Open To Disagreement

Chugging along quite nicely with the great-sonnet-read-through after getting out of the knotty 90s. Now up to 110 having read no fewer than a mighty six today.

Apart from the pleasure of reading the sonnets and John Kerrigan's excellent notes in the Penguin edition I'm using, there's Don Paterson's commentary on each one to look forward to. In fact, it's been rather a good wheeze to read Paterson's comments only after a thorough soaking in each poem. It's quite exciting to see which way our commentator will jump on each poem, his responses tending to be marked in their approbation or firmly otherwise. I've  been surprised on more than one occasion by his dismissal of sonnets I've quite enjoyed, but generally find his point of view persuasive.

However, I'm pleased that I found myself very much disagreeing with enough frequency to suggest my independence as a reader. Just yesterday I fell completely in love with 102, yet the good Don is generally fairly tepid on this, particularly with regard to the concluding couplet: Therefore, like her, I sometime hold my tongue, / Because I would not dull you with my song (though he does accept the beauty of the nightingale metaphor.) Yes, the couplet doesn't add anything in terms of sense and sort of just sums up what is already clear, but what I love about it is the way its ponderous monosyllables, especially those of the last line, enact the tongue-tiedness WS is claiming to experience. I love dull as a verb. And this after the gorgeous music of the sestet, especially: ...her mournful hymns did hush the night, / But that wild music burdens every bough, / And sweets grown common lose their dear delight. Yowza.

Coincidentally I also finished reading Paterson's first collection of poems today, Nil Nil, and here's a confession: I was baffled by almost every poem in it. To be honest, if it hadn't been for the fact that I think his later collection Rain is excellent and for my admiration of him as a critic I would have given up. But the curious thing is that having decided to keep going I found myself enjoying the poems, partly as a result of their incidental excellences, and, I suppose, partly because of their riddling quality.

Isn't reading a strange thing?