Transcript

It’s fall, and that means “back-to-school”. We put together this week’s episodes for the educators in our audience — especially those of you who may be looking for a little Slowdown treatment on those classroom classics, from Shakespeare to Frost. We hope you all enjoy these selections, as learners of any age.

I’m Major Jackson and this is The Slowdown.

An unreasonable fear emerged recently in a dream. I could not recall my family and those I love. This was not prosopagnosia, the inability to recall faces. My difficulty? I was unable to hold them . . . in language. In the dream, I was seated in a park in front of a sketch artist who wore an exaggerated beret. My mental images were there, but words eluded me. I struggled to describe members of my family’s most basic features, my daughter’s hair, my older son’s height, my younger son’s nose. It was as if my subconscious had lost a bit of my boundless affection. They were left undrawn to the disappointment of the “artiste,” who waved me off.

Isn’t calling to mind those we love and their endearing marks and presence a measure of that love? It is how others learn that we live in the company of real people with real features: a pudgy stomach, a mole, specklings of gray hair. In my waking life, I carry within what makes my family and friends unique and quirky: snippets of their voices, the pitch and cadence of their laughter, the slopes and valleys of their faces.

Long ago, the Italian poet Petrarch turned poetry into an act of idealizing female beauty by listing off the physical traits of a woman he once ran into, Laura. Another poet came along, Clement Marot, and turned that naming of features into a contest of words. It took off; poets attempted to outdo each other by concocting the most exaggerated comparisons to describe women from head to toe. Meant initially as a celebration, the irony of the competition is that the more ornate their metaphors, the more invisible the women became.

It is into this environment that William Shakespeare wrote one hundred and fifty-four sonnets. One of them, Sonnet 130, famously rebukes the literary tradition known as the blazon.

Shakespeare’s Sonnet is brilliant for how the speaker disproves the idea that his girlfriend could be compared to anything in nature. He takes aim at hyperbolic similes; he offers examples that deflate the notion of flawless physical perfection. Any poem either collapses or succeeds based on the originality of its vision. The substance of Shakespeare’s vision is that our imperfections are what make us truly beautiful and rare.

When teaching Sonnet 130, I typically discuss the parts of a sonnet: fourteen lines, rhyme, metrical patterns, and the importance of the volta. That’s the easy part. What is even more of an accomplishment is the shift in tone of voice. Tone gives us a hint at the speaker’s inner psychology. The speaker seems irritated at the beginning of the poem, but then, something happens at line twelve; the speaker succumbs to the spirit of awe and wonder. We hear it in the phrase and pauses both before and after the phrase “by heaven.” It’s a very powerful moment when a poet can capture in words what is typically hidden inside a person. I almost interpret “by heaven” as a way of saying that his mistress is divined, and thus, above mere earthly comparisons.

Sonnet 130
by William Shakespeare

My mistress' eyes are nothing like the sun;
Coral is far more red than her lips' red;
If snow be white, why then her breasts are dun;
If hairs be wires, black wires grow on her head.
I have seen roses damasked, red and white,
But no such roses see I in her cheeks;
And in some perfumes is there more delight
Than in the breath that from my mistress reeks.
I love to hear her speak, yet well I know
That music hath a far more pleasing sound;
I grant I never saw a goddess go;
My mistress when she walks treads on the ground.
      And yet, by heaven, I think my love as rare
      As any she belied with false compare.