a certain indefinite number of Petrarchan sonnets: №156
Ordinarily I don’t publish so much poetry at Theoria-press, and instead try to provide mostly essays with an odd poem or sonnet occasionally interspersed among them. But the Muse’s visits have outstripped my ability to keep pace with prose pieces so readers who prefer essays should peruse the archives of this site, which are replete with them. This is more-or-less an actual Petrarchan sonnet so it will not be preceded by my usual exculpatory disclaimer about having departed from the paradigmatic form.
IN HALF-LIT chambers hides a flame divine hid beneath the bushel of my heart whose cosmic fire the heavens do impart when angels down their winding ladders climb descending rung by wooden rung of rhyme and knotted rhythms that their path compart and mete out till with light they fill each part until through chinks in time’s great hall they shine and through this cavern’s chinks I also peer and look upon the hands that set to turn the worlds and their arcing courses steer the power that compels the stars to burn the planets sending out on vast career whose spinning dances one day I will learn
I was thinking more about the language and style of time periods. Not suggesting direct influence by any means. I mostly read 19th century into modernism so the floral, song-like language really stands out. I was unaware that the roots of Petrarchan sonnets predate almost all of my reading. 66 and still learning.
thanks