angels and america

While we are on the subject of sonnets, I thought I would post some for my birthday, which is today! I woke up with a scratchy throat and what feels like a cold, which is not awesome given that I am going to see eight hours of theatre—both parts of Angels in America on Broadway. But I will persevere, because both parts of Angels in America.

On the poetry front: it's a John Donne year, but I also missed posting a poem yesterday, so for yesterday and today: one double sonnet about angels, and a single sonnet about America.

Twice or thrice had I lov'd thee,
Before I knew thy face or name;
So in a voice, so in a shapeless flame
Angels affect us oft, and worshipp'd be;
     Still when, to where thou wert, I came,
Some lovely glorious nothing I did see.
     But since my soul, whose child love is,
Takes limbs of flesh, and else could nothing do,
     More subtle than the parent is
Love must not be, but take a body too;
     And therefore what thou wert, and who,
          I bid Love ask, and now
That it assume thy body, I allow,
And fix itself in thy lip, eye, and brow.

Whilst thus to ballast love I thought,
And so more steadily to have gone,
With wares which would sink admiration,
I saw I had love's pinnace overfraught;
     Ev'ry thy hair for love to work upon
Is much too much, some fitter must be sought;
     For, nor in nothing, nor in things
Extreme, and scatt'ring bright, can love inhere;
     Then, as an angel, face, and wings
Of air, not pure as it, yet pure, doth wear,
     So thy love may be my love's sphere;
          Just such disparity
As is 'twixt air and angels' purity,
'Twixt women's love, and men's, will ever be.

—John Donne (1572-1631), "Aire and Angels" or "Air and Angels" with modernized spelling, which this version of the poem has. From Songs and Sonnets, which is mostly made up of neither songs nor sonnets, but in this case the poem is a double sonnet, and I love that about it—the notes in my grad school edition say "double sonnet! multiple vultas!" and "more mobile sonnet?" which...I am not sure what I meant by that. But anyway, it's a neat poem. I'm less into the misogyny at the end, but there's not exactly a small amount of misogyny in Songs and Sonnets in general; JD was working through some issues.

*

Not like the brazen giant of Greek fame,
With conquering limbs astride from land to land;
Here at our sea-washed, sunset gates shall stand
A mighty woman with a torch, whose flame
Is the imprisoned lightning, and her name
Mother of Exiles. From her beacon-hand
Glows world-wide welcome; her mild eyes command
The air-bridged harbor that twin cities frame.
"Keep, ancient lands, your storied pomp!" cries she
With silent lips. "Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!"

—Emma Lazarus (1849-1887), "The New Colossus." Guys, I've never posted any Emma Lazarus? IN ELEVEN YEARS? Honestly, this isn't even my favorite of her poems; but it's a classic, and it's a sonnet, and despite the last part being immensely famous, I frequently feel like we should read the whole poem more often. So anyway, here is to both angels and America.