The Singing Line and the Sacred: A Review of Theresa Rodriguez’s Sonnets

Theresa Rodriguez, Sonnets. 2nd edition. Shanti Arts, 2020.

Literary critic William Empson famously devoted his attention to the concept of the “singing line,” a phrase denoting the inherent musicality of verse. In her collection, Sonnets, Theresa Rodriguez elevates this technical concern to a spiritual discipline. As both a trained classical singer and a poet, she possesses a heightened sensitivity to the sonic texture of language. While poems like “The Piano” and “Oh, When I Hear” explicitly address music, the entire collection resonates with the melodic qualities of precise meter and rhyme.

Music, in Rodriguez’s hands, becomes an avenue to explore heavier themes: the worship of divine mystery, the pursuit of ideal beauty, and suffering as a conduit for truth. Her work aims to capture the classical trinity of Truth, Beauty, and Goodness. While skeptics often dismiss these as secondary to raw expression, Aristotle argued that poetry is akin to philosophy because it deals with universal truths rather than mere historical facts.

The Goodness of Form

Defining “goodness” in poetry requires an Aristotelian lens: a thing is good when it fulfills its function. If the poet is a human agent seeking the good through versification, then a “good” sonnet is one where sound and sense align to produce both pleasure and instruction. A poem that offers only instruction is tedious; one that offers only pleasure is hollow. Rodriguez navigates this balance with admirable skill.

This classical definition clashes with the postmodern view, typified by critic Terry Eagleton, who defines a poem merely as a “fictional, verbally inventive moral statement” where the author arbitrarily decides line breaks. For materialist critics, the author is often viewed as a cog in the machinery of literary production, and metaphor is treated as a tool for political deconstruction.

poems The Singing Lines of Theresa Rodriguez: A Review of Sonnets

Metaphor as the Path to the Divine

Against the deconstructionist approach, one must look to Thomas Aquinas. In the Summa Theologiae, Aquinas argues that we speak of God through analogical predication. We cannot speak of the Divine univocally (using words in the exact same sense) nor equivocally (using words in totally different senses), but analogically. We use the language of creatures to point toward the Creator.

Rodriguez implicitly understands that poetry is the most direct vehicle for this analogical reach. In “Sonnet for the Sonnet-Maker,” she addresses God through the lens of prosody:

“You know the beats and rhythms, the iamb / Which pulses like a crippled-legged walk…”

The image of the “cripple-legged walk” is brilliant mimesis. It describes the iambic gait while simultaneously characterizing humanity’s relationship to the Divine. We, as fallen creatures, hobble toward the One who soars. This theological aesthetic reappears in “Sonnet Sonnet,” where the “cripple-rhythmed beauty” of masters like Petrarch and Shakespeare is highlighted. Their genius lies in distilled thought, yet they remain mortals attempting to touch the void.

The Muse vs. The Machine

Historically, poets invoked the Muse or the Divine. Modernity has replaced this inspiration with “class consciousness” or, worse, bureaucracy. In “CCP and Falun Gong Sonnet,” Rodriguez depicts a narrator awakening during an organ-harvesting operation, urged to invoke “party loyalty” while being mutilated. The Muse has devolved from a goddess into an anonymous bureaucrat.

In the West, where totalitarianism is softer, the source of inspiration is often Science. Frederick Turner’s epic Genesis, for instance, replaces the holy silence with the “melt of history” and evolutionary struggle. When the Muse is replaced by NASA or the State, the poetry suffers. The heroes become engineers; the language becomes technical. Aquinas’s analogies are useful here only to mock the “committee-room vocabulary” of the modern age. Terms like “memo” and “liquidate” ground a lyricism suited for the lumpenbourgeoisie.

This reliance on scientism—the belief that the ephemeral worldview of a laboratory researcher is equivalent to absolute truth—is a form of hubris. Rodriguez counters this by rooting her work in stable, spiritual ground.

Architecture of the Soul

The collection moves thematically from writing to love, then to faith, and finally to the decay of time. This progression is deliberate. Rodriguez employs a variety of forms—Spenserian, Petrarchan—echoing the diversity of her subjects.

Her technical control allows for wit. in “Enjambment Sonnet,” the syntax spills over the line endings, resisting isolation. She commands the reader to “Dissent!” and “negate / All smoothed-out evenness.” The art of poetry is shown to be disciplined, not merely a burst of drug-induced spontaneity like Coleridge’s Kubla Khan.

In “Sonnet of the Hardened Heart,” she uses crustaceous imagery—shells, scabs, and seabeds—to describe emotional defense mechanisms. The layering of images creates a psychological complexity that recalls William Empson’s types of ambiguity.

“Care less, I warn myself; bother no more / With inner crevices…”

Rodriguez also utilizes the repetition of abstract terms to distinct effect. In “Form Sonnet,” she notes that “freedom in most freedom is remiss,” highlighting the paradox that free verse often loses the very liberty it claims by abandoning discipline. While some critics view abstract diction as a weakness, Rodriguez uses it to emphasize metaphysical doubling. In “The Simple, Stalwart Faith,” she asks about the light that “lit this darkened darkness,” deepening the sense of spiritual obscurity through tautology.

The Verdict

The modern poetic landscape is divided between the classical and the free, a split that mirrors the cultural divide between the spiritual and the material. Empson’s “singing line” is, ironically, more applicable to Rodriguez than to the modernist poets who admired scientific objectivity. Her verse is clear, melodic, and profound without being needlessly obscure. She represents a return to the poet’s ancient role: a creator of musical structures that house the soul.