Piazza Piece by John Crowe Ransom
"Piazza Piece" is a Petrarchan sonnet by John Crowe Ransom that showcases his mastery of traditional poetic forms. The poem features a dialogue between two characters: an elderly man and a young lady, representing contrasting perspectives on life and mortality. The old man's somber view highlights themes of human decline and the inevitability of death, symbolized by the "dying" roses and the "spectral" moon in the setting. He attempts to engage the young lady with his thoughts, but his approach creates an unsettling tension, suggesting an underlying threat in his insistence on possessing her.
In contrast, the young lady embodies youthful beauty and romantic ideals, waiting for her "truelove" and a transformative kiss. Her dreams, however, are disrupted by the old man's presence, leading her to feel both confusion and fear. Despite her awareness of his intentions, she asserts her agency by commanding him to leave, ultimately reaffirming her youthful identity and aspirations. This interplay between age and youth, desire and fear, creates a rich landscape of emotional complexity within the poem, inviting readers to reflect on the tension between romantic dreams and harsh realities.
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Piazza Piece by John Crowe Ransom
Excerpted from an article in Magill’s Survey of American Literature, Revised Edition
First published: 1925 (collected in Two Gentlemen in Bonds, 1927)
Type of work: Poem
The Work
Written as a Petrarchan sonnet (fourteen lines of iambic pentameter rhyming abbaacca deeffd), “Piazza Piece” illustrates Ransom’s skill with traditional forms. The octave (first eight lines) and sestet (remaining six lines) are an attempted dialogue between age (an elderly man) and youth (a young lady). Their differing attitudes make “Piazza Piece” essentially a debate poem (two characters argue the merits of diametrically opposite philosophical positions).
The old man’s message is human decline and eventual death. He tries to attract the lady’s attention and point out that decay is a law of nature, seen in the “dying” roses on her trellis and the “spectral” (ghostlike) moon above them. He introduces possible sexual tension when he insists that he is destined to “have” her soon (to possess her, possibly with violence). The final line of the octave repeats the first but with a period, a full stop, at the end. This line therefore becomes a pun on the two meanings of “trying”: The gentleman is attempting to communicate with the lady, but his behavior is very ’trying’ (exasperating, even frightening) to her.
Likewise, in the first and last lines of her stanza, the lady describes herself as “a lady young in beauty waiting.” The placement of the adjective ’young’ after the noun ’lady’—characteristic of chivalric tales, not colloquial speech—removes the lady from the sphere of everyday life. Filled with romantic dreams, she waits for her “truelove” and his awakening kiss; however, her reverie is interrupted by the appearance of a “gray” (old, colorless) man at the foot of her trellis. She knows he is speaking to her, but she cannot understand his “dry,” “faint” words. Still, aware of menace in him, she orders him away, threatening to scream if he does not leave. Her final line indicates that her romantic atmosphere has been restored: She is once again the “lady young,” and she remains in the midst of beauty (her own and that of her dreams) still awaiting her truelove.
Bibliography
Brooks, Cleanth. “John Crowe Ransom: As I Remember Him.” American Scholar 58, no. 2 (Spring, 1989): 211-233.
Cowan, Louise. The Fugitive Group: A Literary History. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1959.
Howard, Maureen. “There Are Many Wonderful Owls in Gambier.” Yale Review 77 (Summer, 1988): 521-527.
Malvasi, Mark G. The Unregenerate South: The Agrarian Thought of John Crowe Ransom, Allen Tate, and Donald Davidson. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1997.
Modern American Poetry Web site. “John Crowe Ransom.” http://www.english.uiuc.edu/maps/poets/m‗r/ransom/life.htm.
Quinlan, Kieran. John Crowe Ransom’s Secular Faith. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1989.
Rubin, Louis D., Jr. “The Wary Fugitive: John Crowe Ransom.” Sewanee Review 82 (1974): 583-618.
Young, Thomas Daniel. Gentleman in a Dustcoat: A Biography of John Crowe Ransom. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1976.