Frankenpoem
Ifirst came across the idea of the immured sonnet — an invention of contemporary Russian poet Philip Nikolayev — when I was studying at
UMass Amherst, from which I graduated in 2009. I was very interested in strange forms of poetry, and I find the immured sonnet the most intriguing.
A sonnet is a poem in English of 14 lines that can employ any of a number of formal rhyme schemes but usually ends with a rhyming couplet. There are 10 syllables per line.
An immured sonnet is one bound within the walls of another piece of writing. Here, I have embedded an original sonnet, “The Operating Table,” into an excerpt of Mary Shelley’s “Frankenstein.”
You can read Shelley’s prose and my sonnet separately, but I also intend for you to be able to read them a third way, with my sonnet woven into the prose portion so that the entire piece flows together as one.
About my sonnet: As an operating room nurse, I’m surrounded every day by organ transplants and trauma surgery. I wanted to capture some of the imagery and sense of what my type of nursing involves.
When I found so astonishing a power placed within my hands, I hesitated a long time concerning the manner in which I should employ it. Although I possessed the capacity of bestowing animation, yet to find a way, completely search through, and to prepare a frame for the reception of it, with all its bounce — keeping in mind the intact details, intricacies of fibres, muscles, and veins, still remained a structural beauty; it proved an immense work of inconceivable difficulty and labour. I doubted at first glance, directed at those who came before whether I should attempt the creation of a being like myself to fully succumb to our vast wirings, or one of simpler organization; but my imagination was too much overwhelmed by the body’s beauty and exalted by my first success to permit me to doubt of my ability exposed as it was, to honor, to aid, to give life to an animal as complex and wonderful as man. The bonding by unbonding. Third eyes open materials at present within my command hardly appeared reenvisioned, sculpted to find the ways adequate to so arduous an undertaking; but I doubted not that a new entity could be established; I should ultimately succeed. I prepared myself for a multitude of worlds within worlds with which my craft opens, reverses; my operations might be incessantly baffled, with every piece hurried to find a home; and at last my work be imperfect: yet, when I considered the alternatives, tempting though they may be, improvement which every day takes place in science and separate us from the latch and the key mechanics, I was encouraged to hope my present attempts would at least lay the foundations of future success. Nor could I consider the magnitude and complexity of my plan as any argument of its impracticability. It was with these feelings that I began the creation of a human being. As the minuteness of the parts formed a great hindrance to my speed, I resolved, contrary to my first intention, to make the being of a gigantic stature; that is to say, about eight feet in height, and proportionably large. After having formed this determination, and having spent some months in successfully collecting and arranging my materials, I began.