Sonnet by Alice Notley

Sonnet

by Alice Notley

The late Gracie Allen was a very lucid comedienne,

Especially in the way that lucid means shining and bright.

What her husband George Burns called her illogical logic

Made a halo around our syntax and ourselves as we laughed.

George Burns most often was her artful inconspicuous straight man.

He could move people about stage, construct skits and scenes, write

And gather jokes. They were married as long as ordinary magic

Would allow, thirty-eight years, until Gracie Allen's death.

In her fifties Gracie Allen developed a heart condition.

She would call George Burns when her heart felt funny and fluttered

He'd give her a pill and they'd hold each other till the palpitation

Stopped—just a few minutes, many times and pills. As magic fills

Then fulfilled must leave a space, one day Gracie Allen's

               heart fluttered

And hurt and stopped. George Burns said unbelievingly to the doctor,

               "But I still have some of the pills."

George Burns and Gracie Allen, Credit: © Bettmann/CORBIS

Some famous people are known for their enduring love: Jimmy and Rosalyn Carter, Ossie Davis and Ruby Dee, King Edward VIII and Wallis Simpson, Betty White and Alan Ludden, Simone de Beauvoir and Jean-Paul Sartre, John Lennon and Yoko Ono . . . and today's focus of a wonderful poem, George Burns and Gracie Allen.

Let's first address the obvious: it's a poem called "Sonnet," but it has 14 lines, it does not rhyme, it hasn't got any consistent meter . . . but that is what Notley called it, so that's fine. I think of it as an American curtailed sonnet.

Sonnets, traditionally, were concerned with love, as this one is. But the poet isn't speaking of herself--she gives us 2 comic legends, first focusing on Gracie, then George.

I love the words she uses to describe them in the first two stanzas: shining, bright, halo, artful, inconspicuous, and ordinary magic. Notley mixes the incandescent with the commonplace, which is exactly what Burns and Allen were.

At the end of the second stanza, we get to the heartbreak: Gracie Allen's early death due to heart disease. Notley balances out the grief by showing us the touching way they dealt with her heart palpitations, "just a few minutes, many times and pills." Then the poet directly addresses her own ordinary-extraordinary duo she has set up with this great line:

As magic fills

Then fulfilled must leave a space.

Beautiful and powerful, and we know what is coming, we already know that Gracie dies. The way Notley tells us that we are at that part softens the blow.

But the poet does not leave us on this somber note; after all, we are talking about comic legends here. She ends with a joke, and whether or not it is true, it could be true, and that is poetry cares about.

There is a poem for every topic, but sometimes you have to hunt for THAT poem. I love when a poet chooses an unusual topic, as Alice Notley has done here. I love that she plays with the sonnet form, in much the same way that Burns and Allen transcended comedy.

This poem was published in Grave of Light: New and Selected Poems 1970-2005, 2006, by Wesleyan University Press. You can find much more information about about Burns and Allen by clicking here.