Syncopated Sonnets: 1
Here’s a poem I wrote a while ago about fooling around on a beach. We’d been visiting some friends in Cullercoats (between Tynemouth and Whitley Bay) so a visit to the Long Sands was, well, a necessity. What else can you do with such a great, glorious outbreath of sand?
The answer, folks, was to splash about in the water, splash each other, pelt each other with soggy sand and generally get the cardio-vascular system going.
And the result? Ah, that’s the thing. The result is lots of Life, which translates as Joy, so you inevitably feel Love. (Yes, everyone, it’s a parade of the Capital Letter Qualities – Life, Joy, Love – although Peace and Harmony had to wait their turn till we got our breaths back.) Anyway, here’s the poem:
On Tynemouth Seashore
See her gasp as she emerges from the sea
With a gasp that’s a grimace, and a
Grimace that’s a grin – within her hand a
Slog of sand she’ll shortly aim at me.
See her eyes where the grin is one of glee
Cos she’s soaking from the water and a
Vengefulness has brought her to demand a
Full submission though I’m just as wet as she.
If... I... only had a camera I might
Photograph this moment, when before the space
Of ocean she shone brighter than the white
Of breaking foam... But... nowhere in this place
Is any camera to be had (though I might
Have found the flash: for that was in her face!)
By the way, the form of the poem is also playful. It’s a Syncopated Sonnet, and the game is to make the thing look like a proper sonnet – but sound nothing like one. So it is set up like a standard Petrarchan Sonnet (which means it is split into an eight-line ‘octave’ – with the rhyme scheme ABBA ABBA – and a six-line ‘sestet’ – with the rhyme scheme CD CD CD).
Now, you would normally expect the rhythm to consist of iambic pentameters (di-DUM di-DUM di-DUM di-DUM di-DUM). However, the game is to mess around with the rhythm so it sounds entirely different. And that’s what the syncopating means.
Then you can have some more fun by sticking some feeble rhymes at the ends of lines (“and a... hand a”) while putting stronger ones in the middle (“water... brought her”). And so on.
All this might sound very technical but it’s just the rules of the game. Think of the offside rule in football, or LBW in cricket. The better the rules, the better the game – and if you break the rules (like picking up the football and running with it) you might end up inventing another game (like rugby).
Or Syncopated Sonnets.
May I invite you to make certain purchases? (I may? Why, thank you...)
(a) The Salamander Stone (by my most excellent and trusty pal, Mrs Me - indeed the heroine of this poem) from one of these outlets:
Direct from the publisher, Burst Books: click here
Amazon UK: click here
(b) The Two Worlds of Wellesley Tudor Pole (by Mrs Me’s most excellent and trusty pal, Me):
Amazon UK: click here
Amazon.com (US): click here
(You’ll be getting both of them? Well, that is an admirable choice, if I may say so...)