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Tranquil Tokonoma

One thing a perfect purple rose cannot
Accomplish is a type of sadness.  Man
Is best at that.  That is mankind’s special blot.
The plants and animals have learned to ban
Such uselessness.  They settle in their fur
Or leaves and just get on with life and death.
Yet men and women, children, all concur
That they should seek out sorrow with their breath
Whenever possible.  Within rice walls
A cross-legged man caresses sadness from
His heart.  Chrysanthemum’s pure white appals
His sense that he should turn the blossom glum.
_The bloom resists this silliness.  It waits
__There never contemplating wilted fates.

.

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Shade

The quiet, silent things send echoes through
Each other.  Rosebush leaves above the tom
That naps beneath them are more quiet, strew
Their silence down, reverberating calm
On nearly silent breathing through his two
Pink nostrils held by silent fur of white.
Reverberating silence from the blue
Sky far above adds silence from a height
More deep than unheard breathing under blooms.
He does not understand that there is more
And deeper silence from the nearby tombs
Of other sleeping cats who napped before.
_He need not think of them.  Their dreaming breath
__Went years ago.  Their shadowing is death.

.

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Phillip Whidden is an American living in England who has been published in America, England, Scotland (and elsewhere) in book form, online, and in journals. 

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28 Responses

  1. Bonnie

    These beautiful paired sonnets reminded me of these Blaise Pascal quotes:

    “The grandeur of man is great in that he knows himself to be miserable.”

    “Man is but a reed, the most feeble (thing) in nature; but he is a thinking reed. The entire universe need not arm itself in order to crush him; a vapor, a drop of water, suffices to kill him. But when (even if) the universe would (were to) crush him, man would (still) yet be more noble than that which kills him, because he knows that he is dying (that he dies) and the advantage (which) the universe has over him; the universe knows nothing of it (of this).”

    Reply
    • Phillip Whidden

      Dear Bonnie, You certainly raised the philosophical tone (if it needed raising) by those quotations from Blaise Pascal. Thank you very much. I liked them in and of themselves.

      Reply
  2. Margaret Coats

    A lovely pair of poems, Phillip, on the insensitivity of irrational beings to sadness–which I take means principally the sadness relating to awareness of mortality. Plants perk up in their own way when needs are met (by water, for example), and animals when desires are fulfilled. As I write this, there is an unhappy cat nearby who would very much like to be outdoors. Your use of the words “breath” and “death” through both poems is significant–more so in “Shade” because the tom cat breathes while rosebush leaves and blue sky are more silent than silent breathing. As are the white chrysanthemum and imagined purple rose in the first: they simply settle and resist and wait. Those verbs apply to animals in a different, more active sense, and to human beings in a way that almost demands to be understood emotionally. You show that well. The poems represent an excellent imagistic meditation on the subject. I do wonder what you intend by the final, “Their shadowing is death.” I don’t think you mean sick animals are aware of death, though they do sometimes hide (or “settle”) to “wait” for their own death as it approaches. The cat with me now lost a sister to a car and a brother to a coyote, and she has of course changed as a loner. How would your “shadowing” refer to her as she naps beneath silent bushes, or would it not? Thanks for these very human reflections!

    Reply
    • Phillip Whidden

      Maragaret Coats, I wrote quite a long and full reply and then it ZIP disappeared. I suppose I accidentally hit a key that destroyed the message. Where do such messages go in cyberspace? If I work up the will, I’ll try to answer again later. Sorry.

      Reply
      • Margaret Coats

        Phillip, this happens to me, too. If you see your words turn blue, quickly click on a faraway marginal space, and they may return to normal color. Otherwise, any action by you may ZIP them away.

      • Phillip Whidden

        It seems a universal doom–though I very much shy away from the meaning of “doom” or “fate” or “predestination”–or whatever. Thanks for your implied sympathy. I did not see the words turn to blue. They just sublimated to nothingness ZAP, evanesced with a silent bang, not even a whimper (except from me).

    • Phillip Whidden

      In a later message, Margaret Coats, you said, “Phillip, this happens to me, too. If you see your words turn blue, quickly click on a faraway marginal space, and they may return to normal color. Otherwise, any action by you may ZIP them away.” I don’t know if that means messages of yours on this website disappeared or if that happened elsewhere. If the former, you might be interested in the exchange between Mike Bryant and me in this string.

      Reply
  3. T. M. Moore

    I agree that the sonnets work well, and I find the conflating of sight and silence in the second poem an impetus to delightful meditation. But I must disagree, Phillip, with the idea proffered in the first poem that sadness is “useless” and a kind of “silliness.” Sadness is an essential affection for self-improvement and working for restoration in a sin-blighted world. Jesus wept over Jerusalem, and we must not fail to weep over the sad condition of our world and our own failings to do more to heal it. Sadness can be a gift of grace to leading to righteousness, peace, and joy, but not if we deny or despise it. But perhaps I have misread you? At any rate, keep sharing your poems with us. T. M.

    Reply
    • Phillip Whidden

      T. M. Moore, thank you. Since you and I both care strongly about language, I will disagree with you that you “must disagree”…at least you did not have to disgree in a written message. Please do not feel angry with me when I say, perfectly calmly, that you could have remained silent while disagreeing. Of course you are right to want to set things straight about “useless” and “silliness” insofar as those terms might apply to humans, but I think it would be silly and useless for animals to dwell on death. They are aware of dangers and they take precautions as best they can to avoid being attacked and harmed but whether they realize that they might be killed–and what death is–may not be a philosophical realization by them. I don’t know. Perhaps you have data on this point. I rather think that that was not the point you were raising. Perhaps I have misread you. I like it that, given your disagreement, you still encourage me to keep sharing my poetry. I think I have remarked elsewhere on this site that the first and most important rule about good writing is that it must be honest. Actually I have never seen any writing teacher say that that is the most important writing rule of all. To the extent that your “disagreement” with words in the sonnets was a defence of honesty, I am in complete agreement with you. Yes.

      Reply
  4. Paul A. Freeman

    This site does particularly value ‘beauty’, and you’ve come up trumps on that score, Phillip.

    I was particularly taken by the philosophical turn to the wonderfully-alliteratedly-titled Tranquil Tokonoma.

    Thanks for the read.

    Reply
    • Phillip Whidden

      Paul A. Freeman, Yes, this site seems to prefer writing about beauty–beauty as perceived by its editors, although they also appear to have a strong political bend in their decision-making about poetry. It will come as no surprise to readers here that I have a strong bent to philosophical thinking. This includes the various “philosophies” of various religions. Since some “religions” refuse to think of themselves as religion, this can all be very tricky. Thoughtfual followers of Hinduism, so far as I know, deny that it is a religion. The notion is that it is a way of life instead. As best I can work out what the situation is with Buddhism, it too is not what I would call a religion but rather a philosophical stance to deploy in life. Those who know more than I do may well weigh in in this philosophy/religion matter. Yes, I often have to fight inside myself to keep philosophy from overwhelming my poetry, maybe because I like the ways I can be playful, poetically, with philosophy as in “Tranquil Tokonoma.” I’m very glad that that pleased you,

      Reply
  5. Adam Sedia

    Both sonnets are excellent — I see your productivity paid off. What I find most striking is your unconventional use of flowers. Normally we see them as images of fleeting joy or love, but here you give them permanency – which strictly as symbols they totally have. Your chrysanthemum is a true Zen master, putting the man’s fleeting emotions into perspective, while your rose is – quite unexpectedly – a harbinger of death. “Shade,” I will also add, is deliciously elusive.

    Reply
    • Phillip Whidden

      Adam Sedia,
      Be warned. People’s comments in this system sometimes just disappear and can’t be recovered. Probably this is not the fault of the Society of Classical Poets but is instead a fault in the comments system adopted by the Society (from WordPress?). I strongly advise you and others to create your comments in a word-processing program and then paste them into the system—and then send them on.

      Thank you for congratulating me on my productivity. There’s an anecdote behind it. While I was teaching in a classroom smack on the edge of the deep Great Rift Valley in Kenya (a classroom whose windows were about six feet from the steep drop down a cliff into that valley), I was required by the Cambridge University international education system to teach a poem by an author I had never heard of: Charles Tennyson Turner. It was shockingly beautiful and moving. I would say even . . . perfect. In a sense it could be argued that it is flawed in its construction. It is a combination of the Italianate form and the Shakespearean form. The first twelve lines follow Petrarch’s pattern, but then they are followed by a rhyming couplet. Och, well, as they say in Scotland (not in Kenya).

      At the time of this teaching I knew only on biographical fact about this sonneteer: he wrote over one thousand sonnets in his lifetime—before life’s book closed on him. I find solace in the wonder that one of those more than 1,000 is not only perfect but is being read around the world even on the edge of the Great Rift Valley.

      On Finding a Small Fly Crushed in a Book
      Charles Tennyson Turner

      Some hand, that never meant to do thee hurt,
      Has crushed thee here between these pages pent;
      But thou hast left thine own fair monument,
      Thy wings gleam out and tell me what thou wert:
      Oh! that the memories, that survive us here,
      Were half as lovely as these wings of thine.
      Pure relics of a blameless life, that shine
      Now thou art gone: Our doom is ever near:
      The peril is beside us day by day;
      The book will close upon us, it may be,
      Just as we lift ourselves to soar away
      Upon the summer airs. But, unlike thee,
      The closing book may stop our vital breath,
      Yet leave no lustre on our page of death.

      Forgive my seeming arrogance now: one of my sonnets here on the Society’s website was noticed by (wait for it) Cambridge University Press and has subsequently been published in a book by that press (which paid a phenomenal price for it). Wonders never cease. Later another publisher, this one in America, paid an even bigger price to print it in a book across the pond that separates you from me. I was gobsmacked. Please note: I have not claimed by sonnet is perfect.
      I’m wonderfully pleased that you liked both the sonnets you commented on here. That means a lot to me, Adam.
      Although I had occasionally been writing sonnets since I was in my teens (paleontological eons ago), I launched into my huge effort specializing in sonnets because of Charles Tennyson Turner. I took his 1,000+ sonnets as a direct challenge…and always look back to it and him. Thus my productivity. I very recently learned the Lope da Vega (according to Wikipedia) wrote more than 3,000 sonnets. WHOA! (or however they say that in Renaissance Spanish). By the time I learned that, I had already posted on my own website devoted to my sonnets more than 3,400 Whiddenly sonnets (of varying degrees of perfection/imperfection). Still that Spanish writer has outgunned me by writing zillions of plays.
      I especially like the fact that you are attracted to the ambiguity in these sonnets. Your phrase was “deliciously elusive.” For me “poetry” that is not ambiguous is not really poetry, or at least not of the highest order.
      Since like every other poet (probably) I try to say things in a fresh way, naturally I was chuffed that you found my use of flowers in the sonnets new and interesting. I need more fans like, you, Adam Sadia.
      Your mention of Zen prompts me to say that for decades I have been reading, off and on, books about Zen and poetry. Things could be worse, eh?

      Reply
  6. Phillip Whidden

    Adam Sedia, I was well into a reply to your comment when I paused and went to the web to check a fact that I had just written in that reply and when I got back to my reply to the comment the reply was . . . GONE. It had completely scarpered into cyberspace. I have e-mailed Evan Mantyk asking him to get a geek to find the disappeared comment and send it back to me.

    Reply
    • Mike Bryant

      Hey Phillip, the comments section here often drops comments into oblivion… it’s better to save your comments in a word processor before you copy/paste here in a post or a reply to a comment.
      I did check the spam and trash folders, but I’m afraid it has passed into the great beyond!

      Reply
      • Phillip Whidden

        Thanks for your honesty. I suggest that I either you deal with WordPress to stop this from happening, or alternatively put a warning up on screen every time someone starts a comment telling them to create it in a word-processing program first and then paste it in so that his or her comment will not be destroyed. Thanks.

      • Mike Bryant

        Hey Phillip, at the top of the Comments, on every single poem, a note says:
        *** Recommended: Read the Comments Policy Here. ***
        The “Here” is a link to the Comments Policy.

      • Phillip Whidden

        Thank you. I do not see the link. I see where the word “Here” is with quotation marks around it, but I don’t see the link. When I click on “Here” in your reply, nothing happens.

  7. Phillip Whidden

    I went to the top of the page of “Tranqouil Tokonoma” and took a screenshot of what it says there about comments. It seems I am not allowed to paste in the screenshot. What I want you to know is that it is far from clear there at that place on the page how I can go to see the suggestions about comments.

    Reply
    • Mike Bryant

      The Comment instructions are at the top of the comments, not above the poem.

      Scroll up to the first comment. Then read the title above it. Click the last word in that title. Thanks.

      Reply
      • Phillip Whidden

        Yes. I was wrong. When I said I went to the top of the poem, I meant I went to the top of the comments. I still could not see there how to look at the advice about making comments. I tried again just now. This time I put my cursor over the word Here and it went dark. Maybe that means if I click on the word Here instead of the whole line “***Recommended: Read the SCP Comments Policy Here.***,” I would be able to find the instructions. Is it clear to you what the difficulty is? I’ll give a hint: the difficulty is not my low intelligence. I return now to my earlier suggestion: ensure that every time a reader clicks to start a comment, have the warning come up immediately in the space where that reader will begin composing a comment, please, the warning that the system might lose the comment while it is being composed and so the comment should be created in a word-processing program and then pasted into the comment box. Thanks.

      • Phillip Whidden

        Does that “You bet” message mean that it is possible that my suggestion will be put into operation depending only on a positive reply from Evan?

      • Mike Bryant

        No, Phillip, it means, “You’re welcome!” in my particular brand of Texas-speak.

        Presumably Evan would have to hire a programmer to see if the feature you have requested is even possible to implement within the WordPress universe. I am not that programmer. I am a volunteer helper like many others here at SCP.

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