The Poet of The Poet

The choice of poem from Sophia’s work to be set “in conversation” with Todd Turner’s Wondrous Lessons can only be the one which Todd has threaded into the sequence.

The Poet comes from Sophia’s first collection, Antiquity. The image accompanying the text of the poem is a photo of Sophia taken at the age at which she wrote The Poet: at age 13. You will forgive the title, The Poet of The Poet. A little joke. Sophie would find the visual bookend of it amusing. However, the title also highlights a truth: she is so young.

So young, yet the face looking out at you from the photograph (with all the compelling clarity so characteristic of her) was, and is, timeless—a present tense evocation of the vibrant “verb in a world of nouns” of Sophia herself.

As is the voice in the poem…

It is interesting that Todd folded the line from The Poet into a sequence featuring the life and work of Keats. It was around this age that Sophia discovered Keats, and although Sophia’s poem was largely inspired by a powerful and charismatic poet she had met in real life, a trace of Keats is also to be found in it.

To cut up your soul
And remain immortal

Those are lines Keats’ own soul could have sung…and, of course, immortal he has become.

The timeless Sophia and the immortal Keats have their own “conversation” in The Poet, a conversation Todd has reflected and extended in Wondrous Lessons.

In truth, here—in this meeting of souls—is the “wondrous lesson” able to be found at the very heart of Sophia’s Notebook.

The Poet

To be etched
To be pierced
So that
You/others
May survive

To allow yourself
To become a tattoo
Both the drumbeat
And the ink

To be a Christ
Of white paper
And a denial
Of <wordlessness>

Or spaces

To spill blood
On your memories
To give them life

To lose something
That it may be

To be a verb in a world
Of nouns

To be a process
Not a stagnation

To cut up your soul
And remain immortal

The only more enduring message
Than one in stone
Is cut into your flesh

By Sophia Nugent-Siegal © 2005