Tony Harrison: Curtain Sonnets

Length / Form Series of five fourteen-line sonnets (in contrast to the later sonnets from the ‘School of Eloquence series, which have sixteen lines).

Allusion to Classical figure Orpheus and Eurydice; Aurora; Veritas; Honor; Psyche; Iustitia; Pomona; Medusa.

Relationship to Classical text In 1. ‘Guava Libre’: Dedicated to Jane Fonda, references to Orpheus and Eurydice. Fruit imagined as 'The lips of Orpheus fished up by a dyke / singing "Women of Cuba, Libre and Vietnam?"' (note the suggestion of maenads). In 2. ‘The Viewless Wings’: Romantic allusions and reference to Keats ‘Ode to a Nightingale’. Transforms the image of ‘AURORA, rosy-fingered’ into a battleship. In 3. ‘Summer Garden’: Leningrad, statues of Veritas, Honor and Psyche. In 4. ‘The People’s Palace’: Iustitia and Pomona displayed as relics in The People’s Palace. In 5. ‘Prague Spring’: A gargoyle with gaping mouth is imagined to have been ‘hexed [...] mid-song’ by the Medusa. Anticipates themes developed in The Gaze of the Gorgon (Bloodaxe Books, 1992) and use of tragic mask in Harrison’s theatrical works

Note In editions of the Selected Poems and in the Collected Poems ‘Curtain Sonnets’ are grouped in The Loiners sequence 1. ‘Guava Libre’ (CP, p.56); 2. ‘The Viewless Wings’ (CP, p.57); 3. ‘Summer Garden’ (CP, p.58); 4. ‘The People’ Palace’ (CP, p.59); 5. ‘Prague Spring’ (CP, p.46).