Pizza Diavola

As Brave Sir Robin notes, April is National Poetry Month. He says,

I challenge you to read at least one poem a day for the whole of April. You may find that you’ll want to continue when April is done. I also ask that you expand into Poets and styles that might be new to you.

I love poetry for the beauty of the words, the cadences of poetry written in meter, and the joyous union of sound and sense. I love thoughts spoken with allusions, communicating with hints at something older. Allusions bring new layers of meaning into a conversation. I would like to be one of those people who can make allusions to poems, but it rather takes the meaning out of it if no one else gets the reference. Peter Wimsey, Stoppard’s Housman, the Roman elegiacists, the bulk of classical Japanese poets: they all understood that by referencing other works, they were adding to the weight and substance of their own poems. Much like calling in citations in academic writing, allusions in poetry add more ideas, more images, and more meanings than a standalone poem can express within the confines of its verses.

I’ll probably never be Peter Wimsey, but more poetry has stuck in my head than I think I know. I first read Holy Sonnet XIV in British Literature in 10th grade, lo these many years ago, and “Batter my heart, three person’d God” stuck in my head. Maybe it’s the violence of the image, the forceful emotion, the despair, the profound sense of conflict between himself and God, or the difficulties of reconciling himself to God despite his desire to do so (in 10th grade, I was just beginning to lose faith). It’s so naked. At any rate, it’s stuck in my head for a long time, and the whole sonnet is great. There’s so much in it that it’s difficult to pick it apart, but the passionate emotions cause me to shiver.

Batter my heart, three person’d God; for, you
As yet but knocke, breathe, shine, and seeke to mend;
That I may rise, and stand, o’erthrow mee,’and bend
Your force, to breake, blow, burn and make me new.
I, like an usurpt towne, to’another due,
Labour to’admit you, but Oh, to no end,
Reason your viceroy in mee, mee should defend,
But is captiv’d, and proves weake or untrue.
Yet dearley’I love you,’and would be loved faine,
But am betroth’d unto your enemie:
Divorce mee,’untie, or breake that knot againe,
Take mee to you, imprison mee, for I
Except you’enthrall mee, never shall be free,
Nor ever chast, except you ravish mee.

–John Donne (1572-1631), Holy Sonnet XIV