Hi Lapoetessa,
Welcome!
An interesting read that, as with all poems that get posted, is being read,
being weighed and considered, carefully - Ha!, that's what we do.

I guess it's a poem that comes across as saying "look at the form first,
then the content" (perhaps because I saw the title with the words
"Petrarchan Sonnet" appended to it - and the line-lengths and rhymes satisfy
it's formal obligations well. But it's content sometimes seems to be
struggling to fit with the form...
Sometimes when I'm speaking - because of the culture I come from - I say
things where words are inverted (I speak without thinking) but if I write
down what I speak I often have to modify what I actually said.
Sometimes, however, I wouldn't even speak the phrase. So "What fools are we"
I guess I'd always say "What fools we are" - and write it that way too!
I think, too, that starting a 21st Century poem with the phrase "Pray
tell..." is echoing a traditition that's so far in the past it hints that
what follows will be a send-up, or a spoof, or - at least - an ironic poke
in the ribs at whatever poets and poetasters the rest of the poem brings to
mind. And the phrase "to bend the form for ease of fit" has wonderful irony
in it (cos that's just what you've done!). But in using pitchers, swords and
daggers, are you still being playful? I guess you might be...
If you are then it might be helpful if the second part of the poem brought
us into the contemporary world - used phrases that "we write" with... and
maybe, if they're still included, put Muses & Zephyrs back into the
centuries they were more commonplace poeticisms. Sonnets have had times of
great popularity (and, I feel, this is one of those times) but each time
they've sung loudly they've used the contemporary language of the time they
were written. In short, from how I read it, sort the last five lines - then
there's an ironic cracker here!
Bob





>From: LaPoetessa <[log in to unmask]>
>Reply-To: The Pennine Poetry Works <[log in to unmask]>
>To: [log in to unmask]
>Subject: Songs of Love - Petrarchan Sonnet
>Date: Fri, 18 Apr 2003 23:15:59 +0100
>
>Hello, I'm new to the list so thought I would jump right in and post a
>sonnet. I came across this list quite by chance this evening.
>
>I have been a member of JISC for a number of years but mainly through my
>work at a University in the Northwest.  I do believe it used to be known as
>MailBase but I may be wrong?
>
>Well that's enough of my wild ramblings...on to the sonnet...
>
>Songs of Love - Petrarchan Sonnet
>
>Pray tell - if songs of love in rhyme can please,
>and should we all be lost in sandune's dust
>like thoughts in time, who then will write of lust?
>In making haste, words fail and yet words tease.
>
>What fools are we, to bend the form for ease
>of fit? In tempered pattern's cut and thrust,
>like pitchers placed where swords and daggers rust,
>in life it can be so, for words can freeze.
>
>In songs of love we write in rhyme to sway
>the heart. If sung in time, for words are songs
>of love as Muses too have loves to hold.
>
>We think it game to scoff at other's ways
>and yet in time they will forgive our wrongs,
>as Zephyrs blow and speak in words untold.


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