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Sonnets from Aesop and Sarah Laughed
Judith Goldhaber
Review by Alyce Wilson
As the famous architect, Louis Sullivan said, "form
ever follows function." This is true not just of skyscrapers but
also poetry, as evidenced in two books by Judith Goldhaber, Sonnets
from Aesop and Sarah Laughed: Sonnets from Genesis.
To be sure, Goldhaber is skilled in iambic pentameter (she won the
Wild Violet poetry contest in 2006 with a crown of sonnets called "Mea
Culpa"). She is clearly comfortable with this form.
However, the sonnet form consists of 14 lines, making it next to impossible
for Goldhaber to resolve the more complicated stories from "Sarah
Laughed." Therefore, she expands these stories across several sonnets,
which often leads to padding in order to complete the form, such as
these lines from the second sonnet in "Jacob and the Angel,"
spoken from the point-of-view of Jacob:
Mislead, betray, pretend, manipulate
became the way I made a path through life,
avoiding episodes of overt strife
in favor of judicial debate
intended to confuse and obfuscate.
If Goldhaber had been writing simply in blank verse, without conforming
to the sonnet form and its specific number of lines, she very well might
have cut those last three lines.
Form follows function more successfully in Sonnets from Aesop,
especially with the simpler stories, where Goldhaber can resolve the
story within 12 lines and then use the rhyming couplet at the end of
the poem to share the moral of the tale. For example, she does this
in "The Hare and the Hound," where a hare outruns a hound,
and a passing shepherd jeers at the hound for losing.
The Hound retorted, "Sir, in any race
even a fool like you can pick the winner
when one runs for his life, one for his dinner."
The book is illustrated with colorful, folk-art watercolors by Gerson
Golhaber. Again, these illustrations seem better suited to Sonnets
from Aesop, whose fanciful stories lend themselves to creative interpretations.
These collections were certainly ambitious projects, and Goldhaber
should be commended for challenging herself. While Sarah Laughed
often falters, Sonnets from Aesop finds inventive and delightful
ways to marry form with function.
Sonnets from Aesop Rating: *** (Good)
Ribbonweed Press, 2004: ISBN 0-9761554-0-0
Sarah Laughed Rating: ** (Fair)
Ribbonweed Press, 2007: ISBN 978-0-9761554-1-6
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