Poetry

Don Paterson

Poetry 

In the same way that the mindless diamond keeps
one spark of the planet's early fires
trapped forever in its net of ice,
it's not love's later heat that poetry holds,
but the atom of the love that drew it forth
from the silence: so if the bright coal of his love
begins to smoulder, the poet hears his voice
suddenly forced, like a bar-room singer's -- boastful
with his own huge feeling, or drowned by violins;
but if it yields a steadier light, he knows
the pure verse, when it finally comes, will sound
like a mountain spring, anonymous and serene.

Beneath the blue oblivious sky, the water
sings of nothing, not your name, not mine.



This Shakespearean sonnet written by Don Patterson discusses the romanticism of poetry. In the sonnet Patterson claims that poetry cannot be written in the heat of passion, that the author needs time to pass to be able to eloquently and beautifully capture that passion or spark. The truth or a meaningful representation of those feelings may take a while to form, to be read and understood universally. He compares this process to the formation of a diamond--it begins fiery and hot coal but that heat is too boastful, and rather crude, one must wait for it to cool and calm to become a beautiful diamond. And this diamond, like a stream, becomes a universal beauty. The author chose to write this as a Shakespearean sonnet because, as with all Shakespearean sonnets it deals with a highly personal theme, and unlike the Petrarchain sonnet it does not idealize something, rather it questions and analyzes it.