What Fool Would Challenge Shakespeare?: Going Toe to Toe with the Champion Sonneteer

By T. J. King

By Knowledge Unsullied

The way you gut a catfish, trim a sail,
Or how a host concocts the perfect martini,
What the blazes is a farthingale,
The names of all the operas by Puccini,
All this escapes mealong with winning at poker,
Tiling a bathroom, cheating bees of their honey,
Dancing beyond a score of mediocre,
Talking sports, or making a pile of money.
Equating learning with earning, most are aghast.
You worthless dimwit, they say, you must feel dejected.
Au contraire! My cluelessness unsurpassed,
Such matchless ignorance has got to be respected.
A gorge gigantic, gaping, without flaw:
Not even the Grand Canyon commands such awe.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Trafford Publishing
• Release date: Mar 4, 2014
• ISBN: 9781490729152

T. J. King

Within this book lie such poems as their writer finds worth salvaging. Who else will so deem them doesn’t so much matter. What matters is that they be set down in print, a testament in final, supreme gratitude for such quality of life rarely permitted anyone to get away with living. So saith T.J. King, who discovered and perfected the Best Revenge.

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© Copyright 2014 T.J. King.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the written prior permission of the author.

ISBN: 978-1-4907-2913-8 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-4907-2914-5 (hc)

ISBN: 978-1-4907-2915-2 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2014903896

Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any web addresses or links contained in this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.

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CONTENTS

Dedication

Preface

A Raft of Similes Comes Into Dock

Like the Rain When It Rains

The Grist of Care

As I Strain to Hold My Course

Ah… Nature!

The Compost Pile

Threats of Record Wetness

Impossibly I Advance

Presumption Denied

On the Wet Stuff Vast

The Inside Dope

Art Derailed

Escape by Time Machine

The Song of Longing

Beautiful Women

The Evolved Superlative

Were There No Suffering

The Door You Left Ajar

To Fly the Coop

The Gramophone’s Key

Our Delicate Balance

Chris Hedges: What He Wrote

A Trackless Minefield

A Fun Invention

Moonlighted Madness

Colossal Error

It’s a Wrap

What Might Ignite a Fire

How Infinite As Light

To Compliment a Lovely Woman

A Perfectly Clownish Shtick

The Turf of Esthetes

The Terrible Reckoning to Come

Keats’ Ode to a Nightingale

To Read His Own Words

Death As a Gorgeous Act

Your GPS

With Faith Feeble in Zeal

That I Care So Bloody Much

Modernizing

Love Not Her Cup of Tea

Never Not

Splendor Found in Books

Reality

Sculpting What’s Real

Sky-Romp

Big As All Outdoors

The Hoax

This So-Called Miracle

Woman, Kind

This Dark Passage One Would Scarcely Choose

The Task Assigned

The Source From Whence I’ve Sprung

Thought of the Grave

What You Already Know

In Sudden Thrall

Heart on Sleeve

Love Can Be a Judas

The Topmost Tourist Trap City

The Muse Confronted

Alchemy Transmuting Gold

Atop This Steeple

The Rescue

Eavesdroppers Welcome

Why No Other Poem in Any Book

An Authentic Lover

The Boon of Faith

His Craft Pursuing

On Hearing a Music Pure

The Carnivore’s Undoing

Cachinnation

Caught Off Guard

Solace Comprehended

The Joyful Noise of the Divine

Improving on Nature

By Knowledge Unsullied

Him They Called Papa

A Tale to Rip the Veil

Scofflaws of Nature

Coming Clean

Pleasure’s Perks

A Tome So Finely Writ

A Lesson Learned

Liesl Eleyn

Unemployment Check

The Shivering Sense

Righting the Perspective

The Use and Value of a Small Appliance

Elegies

Beyond Thumbscrews

My Muse Unfeeling

Limitations Human

Sarah

Eavesdroppers Welcome

The Unknown Soldier

The Tunnel Vision of Love

To Dwell Amongst the Few

By Ecstasy Undone

The Reliable Confrere

Appendix One

The Rainbow Benediction

Appendix Two

The Inexhaustible Subject

Appendix Three

The Mightiest Monosyllable

Appendix Four

Who We Are

Appendix Five

Au Contraire, Love

Appendix Six

A Lantern One Might Shine On Literature

DEDICATION

S educed by muse to end a sonneteer,

Whiling away my late steps toward the grave

Quite as another gent who shook a spear

And, taut of thought, taught verse how to behave,

Determined like that Englishman sublime

To make a final stand, and leave behind

What, though denied his genius, yet in rhyme

Might just as well express this mortal’s mind,

I settle here, rejoicing in my craft,

And launch, as it is only apropos,

This sequence dedicated to a daft

And ditzy dame, my mate, whom I love so.

Something of both of us, though death arrive,

In witness to my joy just might survive.

PREFACE

I t is I, the fool in this book’s title, who comes swaggering forward here to greet you.

Titles, as is well known, launch a thousand ships. A browser opening this book may well be motivated by curiosity to discover what sort of megalomaniac would dream such a dream. Perhaps for some there may be appeal in the dare of the underdog taking on the champ. But how can anyone possibly make good in challenging the heavyweight champion of all poets?

My acquaintance with Will Shakespeare is not superficial. What is true among English-speaking populations in general is true, as I can vouch, throughout academia: Shakespeare continues to enjoy the reputation of being the world’s greatest poet ever. But when those who are actually familiar with Shakespeare’s writings and credentials allude to him as world supreme, they are thinking of him as dramatic poet. It is the plays, written in poetic form (blank verse, unrhymed iambic pentameter) on which his reputation relies as unequalled and insuperable. Not necessarily the sonnets. Now let’s get down to those, the poems Shakespeare liked enough that he produced a sonnet sequence totaling 154 of them. How good a sonneteer was Shakespeare?

Not at all shabby. Wonderful, you fool! I hear a response voiced indignantly out there, and I wouldn’t for a fortune dispute it. Certain of them, in fact, rank among the best poems in the language, the leading candidates being #29, #30, #60, #64, #65, #73, #106, #107, #116, #129, #138, #146. (This list excludes certain favorites of my own.) So where does this leave me? Going toe to toe with the great Elizabethan, just how presumptuous is it of me to contest his performance?

Although the dozen sonnets I’ve cited above are by no means the total sum of the fine poems in Will’s quiver, the greater number of those 154 are pretty flea-bitten. The best show there was no doubt of his genius, his topmost talent. But the Elizabethan knew his forte was drama, the incomparable plays. I contend that, with rare exceptions, he tossed off his fourteen-liners as if left-handedly, producing them with only a half-baked seriousness. Only you can decide if this is a fair judgment, to do so requiring that you read or re-read at least some of his batch. If you’re going, consider some key standards of measurement.

Variety

It was Francis Petrarch (1304-1374) who’d invented the famous 14-line form to address one Laura, the unidentified lady by whom he’d been smitten. The convention called for sonnet after sonnet in a lengthy sequence, all extolling the charms of some enchantress placed unattainably on a pedestal. Though he departed from the convention in some ways, even introducing a male friend alongside his lady love, Shakespeare nevertheless largely adhered to Petrarch’s established convention. One doesn’t have to read them to guess that over a hundred and fifty sonnets saying that one lady was hot can get a tad tiresome. Not so my own batch. Love gets its due, but likewise all variety of other subjects. And the shifts in tone run the gamut, life affirming, somberly reflective, tongue-in-cheek ironical, plain funny, you name it.

Power of language

Going up against the ultimate wordsmith at the top of his game, I yield to his superiority. Who could possibly equal such eloquence as #73,

That time of year thou mayst in me behold

When yellow leaves, or none, or few, do hang

Upon those boughs which shake against the cold,

Bare ruin’d choirs where late the sweet birds sang…

I stand already in the discomfiting position of self-promoter, and clearly only you, my reader, can redeem me. I must let my poems speak for themselves, and shall hope that by this particular measure, that of sheer language skills, my own may deserve an honorable second place.

Insight, significance of point

Here I come to my best shot as claimant to bettering the champion. Since the Petrarchan influence taught Shakespeare to aim at eloquence rather than substance, Shakespeare’s excellence is primarily rhetorical, which is to say, clever by the tuning of fine language, real insight giving way largely to pleasing turn of phrase.

A struggle, you see, persists throughout the long history of poetry. Lyrical poetry aims at the expression of feeling, yes, but need it exclude treatment of thoughtful reflection? Looking at the predominance of verse written in our own time, as well as in Shakespeare’s Renaissance, it would seem so.

Now consider my own contrasting claims. I never settle down to write (though sometimes the dry stretches are killers) unless inspiration has finally been delivered to my noggin, and I have something to say worth my reader’s thinking about. Take a look, in way of example, at #6, The Compost Pile. The sonnet deals with the question, how seriously ought our culture’s worship of celebrities be taken? And the answer comes not preachily, but on the pithy, freshly sharpened point of irony.

Having conceded my verses will not be acclaimed the equal of Mr. S’s in his highest flights, I contend, however, that what I suffer in height will be made up in depth. It does not patronize his unquestionable genius to say Shakespeare’s sequence is riddled with dozens of sonnets he should never have allowed to be published. Unless I simply delude myself, I offer no such truffles for publication. The thrust of my contest with the champion, therefore, rests in the wager that any reader fairly judging will award me the higher scores for more substance of thought, ampler genuine insight.

The Pleasure Principle

Western poetry’s 20th Century revolution amounted in cost to literature the equivalent of genocidal bloodshed in revolutions costing human life. Walt Whitman and T.S. Eliot, giants bestriding the colossus, achieved history’s perfect coup to liberate poetry from its fetters. Though we would be mad to regret the appearance of their towering talents, we may well lament their influence as manipulated by the purported luminaries in their aftermath. Vers libre, for all its salutary benefits in respect to poetry’s magnificent new lease, concomitantly presided over the sacrifice of delectable skills and devices bearing the beneficent patina of centuries. It must surely be clear that I refer to the immeasurable delight leaping from lines making the most of traditional rhyme and meter. Poetry’s