Betwixt mine eye and heart a league is took,
And each doth good turns now unto the other:
When that mine eye is famish’d for a look,
Or heart in love with sighs himself doth smother,
With my love’s picture then my eye doth feast,
And to the painted banquet bids my heart;
Another time mine eye is my heart’s guest,
And in his thoughts of love doth share a part:
So, either by thy picture or my love,
Thy self away, art present still with me;
For thou not farther than my thoughts canst move,
And I am still with them, and they with thee;
     Or, if they sleep, thy picture in my sight
     Awakes my heart, to heart’s and eyes’ delight.

Analysis

Sonnet 47 finds a solution to Sonnet 46’s battle of loving with the heart versus the eye: You can’t have one without the other.

Bill’s heart and eyes have reached a mutually beneficial understanding: when he yearns for the sight of his beloved, or when his heart is pining, he will look at a painting and both will share succor. At other times, his heart will “see” his beloved in some memory. So whether in painting or in imagination, the lovers are always together. His thoughts are always with the object of his affections. If his thoughts are,sleeping, the painting will delight his eyes and thus awake his heart.

Will’s Wordplay

To be “in love with sighs” refers to an addiction to sad thoughts. Sighs were considered bad for your health, each sigh taking a drop of blood from the heart. Will, you’re such a masochist!

The “painted banquet” is the portrait of his love that gives his heart and eye their sustenance

Clason Point, The Bronx

Today’s sonnet takes us back to the New York City mainland. Clason Point is a peninsula geographically located in the South Bronx. The area includes a collection of neighborhoods including: Bronx River, Harding Park, Soundview-Bruckner, and Soundview.

Soundview Avenue is the primary thoroughfare through Clason Point. Soundview Avenue once stretched from White Plains Road and O’brien Avenue in Harding Park to Westchester and Morrison Avenues in Soundview-Bruckner before the construction of the Bronx River Parkway. It was then known as Clason’s Point Road. The Bruckner Expressway which now bisects the area along the center was once known as Ludlow Avenue.

The small peninsula of the Bronx defined by the Bronx River, Pugsley’s Creek, and the East River is known as Clason (pronounced Clawson) Point. However, it has had several names over the years. In ancient times, the Bronx River area to the West was known to the Siwanoys, who spoke Algonquian,[1] as “Aquahung”. The site of a large Native American settlement, comprising more than seventy dwellings, Clason Point was then known to natives as “Snakapins”, or “Land By The Two Waters”.[2] There was a local and plentiful food source of oak acorn nuts for grinding purposes.

Europeans began settling the region in the early 17th century, and the Cornell family built the first permanent European settlement in the spit of land first known as Snakipins by the Indians. An English settler, Thomas Cornell, began farming here from 1654, for which the area became known as Cornell’s Neck.[1] Later the area was known as Clason Point, named after Isaac Clason, a Scottish merchant and a major land owner.[3] Development in the 19th century soon attracted resort seekers and the area became known for its amusements and entertainment. From 1883-1927, it was the site of the Clason Point Military Academy.[1][3] In the 1640s a series of skirmishes between the Cornells and the Siwanoy, known as the Pig Wars, were led by Chief Wampage, the Siwanoy sachem believed to be the Indian leader who killed Anne Hutchinson and her children in 1643 at Split Rock, now in the northern Bronx. A passing ship rescued the Cornells, and they returned to their home the year after Wampage’s last raid. Britisher Thomas Pell arrived at a treaty in 1654 with several Siwanoy sachems, including Wampage, that the Dutch authorities didn’t recognize. This disagreement was rendered moot in 1664 when the British fleet appeared in the harbor and the Dutch capitulated.

Clason Point in the early 20th century was an era of trolley cars on the main thoroughfare, Soundview Avenue or, as it was were, Clason Point Road. Clason Point was a mixture of mansions, farmland and plenty of undeveloped fields and swampland. There were ferryboat and steamer excursions from “The Point” to downtown (Manhattan) as well as local service across the East River to College Point, Queens. The last boat to College Point terminated during World War II.[1]The area was then known for dance halls, roller coasters, picnic groves and baseball games, as well as the world’s largest saltwater outdoor swimming pool known as “The Inkwell”. There was a volunteer fire department,a small airport, docks for sailboats and motorboats, saloons, and novelty shops. The amusement park rides and novelties in the Harding Park area of Clason Point was then known as “The Coney Island of the Bronx”.

By the middle 19th century Clason Point had many farmhouses, despite its poor drainage. Even today the main shopping area is fairly distant, along Story Avenue, the Bruckner Expressway and White Plains Road. Its seaside location and views attracted seaside resorts, dancehalls and amusement parks in the early 20th Century, served by a ferry from College Point, Queens. Kane’s, a major saloon in the Clason Point area in the 1920s, featured Helen Kane, a singer who coined the phrase “Boop-oop-a-doop” and for which cartoon flapper Betty Boop was modeled. After World War II, Kane’s became the site for the Shorehaven Beach Club. The club was purchased by Soundview Associates, an investment group including Sylvester Stallone, and was to become the Shorehaven Condominiums, a gated community of 1,183 condominium townhomes.[1]

In more recent years, a citywide housing crisis spurred construction of modern multi-unit row houses and apartment buildings. Soundview Park, built on a former landfill and the largest in the South Bronx, has undergone a complete transformation including enhanced pedestrian access and completely renovated and redesigned recreational areas. Future plans in accordance with PlaNYC initiatives will create an urban oasis in this dense community; complete with recreation nodes, Greenway connections, bike/hike trails, designated fishing areas, a boat launch, and esplanades with skyline views. The neighborhood has become increasingly more diverse with a rise in varied Latin American immigration in recent years. Crime has also seen a significant decline as a result of a number of factors including enhanced policing techniques and changing economic demographics.

References

1. Jackson, Kenneth T., ed. (1995). The Encyclopedia of New York City. New Haven: Yale University Press. ISBN 0300055366., p. 239.
2. Powell, Bernard W. “Preliminary Report on a Southwestern Connecticut Site”, from the Bulletin of the Archeological Society of Connecticut, February 1958. Accessed June 5, 2007.
3. Lopate, Phillip. “New York, Brick by Brick”, The New York Times, June 18, 2000. Accessed April 6, 2008.

ACTOR – Cornelia Hanes

Cornelia Hanes is an actress and model with a great interest in fitness. She was born and raised in Sweden, but moved to New York during the fall of 2009 when she received a full athletic scholarship at LIU Post to kick-start her acting and high elite swimming career.

Acting has been a major part of Cornelia’s life since childhood, but during her time at LIU Post she really learnt how to step out of her comfort zone on stage and in front of the camera. Today, Cornelia is a Suzuki trained actress who has traveled around with award-winning “Re-membering Antigone” in both America and Canada, she has been the lead in many short film productions as well as in the NYSE commercial that was aired nationwide on CNN. Cornelia currently lives in New York City where she is management represented by Dream Maker Talent and STETTS Model Management.

Apart from acting, Cornelia is an ECAC swimming champion and a NCAA All American scorer. Despite putting an end to her elite swimming career, she continues her passion for sport and fitness through yoga classes, swimming, conditioning and light weight lifting.

Besides being fluent in Swedish and English, Cornelia also has knowledge of Norwegian, Danish and French. Casting directors, acting teachers, and friends describe her as a strong and energetic individual with a large portion of humor – just like a true Scandinavian Viking.

For film and TV, Cornelia is a mix between the diverse Uma Thurman, the hilarious Kristen Wiig, and the fierce Charlize Theron. She would be a perfect fit to play characters comparable to Beatrix Kiddo in Kill Bill, Helen from Troy, or Carrie in Homeland. Stay tuned for more exciting news to come!

DIRECTOR – Christine Stronegger

Christine Stronegger is an award winning filmmaker from Norway who is currently based out of New York City. Her awards include the Director’s Choice Award at Sacramento Film Festival 2014 and Audience Award at Katra Film Series 2015. She graduated Summa Cum Laude in May 2015, from Long Island University where she earned her B.F.A in Cinematography and Film Production. While attending the film program at LIU, she interned at Tribeca Productions. Since then she has been freelancing and worked closely with directors Katie Holmes, Dustin Guy Defa and Domenica Cameron-Scorsese among others. Christine has a passion for directing and has recently written and directed a short film called “Wanderlust” with actor Daniel Hilt from Foxcatcher, which just became an official selection to NFFTY film festival 2016 in Seattle.

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