365 Sonnets: Celebrating Each Day with a “Little Song”
by Paul Buchheit
365 Poems ~ Appendix ~ 381 pages
Price: $20.00
Publisher: Independently Published
ISBN #: 9798992339604
To Order: Amazon.com
Reviewed by Michael Escoubas
From the earliest days of youth, my mother encouraged me to read widely and well. Her library included every volume of the Encyclopedia Britannica, novels by Tolstoy and Dostoevsky, philosophy by Plato and Aristotle. She also exposed me to great American poets such as Robert Frost and T.S. Eliot. One day she said to me, “Son, do yourself a favor; read the sonnets of William Shakespeare.” I dabbled just a bit but preferred daydreaming about becoming a Major League baseball player.
Enter on center-stage in my seventh decade, 365 Sonnets, by Paul Buchheit. Subtitled, “Celebrating Each Day with a Little Song.” My mother’s gentle encouragement resonates with tsunami force. What a treasure … this color-illustrated volume now occupies its own space in my library.
In his preface, Buchheit discusses the sonnet and its significance:
The sonnet, one of the most common poetic forms of the Renaissance period, has given way over the centuries to free verse (vers libre). Yet the spirit and beauty of the sonnet persists. A well-written sonnet is rhythmic, rhyming, metrical, and pleasing to read. It is the ideal poetic form for the expression of a concise message, a musical message.
Although it has been incredibly difficult, I have chosen a sampling of poems which stand out to me, and which illustrate Buchheit’s unique skills with the sonnet form. Each sonnet is inspired by a holiday attributed to that day. Buchheit has selected artistic works, (all in Public Domain), which inspired each sonnet.
Did you know that January 1 is Ring a Bell Day? Buchheit in his poem “Phones” expresses, in irrepressible humor, what I have often felt:
Benoît Bonnafoux, Ordinary Bell Telephone with Earpiece and Mouthpiece, 1878
I see the people with their flashy phones
engaged in rantings of robotic rhyme,
their voices muffled by the monotones
that add an element of pantomime
to every conversation. On the bus
and on the street they talk and text alone,
immune to nod or inquiry or cuss
from someone standing there in flesh and bone.
I see the silver, pink, and paisley phones
and hear the ping, the ding, and ting-a-ling,
the quaint reverberation of the tones,
the tintinnabulation of the ring.
But mostly how it chills me to the bone
to see a driver looking at his phone.
I think of pompous politicians of any stripe and from any era, on January 7, which is Not Going To Take It Day.
Thomas Nast, Caricature of Boss Tweed and election fraud, 1871
Can’t Take the Candidate!
A Pompous babbler oozes with a stream
of breathy poisons, damning desperate
and broken enemies with infinite
disdain and righteous words, his self-esteem
grotesquely bloated; praising potentates
as model leaders, segregationists
as worthy partners; using guns and fists
to cast elections to the bitter Fates.
And those who cling to shreds of dignity
(as calls for ‘freedom’ in the enterprise
of greed are planted in the nation’s soul)
allow this lord of stealth and vanity
to spurn the social contract, to despise
the synergies that make a people whole.
Early in my training as a poet I was told emphatically: “Don’t use clichés in your poetry.” Paul Buchheit will have none of that dictum in his delightful sonnet dedicated to November 4, Cliché Day:
Unknown Artist, Nursery Novelties for Little Masters and Misses, 1820
Small Talk
It IS, I tell you, what it IS. Cliché
or not, I’m chomping at the bit to yank
your chain, to knock your socks off. If I play
my cards right, push the envelope, you'll thank
your lucky stars I gave a hoot about
Cliché Day! Nothing ventured, nothing gained,
I say. So keep your chin up, I can shout
it from the rooftop till I'm good and drained.
I’ll talk until the cows come home. I’ll go
the whole nine yards, I’ll try to think outside
the box, against all odds, a one-man show.
It’s clear as day, I’ll take you for a ride.
But if I’m clear as mud, and dull, and vague,
I'll look for YOUR cliché: Go and sunk an egg!
Issues of the day are not lost on this poet. How many decades, and even now, has the issue of wealth versus collectivism consumed our economic vocabulary? May 20 is Be a Millionaire Day:
Circle of Ghulam Ali Khan, Portrait of Akbar II, c. 1827
The Super-Rich Lament
We often hear the working class complain
that billionaires don’t pay their rightful share.
With shock and indignation and disdain
the spokesmen for the super-rich declare:
“How odd to question our prosperity!
We offer hope and opportunity,
we focus largely on philanthropy
as sons of Vanderbilt and Carnegie.
The poor want subsidies for housing, health,
and all the other favors on their list.
They’d like the government to take our wealth
and hand it over to a socialist!
Our promise: We of wealth and great renown
are sure prosperity will trickle down.”
I have no idea if Paul Buchheit is left-handed or not. However, his sonnet “Lefties” demonstrates complete understanding of their plight. August 13 is Lefthanders Day.
David Winfield, Church of Panagia tou Arakos,
Left Hand on Book, Cyprus, between 1968 and 1973
Have pity on the lefties: sinister,
unclean, and gauche, dismissed as oddities,
while dexterous folks are viewed as de rigueur,
entitled, privileged. The mysteries
of left and right transcend the centuries,
the hand of Satan on the ‘evil’ side.
But lefties brought about celebrities,
inventors, geniuses, and bona fide
philosophers and artists, Raphael,
da Vinci, Newton, Michaelangelo;
and Aristotle, Einstein: they dispel
the standards of a specious status quo.
And as for me, it may sound curious,
but I’m considered ambisinistrous.
This review began with a sonnet about phones. Everyday life is about how we communicate. How we understand ourselves and the world in which we live. This sampling of sonnets ends appropriately at year’s end. December 31 is World Peace Meditation Day.
Adolph Joseph Thomas Monticelli, Meditation
(Seated Woman), between 1873 and 1879.
Resolution
A year has passed, it’s time to celebrate
a new beginning. Resolutions stir
the waking mind: how best to demonstrate
our good intentions, to avoid the blur
of creeping languor that disorients
crusaders in their quests. The harbor light
will guide a ship through days of turbulence
if steersmen keep it faithfully in sight.
With mind uplifted, heed the Hour of Peace
before the year begins to dramatize
a global need, a human need, to cease
the savageness of war, to recognize
that human need succumbs to human greed,
that each of us feels pain when others bleed.
Dear reader … may these incredibly well-crafted poems speak to you in your heart-of-hearts … the landscape in which, (as Abraham Lincoln said), our better angels live.
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