By Ellie Harsbarger

“Bar Napkin Sonnet #11”

Things happen when you drink too much mescal.
One night, with not enough food in my belly,
he kept on buying. I’m a girl who’ll fall
damn near in love with gratitude and, well, he
was hot and generous and so the least
that I could do was let him kiss me, hard
and soft and any way you want it, beast
and beauty, lime and salt—sweet Bacchus’ pards—
and when his friend showed up I felt so warm
and generous I let him kiss me too.
His buddy asked me if it was the worm
inside that makes me do the things I do.
I wasn’t sure which worm he meant, the one
I ate? The one that eats at me alone?

— Moira Egan

“Bar Napkin Sonnet #11” written by Moira Egan is most definitely not your traditional sonnet. In my experience, most sonnets are written from a male perspective. This one flips this tradition and is written from a female perspective. This sonnet’s idea of love is definitely not your typical sweet and mushy kind either. This poem takes on love in a more modern way, allowing a new spin on love to be addressed. The set up in this poem seems like your average scene of a girl meets a guy at a bar and buys her drinks to get her affection. However, this poem takes this idea and adds an interesting twist. A new dimension is added by knowing the female narrator’s inner thoughts. Egan is able to illustrate this by using her writer’s craft to achieve a very out of the box sonnet that goes against the traditional sonnet form and typical concepts. 

This sonnet poses an important question: what causes the reader to drink? My thought is it must have to do with her mental health. I think that the girl in the poem struggles with the fact that she is desperate for kindness and affection. This trait may lead to the reason causing her to be in pain. I believe she is aware of this trait when she states: “I’m a girl who’ll fall damn near in love with gratitude.” The narrator is aware of this feature within herself, but does not seem to be making any steps to change this. Instead, she uses alcohol to temporarily ease her pain. The alcohol in this poem has a sizable symbolic significance. 

The symbolism of this poem is found when you read it through a second time with the thought of the worm discussed in the last two lines. I think the mescal alcohol is indeed “the worm I ate” at the end of the poem. The alcohol that she drank causes her to act the way she is on this night at the bar. Then the next line is what really emphasizes a new layer of symbolism to the worm. The line “the [worm] that eats at me alone” redirects readers attention to the realization this speaker may struggle even when not drinking. The woman in the poem is most likely using alcohol and attention from strangers at the bar to cope with the things wrong in her life. So in an odd way the worm in this poem symbolizes her personality being drunk but also her personality while she is sober as well. The worm the woman ate is how everyone on the outside views her. The worm that eats at her is how she feels mentally. The way the poem displays this section allows for a negative connotation. 

Many well written poems use figurative language to help add to the writing, but Egan is different in this way. This poem is straightforward, and not much figurative language can be broken down from this sonnet. There is a line about “sweet Bacchus’ pards,” which can be seen as an allusion Egan uses. I will argue that Egan also uses the worm in this poem as a metaphor on top of its symbolism. The symbolism of the worm is that it represents the speaker’s emotions. A worm lives underground, hidden from other people. We only see them when we dig into the ground or weather adjusts their living environment and brings them to the surface for us humans to see. How interesting is it that the poem narrator also seems to act like a worm in this case, but alcohol is what helps her to release her emotions. Even though the worm isn’t mentioned until the end of the poem, I believe, in a way, it is the most prominent thing to be broken down in this poem. The worm adds a great depth to the poem. 

Sonnet poems are known for their specific form. This sonnet uses some basic sonnet format but alters things to provide a new spin on the sonnet form. In many cases, sonnets start with an idea or conflict and the ending is a resolution. This sonnet starts with the poem’s conclusion that “things happen when you drink too much mescal.” The straight to the point line of this work reflects the amount of alcohol consumed by the poem’s narrator. Most people become very honest when drinking. The saying “drunk words are sober thoughts” is something related to this poem. Most lines in this poem are directly stated. This is unusual for a sonnet because usually sonnets require you to analyze lines in order to comprehend their true meaning. The center of the poem includes an important enjambment example. It starts with the phrase, “I’m a girl who’ll fall…” and then follows through until “let him kiss me too.” This is the entire center of the poem with a continuous flow of writing and no pause with punctuation.The enjambment focuses on opposing things that work together well: hard and soft, beast and beauty, lime and salt. These different things can be related back to the narrator’s personality when she is drunk and sober. The two are drastically different but still seem to end up working together in the end. What Egan is trying to convey here is that this girl’s personality is built upon both her best and worst traits. Or maybe, the girl’s good and bad decisions. Which in the case of this story maybe the girl’s bad decision to get plastered with a stranger lead to her finding a new love.  

This sonnet tries to follow the familiar end rhyme scheme of a sonnet; however, some of the rhymes are not as easy to catch on and do not flow as smoothly as they could. Some examples are: mescal and fall; warm and worm; and one and alone. I think the author may have done this as a way of showing how the narrator in the poem is trying to keep the conversation going as best as they can but due to the alcohol things are a little bit messed up. This is why when the man’s friend comes into the poem the speaker engages with him as well through a kiss.  Something that does make this poem similar to the traditional sonnet form is the use of the line “sweet Bacchus’ pards.  Bacchus is the god of wine which seems fitting to this poem. The pards that are referred to are his leopards he used to steer his chariot. This line can also be used to demonstrate again how the alcohol is what drives the speaker to act the way she is. 

Egan does a great job at combing techniques of both form and literary devices to allow readers to pull out the poem’s meaning. The sonnet being written unusually, and the hidden use of metaphor in this poem do a wonderful job entertaining the idea that the speaker has had too much to drink. Everything is messy and yet straightforward. Throughout the poem the language allows readers to believe that the speaker is enjoying their life to the fullest. However, the beginning and ending lines of the poem create a confusion in the reader’s mind. If you are really enjoying life, why would you want to get overly drunk? On top of that, the statement about being alone at the end also highlights this happy feeling found in the poem’s center is too good to be true for the speaker. 

This poem’s overall scene of action may not be easily relatable to every person who will read this sonnet but, the general feelings the speaker is undergoing can be understandable to many. I think that most people struggle mentally at some point in their life. When people are struggling they find different mechanisms to cope. Some people do go for things like drugs and alcohol. Another big one is love and affection. Some people do not easily have that available to them. So this poem’s speaker is able to use alcohol and stumbles upon the affection when a guy decides to hit on her and buy her a drink. Then he has a friend as well. This girl will realize later that her actions that night were not great. Hint: the first line. I think in a way this sonnet is still about love. The love is this sonnet is just different from the other sonnets. 

The narrator seems to be struggling alone, which is why she decides to find love in these two men at the bar one night. The speaker’s lack of self-love is what eats at her. Today self-love is something widely talked about unlike in the past. Today people are being accepted for who they are more often. This does not mean no one struggles with the concept. Egan’s poem shows the typical lonely, self-conscious girl seeking the approval of others. This is a sad situation, but very common. Some of the themes in this sonnet may be common, but the way it was written is unique. This is a piece that draws you in straight from the title.