Elizabethan poets wrote their rhymes
to catalog their women’s charms
in strained conceits, or else the times
produced strange women, wigged with wire,
with jeweled lips and ivoried arms,
cold robots to set a man afire.
I prefer your flesh to take to bed
in all its humanity. Warm skin
beats ivory; jeweled kisses wear
the lips away. I like your head
with hair, not wires. Crescendoing
to spill my seed in your warm place
I glory in your hips’ wild swing
and the rush of blood that flushes your face.
The "Canzoniere" (Songbook) of Francesco Petrarca, the 14th-century poet, served as a model for much of Renaissance poetry, particularly in its use of "conceit." Related to the word "concept," a conceit is an extended, heightened metaphor or simile with a complex logic that controls a poetic passage (or an entire poem). It often employs the use of an oxymoron or hyperbole to make its point. English poets in the 16th century eagerly adopted both his sonnet form (Rik's poem, by the way, though a quatorzain, 14 lines long, is not a sonnet) and his use of conceit, sometimes in direct imitation. The trend began with Thomas Wyatt, who is credited with introducing the sonnet form in Engish and also with anglicizing it by retaining the abba/abba/abba octave of the 1st part but regularizing the final sestet as cdde/ee -- in other words, 3 quatrains and a couplet. For example, his poem
ReplyDeleteMy galley, chargèd with forgetfulness,
Thorough sharp seas in winter nights doth pass
'Tween rock and rock; and eke mine en'my, alas,
That is my lord, steereth with cruelness;
And every owre a thought in readiness,
As though that death were light in such a case.
An endless wind doth tear the sail apace
Of forced sighs and trusty fearfulness.
A rain of tears, a cloud of dark disdain,
Hath done the weared cords great hinderance;
Wreathèd with error and eke with ignorance.
The stars be hid that led me to this pain;
Drownèd is Reason that should me comfort,
And I remain despairing of the port.
closely followed Petrarca's "Passa la nave" but heightened its sense of love's cruelty and punishment, amplifying the role of the conceit as a unifying element. The use of the conceit reached its peak in the 17th century in the work of John Donne and the other "metaphysical" poets. Representing the generation between these 2 poets, William Shakepeare was adept at its use, but also at ridiculing it, as when his Romeo described his infatuation of Rosaline as "brigt smoke, cold fire, sick health." Like Rik, he could also be devasting in turning the concept of conceit upon itself, as in "Sonnet 130" in which he invalidates the Petrarchian descriptions of feminine beauty regularly employed by his fellow sonneteers:
My mistress' eyes are nothing like the sun;
Coral is far more red than her lips' red;
If snow be white, why then her breasts are dun;
If hairs be wires, black wires grow on her head.
I have seen roses damask'd, red and white,
But no such roses see I in her cheeks;
And in some perfumes is there more delight
Than in the breath that from my mistress reeks.
I love to hear her speak, yet well I know
That music hath a far more pleasing sound;
I grant I never saw a goddess go;
My mistress, when she walks, treads on the ground:
And yet, by heaven, I think my love as rare
As any she belied with false compare.