Richard Vallance
|
Vallance Review June 2003
“Karma”, by Robin Ouzman Hislop
After Edgar Allan Poe’s,
“A Dream within a Dream”
THE SONNET
Karma*
1 Conflicts begin & end
2 Limits of this ephemeral world
3 In its womb of time,
4 Where none can tell what is held
5 As destiny in world of multiple illusion,
6 In world within world
7 Within world without end,
8 Where Divine Karma, La Musa
9 Reveals in mirage infinite order,
10 Wherein we only seem to dream
11 & be dreamed within a dream (c),
12 To come & go & return again,
13 As do the sands in that light (b),
14 Which are our day & night (a).
*After E A Poe. Dream within a Dream
© Robin Hislop Ouzman, 2003 All rights reserved [1]
[Verse enumeration and navy italics by the reviewer]
Edgar Allan Poe’s, “A Dream within a Dream”
Take this kiss upon the brow!
And, in parting from you now,
Thus much let me avow —
You are not wrong, who deem
That my days have been a dream;
Yet if hope has flown away
In a night, or in a day (a),
In a vision, or in none,
Is it therefore the less gone?
All that we see or seem
Is but a dream within a dream.
I stand amid the roar
Of a surf-tormented shore,
And I hold within my hand
Grains of the golden sand (b) —
How few! yet how they creep
Through my fingers to the deep,
While I weep— while I weep!
O God! can I not grasp
Them with a tighter clasp?
O God! can I not save
One from the pitiless wave?
Is all that we see or seem
But a dream within a dream? (c) [2]
Edgar Allan Poe (1809-1849) American
 Lillian C. Buttre. American Portrait Gallery
New York: J. C. Buttre, 1877
ABOUT ROBIN OUZMAN HISLOP
Robin Ouzman Hislop, who hails from the United Kingdom, is a respected international poet and sonneteer. He has long since been a regular contributor to our family of Yahoo poetry groups, La Nouvelle Pléiade = The New Pleiades, where many of his sonnets, poems in alternate forms and haiku are featured.
He is also the featured sonneteer in the Spring, 2003 issue of our Canadian sonnet e-zine, SONNETTO POESIA [ISSN 1705-4524], Vol. 2, no. 2.
For more information on Robin Ouzman Hislop as a poet-author, please consult his personal page at AuthorsDen — Robin Ouzman Hislop . Here you will find his own autobiography and a broad selection of his poetry to suit your fancy.
ON ROBIN OUZMAN HISLOP'S SONNET, "KARMA"
Before directing our attention to the comparison of Robin Ouzman Hislop’s, “Karma”, with Edgar Allan Poe’s, “A Dream within a Dream”, upon which he has clearly based the former, let us first examine some of the prime characteristics of his writing style as a sonneteer.
1. Metrical Structure:
There is no need to rush to the defense of the 14 line, 10 syllable per verse, iambic pentameter sonnet form, as I have already made this clear enough in past Vallance Reviews [3]. Some critics of sonneteers slavishly demand that sonnets adhere to this narrowly defined paradigm, because they have circumscribed their own perspective on what constitutes acceptable theoretical grounds for appropriate sonnet forms. This they do in spite of broad hints to the contrary, sometimes subtle, sometimes painfully obvious, from the sonneteers themselves. While the majority of sonneteers do compose in the traditional Petrarchan, Spenserian, Shakespearian or Miltonian forms, even then there are marked deviations from the so-called norm of the iambic pentameter. Any sonnet written solely in unerringly regular iambic would, in fact, sound incredibly dull and flat. Nor should we forget the somewhat more eclectic style of a poet such as Gerard Manley Hopkins. Put another way, there is nothing in the world of poetic literature, in English or in any other language where we find sonnets a long-established tradition, that requires these be cast in their more traditional metric forms.
We need only take as prime examples of the more notable exceptions to the rule such sonnets as Gerard Manley Hopkin’s 19th. Century curtal [4] sonnet, Pied Beauty of 10½ (and not 14!) lines. Hopkins was adamant in his assertion that, with the use of sprung or tripped metre, “…one stress makes one foot, no matter how many or few the syllables. (italics mine)" [5] The resultant conclusion is that sprung rhythm lays heavier stress on each discrete stress itself in the verse line than does any variant of iambic versification; this in turn allows the sonneteer (or poet) much greater rhythmic freedom. We shall return to this point presently.
Or take the even more drastic departure from the traditional sonnet form adopted by the highly innovative and experimental American poet, e.e. cummings, in his 15 line sonnet, Actualities I (which is adroitly reviewed at the same URL). Or what about 16 line caudated [6] sonnets? As early as the Seventeenth Century, John Milton composed his share of them, though this can be scarcely surprising, given that Milton’s sonnet stylistics were often at variance with the then prevailing norms, as I have previously illustrated at some length in Chapter 12, “The Historical Evolution of the Sonnet: 3 Stylistics: 3.4.1 John Milton”, in Canadian Spirit Voices. [7]
So it cannot really surprise us that Robin Ouzman Hislop should also have chosen to break the traditional mold of the 14 liner, iambic pentameter sonnet paradigm. He is far from being the only sonneteer historically to have done so. Walter de la Mare’s, “Silver”, which I previously reviewed in the August, 2002, Vallance Review [3.2 bis] is a prime example of a sonnet, which for the most part is written largely in tetrameter, with only one verse, viz; the last, in pentameter, and even then it is irregular.
Then we have the 21st. Century American poet, Jim Dunlap, who adopts an irregular metric structure very much in keeping with Walter de la Mare’s versification techniques [3.1 bis]. As a final note, and not really in passing, tetrameter or eight foot sonnets, whether these be regular iambic or not, are actually more common than one might expect. The tetrameter verse can be effectively used, as I have previously illustrated in my review of de la Mare's, "Silver", either to accelerate the rhythm or, in the hands of such a skillful versifier as de la Mare, to achieve the opposite effect, and slow it to an andante pace.
Turning now to Robin Ouzman Hislop's sonnet, we can see that he too does not take much stock in traditional sonnet versification techniques. The question is (and I have posed this same question before, both with respect to Walter de la Mare’s and Jim Dunlap’s metrification models), does the sonneteer’s use of irregular or non-standard rhythms and metric effects enhance the sonnet’s impact, or detract from it?. In the case of all three sonnets here cited, the metre serves the poem's rhythmic fluidity, rather than unbalancing it. Robin Ouzman Hislop's metrification impels his sonnet forward in successive bursts, which lend vividness to the content.
Like Walter de la Mare and Jim Dunlap before him, this sonneteer has deliberately opted for variable rhythmic structure. Verses 1,7 and 14 (namely, the first, the middle and the last) are 6 syllables long; 2 and 12 are 9 syllables long; 3 and 6 are 5 syllables long (3 and 6 complement); verses 4, 11 and 13 are 7 syllables; while verse 5 is 12 syllables and line 9 is 10 syllables long. Now that’s quite a hodge-podge. But, here there is definite structure, even equilibrium, albeit skewed. I am the first to confess I wish I knew more about mathematics, the relationships between prime numbers and the like, but I leave that more esoteric analysis to those who are experts in the profounder implications of such arcane knowledge. I do keenly sense, however, from the rhythmic fluidity of Robin Hislop Ouzman's sonnet, that he has resorted to such contrapuntal rhythms to stress the ephemeral nature of reality, and even of the poem itself (let alone its author).
2. The Rapport between Robin Ouzman Hislop's Karmic Vision and Edgar Allan Poe’s Transcendentalism:
Without belabouring the point, I should like to emphasize that Robin Ouzman Hislop has taken rather like a British “duck to water” to the philosophical underpinnings of American transcendentalism, as illustrated in the works of such poets as Edgar Allan Poe (in this particular instance), Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry David Thoreau. The paradox of reality-as-unreality and vice-versa that he espouses is, in the Shakespearian sense of the notion, “a true marriage”. That this is so is made explicit by our contemporary English sonneteer’s mirror imagery, which is in exact reverse order from Edgar Allan Poe’s original images in his, “Dream within a Dream”. I have identified and tagged Poe’s own images, in the order he placed them in the context of his poem, (a) (b) and (c) above. Note, however, that in Robin Ouzman Hislop's sonnet, these same images “appear” in the reverse or mirror-image order, (c) (b) (a). I must admit that my realization of this reversal dawned on me intuitively rather than consciously; so I am of two minds whether our 21st. Century poet consciously or not brought this recto-verso imagery to fruition. It is, I suppose, a moot point. But if he accomplished the mirror-imaging unconsciously, then I declare, all the more power to him! Why so? A conscious and deliberate attempt to reverse the imagery might have seemed contrived or, worse yet, artificial. As it stands, it does not appear that this is the case. Robin Ouzman Hislop seems (if I may use that karmic word) to have allowed his creative spirit to be intuitively sparked by his own passing, yet deeply affecting, encounter with Poe’s own lyrics.
"But how", you may ask, "does one get from early American Transcendentalism to its latter-day manifestations in 21st. Century Europe?
That's a very good question.
Backgrounder:
Poetry Criticism and Historical Context
In order to more subtly grasp the undercurrents which have so strongly influenced Robin Ouzman Hislop in his contemporary sonnet, it is expedient to place his poem in its relative historical context. Readers of this review series will have long since noticed that I frequently place individual poems I review in their proper historical context.
All too many reviewers of poems, whether of this or of previous centuries as far back as the 16th. Century, have not sufficiently taken socio-cultural historical factors into account. Given the breviloquence of sonnets, and the various demands for structural and thematic precision this places on them, this lack of attention to historical context can and often is a cause of misreadings and even skewed interpretation. Poetry and sonnet critics should, I sincerely believe, incorporate a poem’s historic environment into its review; otherwise, many poems can, and often do, lose a great deal of the aura of meaning they must have once held for their contemporary audiences. This is particularly obvious in the case of early sonnets, such as, “Whoso List to Hunt”, by Sir Thomas Wyatt, which was the second sonnet the Vallance Review series placed firmly in its historical context, with the result that the sonnet’s rhyme scheme and its intent made more sense to modern readers, where otherwise it surely would not have [8].
3. The Rise of Transcendentalism in American Poetry from the Nineteenth Century to the Third Millennium and its Transference to European Poetry:
Transcendentalism in American and British poetry and sonnets:
Ralph Waldo Emerson’s, “Brahma”
David Henry Thoreau, author of the ground-breaking book Walden Pond, and his close friend and ally, Ralph Waldo Emerson, a rather prolific poet, were instrumental in setting the groundwork for the American Transcendentalist movement of the early to mid-19th. Century. Emerson authored the now famous poem, “Brahma”, which so faithfully mirrors the profound paradoxes underlying Hindu philosophy and its attendant concepts of Karma, Maya or Illusion. In his mind-bending quatrain, the Brahma's multi-faceted personalities are the very manifestation of the Oriental mysteries. It is this very Karma, which Robin Ouzman has again so compellingly revitalized, at the outset of the Third Millennium, just as Edgar Allan Poe had done after Emerson.
Brahma
You can read Emerson's “Brahma” here:
Sonnetto Poesia, Vol. 1, no. 1., Spring, 2003, "American Transcendentalism: Brahma".
For the purposes of this review, however, two verses stand out in particular for their transcendent quality:
Far or forgot to me is near;
Shadow and sunlight are the same;
Illusions play upon illusions upon illusions. This is the quintessence of the Brahma, so many faces and as many mirrored perspectives.
In the true tradition of 19th. Century American Transcendentalism, we find yet another author and poet, Amos Bronson Alcott (1799-1888), who was an intimate friend of both Emerson and Thoreau, and who eagerly espoused the precepts of their naturalist philosophy, adapting them to his own liberal Christian ethos. In 1882, Alcott wrote a series of 49 sonnets in Sonnets and Canzonets [9], in two Parts, Part I: Sonnets I-XXII & Part 2, Sonnets I-XXVII. Characteristic of these sonnets are his remarkable generosity of spirit, his humaneness and, of course, his own take on Transcendentalist philosophy, which shines through more distinctly in Part 2 than in Part 1.
Allow me to cite a couple of examples of the Transcendentalist thought pervading these sonnets from two in Part 2:
Amos Bronson Alcott Sonnets and Canzonets
Part II
V (verses 3 & 4)
Where Thought uprises with a sudden gleam
And lights the devious path witch (sic) Be and Seem;
VII (verses 2-4)
Clear insight thine of universal mind;
While from its crypts the nascent Powers unrol,
And represent to consciousness the Whole.
You may also wish to read in Part II of Sonnets and Canzonets, sonnets VI, VII and XIII, for further insights into Alcott’s transcendental thought.
The Migration of Transcendentalism to
the European Continent:
The early Twentieth Century Dutch Sonneteer,
Johannes Andreas der Mouw
As early as the outset of the last century, a phenomenon paralleling American Transcendentalism began to emerge in the poetry of certain European writers, most notably, the famous and remarkably nuanced Dutch sonneteer, Johannes Andreas der Mouw (1863-1919), who in 1913, published his poetic opus, which consisted by and large — you guessed it — of exquisitely wrought sonnets with a strong transcendentalist bent [10]. Whether or not der Mouw’s transcendentalist philosophy was somehow “borrowed” from American Transcendentalism is almost beside the point (in fact, it is doubtful it was). What matters more is that transcendentalism once again, albeit in an altogether new guise and novel historical context, that of Europe, was presently manifesting itself.
A similar strong penchant for transcendentalist imagery and thought informs most of the sonnets of the famed early Twentieth Century German sonneteer, Rainer Maria Rilke (1875-1926), in his “Sonnets to Orpheus” [11], which are among the sublimest in the entire repertoire of sonnet literature.
Transcendentalism in Sonnets of the Third Millennium:
Robin Ouzman Hislop is not alone in the tradition of transcendentalism, which has persisted in fits and starts through the 20th. Century, but seems yet again to be resurfacing on a wider scale at the outset of the 21st. Century. Notable among sonneteers and poets, whose works are often permeated with transcendentalist thought are, of course, Remco van der Zwaag of Holland (whose sonnets can be found on the same page of SONNETTO POESIA as those of Andreas der Mouw); C.S. Snow, California [12] and Richard Vallance of Canada [13], in such sonnets as his, “Philos Sophia” and “Hesiod and the Muse”, two examples of many others he has written in the same vein. Examples of quatrains or sonnets by each of these authors exemplifying this penchant for transcendentalism, whether in the North American tradition, as with C.S. Snow and Richard Vallance, or in the European, as with Remco van der Zwaag [10], may be found at the links just cited in the References and Notes.
CONCLUSION:
The question remains — why has transcendentalism been so persistent phenomenon from the early 19th. Century on through the 20th. to today, in the first decade of the 21st. Century? It has naturally gone through several metamorphoses, as the historical environment has changed, in which consecutive sonneteers have emerged. It seems likely that the phenomenon as it appears in European poetry and sonnet literature is probably not directly linked to that in North America; nor is it necessarily an offshoot of it. And yet this very question, why does transcendentalism continue to “hang in”, as distinct from “New Ageism” (which latter phenomenon is, to this reviewer’s mind, a pale and superficial shadow, merely a passing fad)? The answers, I believe, may be traced all the way to the ancient Vedic literature of Hinduism and to other spiritual historic sources millennia back. It remains to be seen whether there is any critic bold enough in this century to tackle the supreme task of tracing the history of transcendentalism in poetry from it earliest historical roots all the way through to their own actual present. Such a task is clearly beyond the scope of this review, which has none-the-less attempted to place Robin Ouzman Hislop’s sonnet in the context of this pervasive philosophical trend in modern poetry, from early 19th. Century American verse to the present day. © by Richard Vallance, May 28th., 2003
REFERENCES & NOTES:
[1] Robin Ouzman Hislop is the Featured Guest Poet for Spring, 2003, on Richard Vallance’s poetry home page, Poesie’s laissez-faire, here: Poesie’s laissez-faire Faire Foire: guest poetry = poésie d’amitié
[2] FROM: A Selection of Poetry: Edgar Allan Poe, “A Dream within a Dream” (Stellar One: Poetry)
[3.1] See The Vallance Review, January, 2002. Jim Dunlap, “Sharps and Flats”. In this review, I discuss at some length the implications of the sonneteer’s use of irregular rhythm and metrification techniques.
[3.2] See The Vallance Review, Poetry Life and Times, August, 2002, Section 3.1.
[4] For the definition of “curtal sonnet”, scroll to the bottom of the page at this URL: Heart’s Ease: Literary Terms
[5] This fascinating and illuminating essay on Gerard Manley Hopkin's treatment of rhythm, metre and versification techniques is well worth your reading: Hopkins and the sonnet.
[7] Vallance, Richard. Canadian Spirit Voices. Kedco Studios, Las Vegas, NV, © 2003. ISBN 1-878431-44-7. [CD-ROM book, compatible all Windows platforms, all Internet browsers]. Chapter 12, “The Historical Evolution of the Sonnet”, Section 3. “Stylistics”, ref., CD-ROM URL = rv12-3.htm, “3.4.1 The Caudated [6] or Miltonian Sonnet”
[8] See The Vallance Review, December, 2001, “The Legacy of Francesco Petrarch and Sir Thomas Wyatt: an Historical Perspective”
The first sonnet I firmly placed in its proper historical milieu was in fact the very first sonnet I ever reviewed, viz; Mathilde Blind's, "The Dead", in Poetry Life and Times, Vallance Review, September, 2001
[9] Alcott, Amos Bronson, 1799-1888. For the transcript of his Sonnets and Canzonets, Boston, Mass.: Roberts Bros., 1882, please consult this URL: Sonnets and canzonets / A. Bronson Alcott [electronic text] (University of Michigan online)
[10] For a complete biography of Johannes Andreas der Mouw, please see Voici le sonnet: Johannes Andreas der Mouw, in Vol, 1, no. 1, Spring, 2001 of SONNETTO POESIA. In this same issue, you may also read translations into lovely English sonnets of four of der Mouw’s own sonnets by the contemporary Dutch poet, Remco van der Zwaag, here, Andreas der Mouw: 4 Sonnets
[11] Should you wish to read a few of Rilke’s exalted sonnets, either in German or in parallel English translation, you may consult: Selected poems from the Sonnets to Orpheus, by Rainer Maria Rilke, trans. Cliff Crego
[12] C.S. Snow’s contemporary poem, “longevity”, which falls squarely into the tradition of American Transcendentalism, even though it is of our century (that is its historical context), is reviewed in depth along these very lines, in the September, 2002, Vallance Review. "longevity", by C.S. Snow
In addition, you may wish to read several more of C.S. Snow’s poems in a similar vein in Poetry in Emotion = la Poésie à s’émouvoir [1705-4516], Vol. 1, no. 2, Winter, 2002
[13] Here are two of Richard’s sonnets in the North American transcendentalist tradition:
13.1 Poesie’s laissez-faire: my poetry, “Philos Sophia”
13.2 Poetry Life and Times, April, 2003: Featured Poets, page 2. Richard Vallance, “Hesiod and the Muse”.
Next Month's Vallance Review!
Look for the Vallance Review, July, 2003,
"John Keats. 'Blue!' 'Tis the life of heaven, the domain' "
For the Cumulative Index to all 21 Vallance Reviews, September, 2001 to May, 2003, please visit:
The Vallance Review, Poetry Life and Times: Cumulative Index: 2001-2003
For Richard Vallance’s Poetry Carousel Home Page, please visit:
Poesie's laissez-faire Faire Foire
|
