In Honor of National Poetry Month...

A poem by John Crowe Ransom entitled Piazza Piece.

--I am a gentleman in a dustcoat trying
To make you hear. Your ears are soft and small
And listen to an old man not at all.
They want the young men's whispering and sighing.
But see the roses on your trellis dying
And hear the spectral singing of the moon;
For I must have my lady soon.
I am a gentleman in a dustcoat trying.

--I am a lady young in beauty waiting
Until my truelove comes, and then we kiss.
But what grey man among the vines is this
Whose words are dry and faint as in a dream?
Back from my trellis, Sir, before I scream!
I am a lady young in beauty waiting.

I will not torture you with verse of my own, and trust me, as of right now, I have a great deal. Some of it even rhymes.

Rather, I will torture you with why I'm fond of the piece and what I think it means.

Ostensibly, it is a conversation between an older gentleman(wearing a dust coat) trying, it seems, to woo a younger woman who is waiting for her ideal love child to come and sweep her off her feet. There can be other interpretations, death being, perhaps, the first voice with the Maiden, or, it has been suggested by my anthology, December and May. Regardless, though I invite individual interpretation, I will go with the initial assumption for purposes of whatever it is I'm writing.

I'm fond of the rhyme scheme, for starters, I am also told it is an adaptation of the Italian sonnet, a form that, dry lover of academia though I might be, I am rather fond of for a number of reasons, not the least of which is that it is Italian. (On a sidenote, I find it interesting how certain ethnic groups, i.e., the Irish, have such extreme pride in their heritage, while others, like Lithuanians or Czechoslovakians have none at all. And then, we have me. I claim Swiss/German decent, however, I ignore these, preferring to place pride in a nonexistant Greek, Roman, Italian, Russian, British, French heritage. What did the Germans give us? Naught but Nietzsche and Rilke.)

I like the rhythm as well, and honestly, I've always thought of myself as prematurely old, and so any attempts at wooing female individuals would seem, mentally, at least, like the above. Plus, Ransom taught Lowell and others at Kenyon, started, in fact, the Kenyon Review, a most excellent literary magazine with a brilliant reputation(from what I'm told by authorities at Kenyon College) and so he is on my "good" list.

But we are ignoring the obvious. Ever the lover of fine words, I dig how he combined "ture" and "love" to form one superword(truelove, thus accenting the second speaker's naivete.