NaPoWriMo Day 27: "Back East"

Today's NaPoWriMo prompt: "I’d like to challenge you to 'remix' a Shakespearean sonnet. Here’s all of Shakespeare’s sonnets. You can pick a line you like and use it as the genesis for a new poem. Or make a 'word bank' out of a sonnet, and try to build a new poem using the same words (or mostly the same words) as are in the poem. Or you could try to write a new poem that expresses the same idea as one of Shakespeare’s sonnets, like 'hey baby, this poem will make you immortal' (Sonnet XVIII) or 'I’m really bad at saying I love you but maybe if I look at you adoringly, you’ll understand what I mean' (Sonnet XXIII). If you’re feeling both silly and ambitious, you might try writing an anagram-sonnet, like K. Silem Mohammad has done[.]"

Today's PAD Challenge prompt: "For today’s prompt, pick a direction, make that the title of your poem, and then, write your poem. There are so many directions: north, south, up, down, left, right, over, under, etc. But there are also more specific directions like 'Across the Way,' 'Through the Woods,' and 'Beyond the Clearing.' Or give directions like 'Clean Your Room,' 'Tie Your Shoes,' or 'Get Over Here.'"

I decided I would try the "word bank" approach, and I searched the online collection of sonnets for direction words, hoping to find "east" as I felt inclined to write some thoughts about going back east soon for my 35th college reunion. Lo and behold, Sonnet 132, "Thine eyes I love, and they, as pitying me" had both "east" and "west" in it, and wasn't oppressively familiar. It also had the word "grey," which very much evoked the gothic stone buildings of Bryn Mawr College. So I wrote out a list of all the key words from the original and then began my poem.

Though it wasn't my original intention, I found I was writing about the recent controversy over the name of what has always been called Thomas Great Hall, as current students have protested the unsavory views of one of the college's founding (and lesbian) eminences, M. Carey Thomas, which has led to the official removal of "Thomas" as part of the name. I'm aware that even though I'm one of the women Thomas wouldn't have wanted at the college, I feel a lot of resistance to the renaming and the erasing of the positive aspects of her legacy. Anyway, name aside, I have powerful memories of being in that building, especially certain spiritual transports listening to classical music while gazing out the enormous windows at the sky beyond.

I wasn't setting out to write another sonnet, but as I neared the end I realized it was becoming one -- the turn had already happened naturally just in the right spot. And I noticed that it was tending towards a couplet slant-rhyme scheme in places, so I worked on it then to get the rest to fit. I got most of the sonnet keywords into my poem, maybe not every single one, and with some grammatical shifts.

Back East

A gothic Great Hall, now freshly unnamed
for a woman who loved women but felt disdain
towards Jews and Blacks. What well beseemed us then
has turned to torment and the vocal pain
of the young and righteous, who hold pity
for past blindness unsuited. Ruth feels my necessity;
it is, yes, foul, but truly more a lack I mourn for.
Yet with hot cheeks and words new worlds are ushered.
This part persists: the beauty of grey stones,
our sober Quaker castle with its vaulted heaven,
where I raised my eyes to the glory of window arches
rippling the morning sun or evening full of stars.
There in my own young torment I would look above
to find that grace I’d swear by, love without love.

--Draft by Anne Myles. Please do not copy, cite, or quote without permission.