murmurs

sonnet - sonitus (from Dante's Latin) - murmur; little sound.

like whispering to yourself, or low to an intimate. I like how personal this etymology is, as opposed to "little song," which is cute and public or maybe domestic but hardly feels as private, and if the sonnet is "the first lyric of self-consciousness," then it becomes so fitting. I like the idea of a poem that comes to you like murmuring -- a very constrained murmur. like Donne's "I am a little world made cunningly" or Keats' "When I have fears that I may cease to be." in fact, thinking about it now, really from Petrarch to Donne to Wordsworth and Shelley and Keats, one finds all of these references in the sonnet to poetry rising from silence, stillness, solitude.

and since I'm reading so many sonnets these days, I'm adopting a theme sonnet (like a theme song, but without the singing):

Keen, fitful gusts are whisp'ring here and there
Among the bushes half leafless, and dry;
The stars look very cold about the sky,
And I have many miles on foot to fare.
Yet feel I little of the cool bleak air,
Or of the dead leaves rustling drearily,
Or of those silver lamps that burn on high
Or of the distance from home's pleasant lair:
For I am brimful of the friendliness
That in a little cottage I have found;
Of fair-haired Milton's eloquent distress,
And all his love for gentle Lycid drowned,
Of lovely Laura in her light green dress,
And faithful Petrarch gloriously crowned.

-- John Keats