Sonnet 130

When I was at school Samantha Fox had a hit called Touch Me. Sam Fox was a British page three girl with large breasts. At the end of the song she made a lot of moaning and groaning noises presumably suggesting sex, although she may have just been having a nice ice cream. She was supposed to be every teenage boy's fantasy of a perfect woman. I say supposed to be because she really didn't do much for me. In fact I always thought her large breasts made her look a bit uncomfortable (or maybe it was that all her tops were too tight). The best thing about the Sam Fox story is that I believe she is now a happily married lesbian.

At the time Sam Fox posed a problem for me. I knew that I was supposed to fancy her but I didn't so I had to fake it. If I had been insecure (instead of being lumpish and unthinking) I might have worried about my sexuality. On the other hand I did fancy girls, just not the girls I was supposed to fancy. I wrote love poems for these girls (of course I never showed anyone them). These poems were filled with lies. I can't remember an example so I'll make one up:

I love you, you're so perfect...

Your eyes are like pools

This kind of poetry is like make-up: it conceals the blemishes that make people really beautiful.

A body is a map of a life, and on it are marks of pain, of laughter, of age. The feet and hands have a roughness; the neck and inner arm are soft, pale. Real love poetry is specific and honest. It tells us not about what somebody should look like, but about who they really are.

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.

I don't know if Sonnet 130 is honest or not. I don't know if it describes a real woman, but it certainly has the feeling of truth. It's a neat trick Shakespeare pulls because he actually describes this woman by saying what she isn't.

She isn't Sam Fox.

Sonnets

In my first year at University I took English Literature. I was young, hairy and sulky. My tutorial was with half a dozen other students in a small meeting room, and it was held after five o’clock. I remember that it was usually dark outside when we finished (I suppose that memory is from winter).

At the first tutorial the tutor asked us each to introduce ourselves and say an object that we thought represented us. I said:

“I am John-Paul and I am a stone.”

I was thinking of a smooth, round rock at the bottom of a stream. The tutor may have been thinking of her gravel driveway though, because she didn’t seem impressed.

Our first essay had to be about a short poem. I chose Sonnet 18 by Shakespeare. I chose it because I thought it was very beautiful. This is actually a good reason to choose a poem, but at the time I thought you needed more profound reasons.

My essay was quite poor. I rambled. Nowadays I might say something like:

Sonnet 18 is beautiful because it is romantic. Most of Shakespeare’s other sonnets are not romantic.

Actually I would probably say: go and read the damn poem.

Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?
Thou art more lovely and more temperate:
Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May,
And summer's lease hath all too short a date:
Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines,
And often is his gold complexion dimm'd;
And every fair from fair sometime declines,
By chance or nature's changing course untrimm'd;
But thy eternal summer shall not fade
Nor lose possession of that fair thou owest;
Nor shall Death brag thou wander'st in his shade,
When in eternal lines to time thou growest:
So long as men can breathe or eyes can see,
So long lives this and this gives life to thee.

I believe in this idea that art can make “things” immortal or, if not immortal, at least it can make them far outlive their brief natural existence. When I write a poem for someone or play them a song I am attracted to two things in that act. Firstly, that the moment of the performance is so fleeting and ephemeral, and secondly, that the words on the page make that same moment enduring. In itself that double act is beautiful.