Episode 129 Beyond Love - Sonnet Week Ep. 5

Connor and Jack close out National Poetry Month 2021 with a series of episodes exploring the history and enduring popularity of one of poetry's iconic forms: the sonnet. In episode five they travel forward hundreds of years and explore sonnets that go beyond the bounds of love to describe war, internment, and much more. Poems featured include "The Road to Corbie" by American war poet John Allan Wyath and "Barracks Home" by Toyo Suyemoto.

The Road to Corbie
By: John Allan Wyath

Our staff car flies and trails a long-spun haze
over the looping road and the surge and fall
of the heaving plains ~~ quick dusty tree trunks throw
their flickering bars of shadow in our eyes.
A wood ~~ men leading horses out to graze ~~
a misty bridge, and past the lumbering crawl
of crowded lorries ~~ low hills all aglow
with tufts of trees against the evening skies
and long blond hill slopes catching level rays
along their quilted flanks ~~ and under all,
the deep earth breathing like a thing asleep.
And there, Corbie ~~ her brittle walls brought low ~~
a brick-choked wreck, in which her ruins rise
like gravestones planted in a rubbish heap.

Barracks Home
By: Toyo Suyemoto

This is our barracks, squatting on the ground,
Tar papered shacks, partitioned into rooms
By sheetrock walls, transmitting every sound
Of neighbor's gossip or the sweep of brooms
The open door welcomes the refugees,
And now at least there is no need to roam
Afar: here space enlarges memories
Beyond the bounds of camp and this new home.
The floor is carpeted with dust, wind-borne
Dry alkalai, patterned with insect feet,
What peace can such a place as this impart?
We can but sense, bewildered and forlorn,
That time, disrupted by the war from neat
Routines, must now adjust within the heart.