On “Sonnet XXXIV” by Ted Berrigan
Have you ever ridden one of those carousel rides where you and the love of your life sit in a pod, and both your seat-pod and the entire ride rotate in a marriage of human ingenuity and stupidity? Trevor and I went on one of those back in May, and I had to keep my head stock-still and my eyes glued to his the whole time so I wouldn’t get dizzy. Blue on hazel. At the time, my mother was at home suffering from fits of vertigo and I couldn’t help but think of her, stiff-necked in bed, trying to keep the world from spinning.
The last piece I loved is “SONNET XXXIV” from Ted Berrigan’s the sonnets because it is a moment of clarity–an intimate moment of eye contact with Berrigan as we try to stabilize the world spinning around us. By the time I reached “SONNET XXXIV” in the book, I realized that Berrigan is the one making the world spin, or rather reflecting the way that his own world spins. However, in this piece, he puts the reader in the eye of the storm. The speaker takes on a contemplative, melancholic perspective, which differs from Berrigan’s typical exhilarated and skittish tone– “Time flies by like a great whale…” The speaker looks at their life dissociatively and confronts an identity crisis, expressing observations in a calm, meta-way that contrasts with the other poems, which are bright, impulsive bursts of energy (see “SONNET XXVI.”)
Berrigan’s sleep-devoid substance binges influenced/encouraged/spawned much of this book; as a result of this, some poems are more coherent than others and some bear zero resemblance to the traditional sonnet. Berrigan is a true scientist, experimenting with language and all areas of the form. Most of all, he challenges me to think beyond what a poem “means.” While I enjoy the increased clarity and more traditional syntax of “SONNET XXXIV,” I have discovered newfound value and enjoyment in the more obscure, sonic sonnets like “SONNET XXVI.”
Comments