M E R I D I A N     M A G A Z I N E

A Question of Authority
by Doug Talley

I have always considered any broad declaration suspect. The statements of a politician, even when citing statistics, may be no more trustworthy, nor any more grounded in reality, than the fabrications of a child. My father has always been fond of repeating, “Figures don’t lie, but liars figure.”

When my older daughters were six and eight, they had a neighborhood friend named Kristen who spoke with great authority because she was nine. Daily at the dinner table the girls reported Kristen’s most recent pronouncements:

Kristen says eating broccoli will make your teeth fall out.

Kristen says the earth is bigger than the sun.

Kristen says when the sky turns yellow a tornado is coming.

Kristen says her grandfather never lost his baby teeth.

Kristen says if you wear tight pants you get fat lips.

My wife has listened to me patiently for over twenty years now as I have shared with her literary enthusiasms ranging A to Z from Anacreon to Zeno. I have some advantage of authority only because she has no Greek or Latin and I lapped up a few crumbs while in college. I asked her once if she ever tired of hearing me rave about a favorite writer and she replied, “No, because every once in a while you say something interesting.” Taken aback, I asked what she thought my other insights amounted to. “Rhetoric,” she replied. So much for academic authority, it may be little more than a license to bore people.

De gustibus non est disputandum, said the Romans, exalting anciently that authoritative last word to every difference of opinion – There is no disputing taste. “The Golden Mean,” sighed the Greeks, suggesting tolerance in all things, but our zealot modern age has firmly established “Personal Taste” as the final arbiter of every matter.

I had a creative writing instructor in college who declared she would never write a sonnet. She was a masters student, and so, of course, her class of undergraduates took careful note, Never ever write a sonnet! A number of modern authorities think the sonnet is rather staid and old fashioned. It was a fine form, they say, for the 13th century Italian whose language abounded in rhymes, but the strictures of the form, and its brevity, cramp the otherwise easy flow of the modern American poet. They cite Walt Whitman, that brawling town crier of American expansiveness.

I am not so sure, and the older I grow, the less sure I am about anything in this finikin art of poetry. This month’s featured poem by Loren Jarvis was selected, in part, because the opening and ending lines particularly suggest English is just as mellifluous and natural in the sonnet line as it is in free verse. To make a pleasing sound, almost any clump of vowels and consonants graced with a spirit of truth will do. Ultimately, I suppose, the authority of any poem must rise or fall on the strength of its own emotional truth, but of course, anything I say in this regard is suspect. Nevertheless, I, for one, like to read sonnets and the following is a fine one. Consider it a matter of personal taste. End of discussion.

By Loren Jarvis:

CIRCLE

I cannot say completely what I feel.
Winter has come and robbed me of my breath.
But wait till Spring and once again I’ll steal
Across some field, some barren yard of death

And wait for Summer’s wind to carry there
A voice that speaks of life with every dawn.
There, waves of radiant music in the air
Will reverence simple gifts of those now gone.

They, like the tinted leaves of early Fall,
Were born to wake, then sleep when dropped the cold.
What Season will it be when first I stall,
And feel my outer shell first crack, then fold?

Perhaps when Autumn’s light burns red as steel.
I cannot say completely what I feel.

Loren Jarvis was born in Colonia Dublan, Chihuahua, Mexico and served a mission in Mexico from 1965 to 1967. He lives in Tucson, Arizona with his family and appreciates the desert environment and the blessings of family, church and civic activities.

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