[Ttha-potm] Fwd: Minute before Meeting

[Rosemarie Morgan]

I'm still pondering the eccentric notion that Hardy is writing a 
tongue-in-cheek sonnet.  What we would term a parody, perhaps?

But I'd really like to hear from others.  The poem has flashes of 
brilliance - to my mind -- one being the inner conflict on "expectance" 
presented in a triangular form (clever) --as  a three-point unit; but 
then,  what of the wooden inspiration (if that doesn't sound like a 
contradiction in terms) ?   It almost seems that "the significant let down" 
(glad to have that ratified, thanks Gene)  is purposeful. Otherwise, why 
didn't TH consign this poem to the bonfire along with all others he 
disliked and destroyed?

That the poem strikes us all (only  8 days into the conversation)with the 
immediate sense that "the poet's imagination seems...not to have been "on 
fire"" as Gene puts it, is a clue - maybe?  Early as it may have been TH's 
literary career he is - even in the 1860s "on fire" enough to produce some 
very fine poems and (1872) a much applauded novel, *Under the Greenwood 
Tree.*  So why would we excuse an uninspired poem simply on the basis of 
its not being "on fire." I would suggest that we need not excuse it at all 
.   The more I think about it the more I feel it is parodic.

I'd also like to hear from others. -- especially about the placement of 
this early poem in a late collection alongside "He Abjures Love" with its 
"Too many times ablaze/ With fatuous fires" - Surely, surely Hardy is 
playing games here ?

  Help!

Rosemarie






>>             lays most of the usual characteristics (octave, sestet) of a 
>> sonnet without the flashes of imagery, metaphor, the daring leaps beyond 
>> the limitations of the everyday that makes poetry POETRY.
>>             . Because of course this flawed "hour of grace" will soon be 
>> over, and he'll face more "grey gaunt days."
>
>_Gene