Hope's Epoch

Hope’s Epoch

How amazing to me the dawning light

Gilding with rosy flames the purple clouds

As His children below head out in crowds

To front another day with renewed might.

Fairer still, there below that amber height,

My varied kin wandering to and fro,

Blessed with many joys but besieged by woe:

These I love who conquer their daily plight …

These people my brothers and sisters are,
Whether known or unknown, or near or far.
May our common enemy, hate and fear,
Slip into oblivion’s lasting state

Til alas we with love will deem each dear,

And finally take hold of a noble fate.

-jwm

Of the Poem

Inspired by the poet Edward Robeson Taylor, and the many beautiful sonnets of his that I have recently come to know and appreciate (his classical style is for me refreshing beyond expression), I thought that I might humbly attempt one myself.

To my regret, I believe I may have written no more than a handful of sonnets over the last decade, and of these the poetic form that I chose was that of an English sonnet—otherwise known as a Shakespearean sonnet.

Taylor, who arduously experimented with the sonnet form, seems to have favored the Petrarchan model as typified by the French poets—a form whose poetic parameters seem to have been largely overlooked here in the United States. If you are visiting this page and have any interest, there is a recent article I posted which talks about the unique parameters of a French sonnet (other major sonnet forms are also highlighted there).

Inasmuch as my attempt at a French sonnet was concerned, and the subject of it, I initially began the first half of the octave praising the beauty of the sunrise as it occurs in my hometown of Aurora, Colorado. The second half of the octave was supposed to elaborate on the grunginess and beauty and diversity of the people of Aurora—all of whom I love and wanted to boast about.

My initial endeavor was to personify Aurora as a sort of mother’s beauty brooding carefully over her children as a new and renewed day approached them.

How amazing to me your dawning light,

Gilding with rosy flames the the purple clouds,

As your children below head out in crowds

To front another day with renewed might …

… children “bedeviled about by so many cares” and just desiring happiness. But the poem took a turn as a result of other things I was studying.

I was reading a powerful poem written by Jamaican poet, Claude McKay. The poem, which is a sonnet and a must needs read, is called If We Must Die. It is a poem about brutal oppression, the inability to tolerate it anymore, and an invocation to fight violently against it. The poem was essentially a response to a series of violent racest riots that occurred in 1919, a period known historically as the Red Summer.

After having read about these terrible events a sort of hopelessness and grief lingered with me, a sadness within me that we humans have it in us to be so hateful—murderously hateful—toward one another. It never seems to end, and when I begin to believe that humanity is progressing toward some higher goodness, invariably it seems that some next-level, monumental evil comes in and eclipses that hope. Still, I had to remind myself, if any of us wants to see change we cannot stop hoping for it, and the only way of effecting change is to change ourselves.

It was on this thinking that I began to edit the octave of the poem I began about my hometown and the diversity of its people, and began to ‘universalize’ it. I had the poem open with a new day, a new dawning light as the world (His children) sets out to face and make something of it.

Note the human condition as laid out in the octave: ‘fronting existence’, wandering to and fro (as if lost), besieged by woe, and yet still having within ourselves many joys. Note also how the narrator deems the diversity of the human race (my varied kin) as more beautiful (fairer still) than even that of the dawning morning sky—he especially has love for those who endeavor to overcome their plight (i.e. the human condition).

In a French sonnet the volta or turn in the poem occurs in lines 9 and 10 where a rhyming couplet is employed. In the case of this poem, the volta is an open acknowledgement that all people, whether known or unknown, are as close family to the narrator, and that this perspective must be held if effective and meaningful change is to occur in the world (as the following lines indicate).

The quatrain which then follows concludes with the idea that the enemy we face is not one another, it is xenophobia (fear) and prejudice (hate), and that these must of necessity be lifted if there is to be any hope for humanity. Indeed, the narrator suggests, it is only by banishing these in ourselves that one can even engender the kind of disposition that can love others as if they were our closest kin and family.

Imagine if this were the general disposition or creed of the American population of 1919, one could hardly imagine that the race-hating atrocities which occurred that year would have happened as it did, or at least not to the scale that it did. Imagine, what if this were the general disposition of people globally? What a difference it would make … we might even be able to change our fate.

If you are visiting this page and read this article, I would love to know your thoughts. How did you come to find interest in poetry? Have you written a French sonnet (or any other sonnet types)? How do you like the poem posted in this particular post? Any views on xenophobia and/or prejudice that you might have seen? If you are from another country, what kind of racial issues occur where you are from, and what solutions are being employed there to reduce it? I could go on and on. Nevertheless, I would love to hear from you. Thanks for stopping by.