©copyright
Stephen Gill
After completing Amputee, a long poem about a sexually abused child, I felt like drifting to
the landscape of fiction. This drift was based on my feelings that I had said nearly
enough about the important issues relating to peace in poetry, and now I had to detail
these issues in fiction. As a result, I wrote my novels The Coexistence and The
Chhattisgarh and short stories and essays. One project that came into my mind was to
collect my own opinions on love and peace in one volume. While working on this project,
I got involved with the issue of love that led me to the genre of sonnets. I was back to
poetry.
A sonnet is a lyrical poem on love that has roots in Italy. Its pioneer Francesco
Petrarch, a 14th century Italian poet, was not satisfied with the existing poetic forms to
express his love for Laura, his beloved. The form that he uses is of 14 lines in a
concentrated structure with a definite rhyming scheme. His form became popular with
Elizabethan poets, including William Shakespeare, who was born in 1564. Elizabethan
sonnets are of fourteen lines, divided into two parts, the first part of 8 lines and the second
part of six lines. William Shakespeare modified this format slightly. Later, Gerard Manly
Hopkins, a Jesuit, among Victorians, introduces some changes, but the subject remains
unchanged. Modern writers attempt sonnets also in blank verse.
My sonnets of twelve lines each are based, as are traditional sonnets, on love
without the division into eight and six lines. Some words from the beginning of the first line
form the heading. In Love is the singer of life, I modify the format of the sonnet to suit my
purpose, though it demand an extreme form of discipline. In other words, I change
bottles, but the wine remains the same. My sonnets are aligned to the left and right sides
in the same way as in prose. I believe love is a singer of life. I also believe that love and
peace walk side by side and where there is no love there is sickness in every shape and
where there is sickness there is no peace-- neither personal nor national. It is in the
interest of every human to follow the path of love for personal health and governments are
expected to maintain peace to nourish a meaningful life and prosperity. I believe live and
let live is the way for personal and national prosperity. In my novel The Coexistence I
attempt to provide its blueprint. It can be achieved without love, but if these principles are
used with love as a lubricant, the result would be much more satisfying. There can be
peace without the base of love but love provides emotions and feelings to solidify the
foundation. In other words, attachment is the base.
Some literary critics find elements in my poems that bring them close to Sufi
poetry which developed as a separate religious phenomenon around one thousand years
ago. Sufism existed in some form even before as love and wisdom existed as did also
the messengers of God. My poems are about love and there have been poets of love in
every age. King Solomon, a prophet of the Jews, Christians, Muslims and Bahai’s, wrote
his psalms in the same vein almost a thousand years before Christ. He refers to his divine
experience when he says in The Song of Solomon in chapter 1, verses 15-17: “Ah, you
are beautiful, my love; ah, you are beautiful; your eyes are doves. Ah, you are beautiful,
my beloved, truly lovely. Our couch is green; the beams of our house are cedar, our
rafters are pine.” Or refer to chapter 8, verses 6 and 7: “Set me as a seal upon your heart,
as a seal upon your arm; for love is strong as death, passion fierce as the grave. Its
flashes are flashes of fire, a raging flame. Many waters cannot quench love, neither can
floods drown it. If one offered for love all the wealth of one’s house, it would be utterly
scorned.”
As I have observed before, the form of the sonnet has gone through changes.
But love as its subject and also lyricism remains unchanged. Because of these two
elements, the sonnet is called an English ghazal. Sonnet comes from the Italian word
sonetto that means a little song. Ghazal means conversation with women. It was
originated in Persia and is popular in India and Pakistan mainly with Urdu poets. It is also
lyrical and is often sung or presented in melody. I have loosened some strict structural
parts to make my sonnets flexible to meet my requirements. However love and lyrical
elements remain unloosened. I believe that to find the lyrical aspect a poem should be
read out loud. If the poem does not sound lyrical when read out loud, then it is definitely
not a sonnet.
To me, lyricism is the expression of deep emotions and feelings in artistic ways.
This is to make the expression appear beautiful or more beautiful. The beauty may be in
the character or in the style. Any object, such as a flower or the moon, can be lyrical. At
the same time, the object can appear lyrical to one person and non-lyrical to another. A
poem is subjective as far as its beauty is concerned. A flower, such as rose, may look
beautiful to one and not to another. Some may like roses and some may like lilies and
some may like another flower. The same applies to colours. Personally, I avoid wearing
black clothes. Beauty is subjective. Poetry is beauty and so is lyricism. Lyricism is beauty
and beauty is subjective. It is often said that beauty lies in the eyes of the beholder. The
beauty of a sonnet lies in its lyricism and lyricism can also lie in the ears of the listener.
Listening is the faculty of the sound and sound can also be silent. Sometimes the sound of
silence is more effective than meaningless noise.
At the same time, beauty is also objective, because beauty is truth and truth is
beauty. It is also said that beauty is eternal. If beauty is also truth and eternal then beauty
has objective qualities. If beauty has objective qualities then lyricism also has some
objective qualities. For me, beauty is lyrical. The moon and stars are beautiful and lyrical.
There are some aspects of beauty that are beyond the physical interpretation of beauty
and so are some aspects of a lyric. Any prose that has these subjective and objective
aspects becomes poetic and lyrical. Meter is used in poetry to create rhythm. In addition
to the use of meter there are other ways to create rhythm. These ways make even prose
or a paragraph poetic or lyrical. My sonnets in Love is the singer of life are in paragraph
form.
Reflecting on my works I have done so far, I can say that two influences are
notable. One is Christ’s teaching and another is Indian mythology, particularly the Vedas.
Both influences are obvious in my novel The Chhattisgarh, though also in my novel The
Coexistence and poetry. Both go parallel without any clash. I feel happy to note that some
scholars have done some work on my Indian influence in their doctoral dissertations. I
would like to quote Professor Dr. Sudhir K. Arora, a prominent literary critic from India
from his critical study The Poetic Corpus of Stephen Gill, released by Sarup Book
Publisher in 2009, while comparing my epic The Flame with Tagore’s Gitanjali: “This
lover- beloved relationship between God and devotee is the very life-breath of Indian
culture. In Gitanjali, Tagore, the devotee, loves God as a beloved loves her lover. Traces
of this inclination are quite visible in The Flame.” (p.133)
Please find below my three sonnets:
(13)
You are the sacred meal that has the
means to heal and the blood that circulates
in my zeal. You are strong, active and
trusting, compassionate and forgiving. My
love for you is honest and surrender unlike
deceitful fear. My love is neither the tiger
of terror nor to escape. It is the expression
of OM and OM is peace and peace is my
plea as it is of Prophets. You are the
discovery in my voyage for lyrics or rays in
a spring morning when I visit the sweetest
bliss of your indomitable spirit.
(14)
I need to stay close to you because the
night has been banging on my door for a
long time while the beasts roar in the
jungle. The guards are dancing on the
notes of their fiddles on the roofs of their
safety. The bread is getting harder for lack
of heat. I do not expect the arrival of
Prometheus. I search for a tranquil site, a
slumbering meadow, far from roads, where
I wish to sleep on the feathers of my
fancy as long as I would like, hearing the
soothing Veena from you, my Saraswati.
(17)
My adoration is the bird that flies high
above the sea of the morning waves of
your stainless name. A sip of the Soma
from the matchless cup of your sublimity
intoxicates me. Love floats gently in the air
where it receives cheers from liberty and
fear is the thorn of the heedless profanity
that fertilizes the dryness where hostility
rules. The holiness of my love for you is
the fuel that enlivens in me the arcane
fumes. To deny it is to deny justice, and
the one who denies carries an empty tomb.
Stephen Gill, Canada
www.stephengill.ca
www.stephengillcriticism.info