Like Attracts Like

Romance Writers of America is a world-wide support group founded by seven Texas writers thirty-some years ago, and it works. When Fio was at the bank yesterday, she not only gave her own business card to the lovely young woman who helped her, but, when she learned the woman was from Louisiana, also gave her the name of a Louisina author (Farrah Rochon) whom she might want to check out.

Romance writers are pack animals. We clump together for improvement, encouragement, and inspiration, and it's not a new concept, but a universal of mankind--think of the Byron-Shelley-Keats crew,  of clubs you've joined, of your work relationships, of your family ties. Where would we be without each other?

The Sonnet Sonnet

Yesterday was Poetry Day so here goes

         

    The Sonnet Sonnet

A sonnet is the clever use of rhyme

In patterns such as Petrarch might employ

Or Shakespeare's playful whimsy intertwine

For centuries of lovers to enjoy.

A sonnet is an unrelenting beat,

The blood's intrinsic pulse of weak and strong,

That runs full-tilt for five iambic feet

In three times four plus two, a discipline of song.

A sonnet is a message of the heart,

Of Wordsworth's wonder, Milton's heavy hand,

Of Keats's classic skill, of Shelley's art.

Of Browning's love songs from a foreign land.

    While others seek the chessboard on a day,

    The sonnet is my choice of game to play.

The Sonnet Sonnet

            

A sonnet is the clever use of rhyme

In patterns such as Petrarch might employ

Or Shakespeare's playful whimsy intertwine

For centuries of lovers to enjoy.

A sonnet is an unrelenting beat,

The blood's intrinsic pulse of weak and strong,

That runs full-tilt for five iambic feet

In three times four plus two, a discipline of song.

A sonnet is a message of the heart,

Of Wordsworth's wonder, Milton's heavy hand,

Of Keats's classic skill, of Shelley's art.

Of Browning's love songs from a foreign land.

    While others seek the chessboard on a day,

    The sonnet is my choice of game to play.

                                            

Endurance

,

Fiorella used to hate "Ozymandias," Percy Bysshe Shelley's depressing poem about how nothing matters because nothing endures.

I met a traveler from an antique land
Who said: "Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert. Near them on the sand,
Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown
And wrinkled lip and sneer of cold command
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,
The hand that mocked them and the heart that fed.
And on the pedestal these words appear:
`My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings:
Look on my works, ye mighty, and despair!'
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare,
The lone and level sands stretch far away."

But after due thought, Fio disagrees with Percy.  Certain things do endure.  Not edifices built by mighty rulers, not the rulers, not even their histories, certainly not their people, but universal principles.  Thus: 

Love Endures

How long lasts love?  Past tomorrow's dawn? 
Past hurt and anger, betrayal, desertion, death?

This weakness of the heart--will it grow strong

Enough to last the years, and stay weak yet?

Love ripens in the lusty sun of youth

And is consumed, but blossoms always sweet

To be the springtime baby's first-fed fruit,

The sustenance of summer, winter's treat.

The music of the song survives the singer

And echos of itself divinity;

Thus Love and Beauty, Truth, and Courage linger

Long past their actors in eternity.

         How long lasts love?  My love is yours
         As long as Love endures; yes, love endures.

Pull Together, Now

Fio has been thinking again, as is her wont. This time she's been thinking about support groups. There are ones that focus on drug addiction and alcoholism and every other kind of ism, and there are also ones that come together in the arts and sciences, like the Byron-Shelley-Keats literary clique and the Einstein-Goedel partnership. In sports, they're called teams.

In fact, one might regard all of society as a giant support group. Maybe that's the secret of humanity's success.