The Edited Editions: Coffee Sonnet 6

Well it's been a while. University took over and I have made excuses of being busy ever since, so it is only now that I've given myself the time to sit down with my sonnets again. This is number 6.

6. 

It was my first feeling of being at home,

A familiarity with the room, 

Enough to have felt comfort on my own, 

With the china clinks providing the tune. 

It could have been the weather that took me, 

The global mist fading what was in front. 

Leaving the grey walkers of Esplanadi

As the shaded focus of the pavement. 

So I watched the mono-saturated:

The white faces, black ties and overcoats, 

Unaware of my blue eyes fixated,

Playing the game of cafes, taking notes. 

Before leaving the colour behind too

And joining the ashen catwalk's few.

The original of this is full of awfully forced rhymes and generally when I re-read it felt that it needed wholesale change. 

As I've taken a turn toward observation with my poetry I decided that the act of observation within the sonnet was a nice frame to keep; that's also a reason for pushing it into the past tense, as a reflected observation on me observing. 

It jumped out that colour was really what I wanted to put across here - though I did it in a pathetic fallacy kind of way; the link of the cliched British weather with what I assume was a current mood, though this time I found it difficult to remember the moment - something I haven't struggled with as yet. 

I've copied a technique observed in the past semester in the edit: by leaving colour out, and deliberately noting the black and white shades, it focuses the blue of the watching eyes, which is then only placed to set up the eventual joining to colourless life outside. This is as the cafes were moments of reflection and a time-out from the rush of Erasmus life, it can come across negatively with this description - that it was when away from it that I regained the colour in my eyes but at this moment the weather and amount of work I had becomes synonymous with a dulled eye. 

In the original I say "Watching fashion", this is why I observe the ties and overcoats, simple garments that can influence a look and though black and white the "catwalk" of the edit brings the potential juxtaposition of weathered against new. 

Though I am still unsure of the "china clinks" line it is the only real connotation of why the room is familiar, implying a tea room, whilst also being an over arching comment on separation from Erasmus in Helsinki. 

It's also a point to note that some of the original doesn't even really make sense, hopefully the improvements are substantial. 

Original.

The First time I have felt like I'm at home, 

All because of a familiar clink. 

More like a tearoom, no need for my phone, 

Cakes and pastries awaiting my lips, think

This is the place I was recommended.

I sit here, gazing at those who go past. 

My place at the front should be commended,

Watching fashion, no questions do I ask. 

The grim outside mocks me, return I'm waiting

The low mist pathetic, damp, insipid.

I must leave but not yet, work is berating

Me, I'll watch: but who am I to kid? 

People watching is a game for cafes, 

But the warmth shall turn my day to a haze. 

The Edited Editions: Coffee Sonnet 5

5. 

Rosemary and cardamom on my tongue:

Infused in the air and the cold white ice

In my mouth, with undecided thoughts hung

Like my pen, waiting for an inky voice.

Looking for words to fill my empty lips,

As my fingers tread the page for the beat

Matching my heart, and the feet as they skip

Over the distant chatter in the street.

Peter! Time directs its hand to my face;

At least, my friends tell me its time to leave. 

Darkness rising and day ending at pace.

So them to me, and I to my pen cleave.

A napkin with blurred lines held in my hand

The noise of my unheard thoughts, as I stand. 

This poem has been the most difficult to edit so far; I think this is because I am starting to be much more confident and consistent with, I guess, a bastardised form of imagism and so I'm becoming much more aware of devices I'm using. 

Poetically there are some very obvious ones, "hung" being left at the end of the line with no punctuation and "skip/ Over" using the same device and paralleling the image. The volta is probably the strongest I have formed; by taking what originally started the poem and developing it with the imagery of time that I had thrown about the original copy there is a much more emphatic (thanks to the nominalisational exclamative "Peter!") snap into an awareness of the surroundings rather than the self and specifically the mouth. The dual meaning available to the verb "cleave" is very important as I aim to confuse the reader as to who takes either one - to part or to adhere to. 

I am still unsure of the final couplet though it  does tie in with the first two stanzas as well as positioning the persona in a stance to leave; this image I do like as it is as if the persona is leaving the poem as the reader ends this sonnet. It is certainly better than the original ending which at the time obviously shows my inability to understand the word kitsch and also passes a judgement which I don't particularly like. "Alter ego" is a reference to the name of the place we were at ("artelier ego") and is far too removed from the casual reader to make any sense of. 

The "Czech, Polish, Swiss and Dutch my friends, I think/ Wish to leave..." is a fun line and clearly the "I think" begins to question whether the persona fully agrees with the initial statement "my friends" but to why is left unknown. 

In an earlier edit I tried to keep the empty glass line too, especially due to the "empty on my lips" which is an image I have obviously kept for the final edit - but with a much stronger focus, as a persona that is trying to write words that are available to them but not articulated.

Original

Come on, food is your interest Peter!

So here I am in someone's home, loving

The dark, earthy colours. As I'm sat here

We are artists and we are coveting. 

Feet shall tread throughout the day in this place.

Rosemary and cardamom infuse their tastes, 

Harried am I, time staring me in the face

Second hands, arriving filling up plates.

This napkin that I write bleeds out the ink

The glass that I drink empty on my lips

Czech, Polish, Swiss, and Dutch my friends, I think

Wish to leave this place, kind words we go, tips.

Alter ego, taken with a twist, it's

Restaurant day in Helsinki, how kitsch.

The Edited Editions: Coffee Sonnet 4

4.

A cafetiere stands on the table. 

Loose leaf tea drifting in ever-greening

Water - as time drifts with it in a lull

For us, sat apart from our surrounding.

Sunk into the two sofas by the window,

Eyes closed but I see from constant voices.

Korvapuusti's cinnamon smell thrown

Across to nostrils, which begin to rejoice.

The air scolded and split like paper torn,

As the beans, ground and tampered compactly

Wait to line my tulip cup. Clasped to warm

Cold hands; steam rising, curling toward me.

And, in that, return to our window seat.

The moment where back to life I retreat.

The Edit

I found this week's edit quite difficult; again on reading back the original I thought it was disjointed and quite specific on either surroundings which couldn't be imagine...but that didn't add anything ("T is flipped here, made in cafetieres" for example) or on themes I'd already looked at (the kinds of people who frequent the cafe). 

  There were however lines that I liked and certainly ideas that I wished to keep - most specifically the sounds of coffee being made, which in the edit are used at the volta to snap back into the reality of life (noted by the cold hands, as before everything is homely and a sense of warmth is attempted). I like this volta largely because it is a definite parallel to the reasons I go to cafes and also works more effectively than the original's attempt at degrading the status of another cafe. This is something I have and will continue in my edits, the omittance of names, as it limits the availability of the poem to a reader; I would like to ensure a liminality to the cafes in these sonnets so that the experiences within them can be shared, rather than confined to the specific space I was in a year ago. Furthermore the constant voices in the second stanza allude to the fullness of the cafe and thus embodies all the people in the original that are omitted in the edit (families, students and lovers). 

  I think, on the whole, I manage to keep the essence of my original poem but create imagery that flows and is accessible - which is where I think the original fails: 'the dark bodies of other nations dear' was clearly something poignant at the time but the inability of my other lines to coalesce around this idea means it is empty of any real meaning. This is also why 'young tyke', something originally associated with the first line 'American retro writing', are both cut from the sonnet as they do not immediately provide that link.

  I am aware that talking of time and it slowing can be quite cliche and to attempt to lessen that I have linked it to the tea leaves, a moment in time that can be fixed upon - something similar to staring into a fire, I guess. 

  There are also reductions in obvious rhyme, something again I will probably continue as I think it can sometimes feel too forced and in some cases has pushed me (at the time) to create a line that doesn't necessarily work. 

  

Original.

American retro writing adorns

Your windows, two, sofas we sit upon.

I can hear your namesake, like paper torn

The sound of constant voices never gone.

T is flipped here, made in cafetiers;

But that is not the smell that pervades here. 

Ground and beaten, scolded, poorly it fairs

The dark bodies of other nations fear.

Beside Roberts' you are beside yourself

Serving better coffee that that top scum.

Bringing in youth let us drink to our health.

Like saunas, steam, lures our bodies to come. 

Families, students and lovers alike

Yet probably treated as the young tyke.