Rewriting is a form of reading. While reading Archibald Lampman’s A Gift From the Sun I came across Love-Doubt. It was written over a century ago. This romantic sonnet is iambic pentameter puppy love from afar. It is towards a child-woman or woman described as a child. That last bit gave me pause of irritation.
It was written over a century ago and it shows. I was skimming from “her child-sweet mouth” to “the love of some red rose” and getting into an argument with myself. Cliches only become so because they are an intuitive natural way of transcribing a direct experience to a metaphor.
Forgetting what doesn’t work for me, and why, what does? Some killer phrases. Love was sunny-lipped, dreams weighed, be the listening maker of a song as the song is made by being heard.
Overall, the sound travels better than the meaning. Tumbling the words around the end rhymes can stand alone in some sort of discrete poem of two shy people.
flit cheek meek sit knit seek speak
it stirred long heard throng bird song.
It rather encapsulates the mood without the distraction of changed aesthetics and politics. It strips it of gender and many of the abstractions.
What if I were to take it further, peel it off by 5 columns keeping words in their original order top to bottom?
faint sweet watching
soul’s lily
red blithe was light with echoing
song listeningthat innocent
all would never
should
could tell
gloom ever loudest merry makerupon child-eyes shadow
knowing pale love word
Love swift with burdens
wild butyearning about her light
mute as the one
for all retained
sad, she, Iflit cheek
meek sit knit seek speak
it stirred long heard throng
bird song
It leans it into more the doubt than the exuberance of love, of the title. Some interesting phrases I think. I’ll keep puttering…