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Batten the Sovereign Soul
I think we used to be stronger, home-made
With simple stuff. We’d read a headline, see
An ad and know that we were being played.
We’d roll our eyes and let the bias be.
Perhaps we’d laugh like holy fools and try
The part, the party’s propaganda’s plaything,
Or cry like Luddites, lost within a sigh
And longing for truth’s carton’s candid casing.
But now, the world assumes our fragile eyes
Need censorship. Our ears, in echo chamber,
Need bots and bans. We need fact-checkers checking,
Mob’s standards standing, cancel’s canceling lies
__Canting curated “truth.”
__We are in danger.
Batten the sovereign soul. Real rends a reckoning.
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Maura H. Harrison is a poet and photographer from Virginia, USA.
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I enjoyed this poem very much, Maura. I especially like your reference to the Luddites which has strong 21st Century parallels. And your reference to canting curated “truth” is spot on. I also like the split of the sonnet’s 13th line into two short lines to really spotlight the dire warning.
Brian,
Thank you for your thoughtful read of the poem and your comments.
–Maura
Censorship begets censorship! You are so right in your message to all. I fear it has only begun and will worsen. From free speech now branded hate speech to attempts to crush resistance to words against the many countercultures and supposed gender-bending changes, we are in a war of words. Like Brian, I found the two short lines really emphasized your point.
Roy,
I agree; censorship begets censorship! Thank you for your comments.
This is one of those poems that scares me — literally. It focuses very clearly on the evil that is unfolding, and which is now rooted in the highest levels of government agencies and in the boardrooms of big business. Academia, publishing, advertising, mainstream media, the endless flood of lies and propaganda coming from bureaucracies and NGOs — all of it is preparing the groundwork for massive censorship, world-wide.
All of us who are resisting and protesting are like David, facing Goliath.
Ms. Harrison, I also agree with Brian and Roy that splitting the penultimate line is a master stroke of emphasis.
Joseph,
Thank you for your comments. While I don’t explicitly use the word evil in the poem, I agree…it is an evil.
Maura, from the enticing title to the clever use of line breaks in the sonnet’s conclusion, this admirably crafted poem highlights the horrors of living in today’s world with chilling accuracy. Dr. Salemi is right. This poem is scary… very scary. Great stuff!
Susan,
thank you, I am grateful for your comments.
Maura, it’s interesting that the poem becomes slower reading as we go on. Your increasingly complex syntax (clear as most of it is when carefully considered), makes us stop to think about the increasing fragility of our eyes. And ears, too, now that we seem to be in echo chambers where we hear the same messages repeatedly, and with less clarity. This is an excellent technique leading up to the call for renewed responsibility in “Batten the sovereign soul.” That call resonates well if we are aware that eyes and ears are the windows through which the soul receives knowledge. I’m not quite sure what the final sentence means. “Real” (I imagine) refers back to the simple, stronger, homemade stuff we used to be made of. But is “rends” the verb, or a noun modified by “real”? I will think further if you don’t want to give your authorial interpretation immediately. I admire the poem as a truly thoughtful one facing a difficult prospect, and created with the careful choice of words due to the situation you describe.
Margaret,
Thank you for your comments and questions. Regarding the last line, I am using “real” as another word for “truth”; and my intention was for “rends” to be the verb. It’s interesting, looking at that now, I can see how one could place the stress on “real” for an inverted forth foot, or place the stress on “rends” for an iambic foot. I think “rends” stands out more as a verb if you read that fourth foot as inverted.