Liberties of the Imagination: Poems by Joseph Harrison, commentary by Mary Jo Salter [part 3 of 5]

Today I want to comment on the ingenuity of just one poem in Joseph Harrison’s crown of sonnets, “As If.”  This one is the third in a series of… twenty-two sonnets!  All of them speak of an unrealized love affair.

from "As If" (#3)

Look in my heart, what’s left of it, and write
The honest declarations that just might
Move you to love me, even for one night,
If I could only get the phrasing right?
If I could only get the phrasing right,
I’d hold your hand in candelabra light
And step by step ascend the spiral flight
Of marble stairs—or are they chrysolite?
Oh, I can never get the phrasing right!
There is no text, much less a copyright,
And all’s been said much better than I might.
I’ll sleep alone, like every other night.
Belaureled lovers hold their dreamgirls tight
And all I do is write.

The English majors among us will recognize in Harrison’s first line an adaptation of the first sonnet of Philip Sidney’s series of love poems, “Astrophil and Stella.” Sidney’s speaker is rationalizing and bemoaning his writer’s block when an impatient interjection on line fourteen chides him: “‘Fool,’ said my Muse to me, ‘look in thy heart, and write.’” And indeed, Harrison’s sonnet that directly precedes this one ends with these lines: “And I thought you were someone I could choose, //Not just be chosen by. ‘Fool,’ said my muse.”  A rule of sonnet crowns is that the last line of a sonnet must recur as the first line of the next.  Harrison has been clever in a different way: He has split Sidney’s final line in half, giving the first part as the conclusion to one Harrison sonnet and the second part to the beginning of the one that follows. In fact, with a switch of pronouns—“thy” to “my”—the poet establishes that he’s hoping his beloved will do the writing for him. Then Harrison tortures himself with another rule: he must write in an “A” rhyme scheme for fourteen lines in a row.  Admittedly, he repeats himself with the phrase “If I could only get the phrasing right,” but that’s clever too, since we repeat ourselves when we’re trying to get out of a writing jam. Besides, the phrase is never really repeated verbatim, since its first iteration ends with a question mark, the next with a comma, and the last with an explanation mark.  How fitting that the only rhyme sound Harrison employs is what goes with “write.” And of course the sonnet has to stop short of a full pentameter ending: “And all I do is write” suggests the poet really can’t complete his poem.  Meanwhile, Harrison has aced it.

-- Mary Jo Salter

 "As If", part 3 is from Someone Else's Name, Waywiser Press (2003)

Comments

[Ronald Horvath]

I appreciate being introduced to the poems of Joseph Harrison, particularly with the perceptive and informed introductions of Mary Jo Salter. I look forward to the next two.

[Merrill Wolf]

Thank you for your blogs on Joe's work. I'm so sad that we've lost him. I don't see links to the fourth and fifth installments of your series, though. Can you help?

[David Lehman]

https://blog.bestamericanpoetry.com/the_best_american_poetry/2024/01/liberties-of-the-imagination-poems-by-joseph-harrison-commentary-by-mary-jo-salter-part-4-of-5.html

[David Lehman]

https://blog.bestamericanpoetry.com/the_best_american_poetry/2024/01/liberties-of-the-imagination-poems-by-joseph-harrison-commentary-by-mary-jo-salter-part-5-of-5.html

[David Lehman]

Thank you, Merrill Wolf.