Stuck in the Soup

#83

Welcome back. There was no Sunday Song post yesterday for several reasons and I plan to return to that in the coming week.

Although no one took a stab at classification for this one, I did get an in person comment from a subscriber on a noticeable ‘contemporary’ feel to it. I say, good eye to Sara K., who was referring to the final words of lines 7 and 8. Also, a thank you to Titus for his comment on line 10, referencing Shakespeare’s Sonnet #55. To bring up Old Will is always a pleasure to this humble 21st Century sonneteer.

This week’s non random selection is a Crybin Variant Petrarchan with a Sicilian Sestet, and an oddball twist.. Think of it as an Italian sonnet having both alterations, in addition to having the Spenserian influence of a linked rhyme scheme. ABBACDDC CDCDCD

I dictated this one into my phone, no bleeding pen (or even a pencil) here, while drowning in the heat and humidity in my car outside a remodeling job.

Stuck in the Soup
#83

The golden autumn leaves are yet far off,
With breezes brisk and ev'ning's onset quick.
For now the stifling summer sweat does stick
With real discomfort, slogging through a trough.
The hum of air conditioner is sweet
Yet where I'm working it does not exist
Nor in my car, it seems Fate has me dissed.
For all intents and purposes, I'm beat.

Yet end of day comes, with its Sun's retreat.
Humidity insists it will persist.
Ignoring our admissions of defeat,
The weather laughs, it's victory complete.
Tomorrow's worse, the onslaught won't desist,
For six more days this cycle will repeat.

Frank Garnick

© Copyright The Archer's March
18 July 2022
83

I had just finished listening to Autumn Leaves, which explains the first line. I’m a carpenter/handyman by day and after finishing a block of work on this particular job I went out to my car for some ‘fresh air’, coffee and a smoke. It was stifling hot with the humidity over 90%, and being in a house without air conditioning I had hoped for some respite. No luck. My car had lost it’s AC over Memorial day (another story) so I was hoping for a breeze of some sort. I had disabled my passenger window from rolling down due to it’s hit or miss track record of being stuck in the down position when it rained, so no possibility of a cross breeze. I’ll add that, ‘back in the day’, during extended spells of ‘Hazy, hot and humid’ days, I would retire in front of my TV in the late afternoon to ‘binge watch’ (we hadn’t the term back then) Rudolf the Red Nose Reindeer, Frosty the Snowman and such things on VHS tapes. Sort of a vicarious winter vacation in the midst of summer. The first two lines can be linked to that idea. The octet finishes with the colloquial terms pointed out by Sara.

The Volta brings the (false) hope of relief from the heat. The sestet’s normal resolution vanishes immediately by the next line. I had checked the forecast and all my hopes were dashed as the weather pattern was slated to continue for another week.

This was written during a period last year which produced 71 sonnets in 37 days, (including 4 unproductive Saturdays), speeding me on to that day in September when I tied and surpassed (quantitatively) The Bard in sonnet writing. Maybe I’ll post One Hundred Fifty Four #154 to celebrate my Substack anniversary, which happens to coincide with anniversary that sonnet’s writing too. I suppose that once I reached that never imagined point, I thought I should publish these things that, to me, are so important.

Or buy me a coffee.

Thank you for reading and have a wonderful day. Today’s forecast here, 90 degrees and humid.