Poetry Friday: Boxing with A Curtal Sonnet

I'm not in a box, but a basket.
However, I am cute so I can do whatever I want.---Rebecca's cat, Neils

Sonnets are known as a "box form" because of their precise rules and tight appearance on the page.  Some poets, like Gerard Manley Hopkins, cried out inside those boxes, and made some of the most anguished, glorious sonnets I've read.

Hopkins, in particular, was known for counting hard stresses (punches?) rather than regular rhythms, and for compacting the Petrarchan fourteen-lined sonnet into a 3/4 sized poem, of 10 1/2 lines.  For what better way to squeeze out more anguish than with less room to cry?

I've tried one in his honor today.  (Thank you, Kelly, for the challenge.)



Hopkins foxed sonnets to 3/4 spare
    wire-whipped stresses til they wailed
      half-tocked feral hymns from sprung clocks

 Elbowing joy as birdsong from air,
     priested, pressed hard, he failed
       at 44, a life, curtailed and boxed

 Yet, cold-call his poems, and he swells,
     as slugger’s bandied cauliflower ear; rung,
       you clangor, near strangled, on far-hailed
 Words; carrion cry unlocked, he wells
                                      blood to tongue.

                                 ---Sara Lewis Holmes
                                    (all rights reserved)

My poetry sisters are writing sonnets today, too, some curtal, and some not.
Find them here:

Liz
Tricia
Kelly
Laura
Tanita
Andi


Poetry Friday is hosted today by Reading to the Core.

Make Haste!

Make haste! Kelly is running a contest for Brush Up Your Shakespeare Month, and you only have until tomorrow, midnight, to post your favorite bit of his poetry for a chance to win a Folger Shakespeare Library Edition of Shakespeare's Sonnets.  

I truly can't pick a favorite bit---for me, Shakespeare's all about how his words roll off the tongue and like a dessert buffet, whatever my mouth is tasting at the moment is the best ever!  I'm picking his Sonnet #90, only because I don't know it well, but it's dolefully delicious to recite and I adore the line "Give not a windy night a rainy morrow."

Sonnet 90

Then hate me when thou wilt; if ever, now;
Now, while the world is bent my deeds to cross,
Join with the spite of fortune, make me bow,
And do not drop in for an after-loss:
Ah, do not, when my heart hath 'scoped this sorrow,
Come in the rearward of a conquer'd woe;
Give not a windy night a rainy morrow,
To linger out a purposed overthrow.
If thou wilt leave me, do not leave me last,
When other petty griefs have done their spite
But in the onset come; so shall I taste
At first the very worst of fortune's might,
And other strains of woe, which now seem woe,
Compared with loss of thee will not seem so.

Poetry Friday: Sonnet-and-pie-looza

I wrote two poems this week. One of them you can see here, at the crazy-fun "15 words or less" challenge that Laura Purdie Salas hosts each week. The other was the first sonnet in the crown of sonnets that I'm creating with Kelly Fineman, Laura Purdie Salas, TadMack from Finding Wonderland, cloudscome from a wrung sponge, Liz Garton Scanlon, and Tricia from The Miss Rumphius Effect. You can't see it yet, because we're going to unveil all seven sonnets at once and charge admission! No, not really, but we do want to present them together, so you can wear the crown with all its viewpoints and experience its corona as "many lights as one."

I wrote my sonnet curled up on the couch on the Friday after Thanksgiving. Some things I discovered:

1. Pie is very inspirational.

2. Trust the first image that comes to you, no matter how crazy. For me, it was shoelaces.

3. You are the boss of rhyme. It is not the boss of you. Didn't your momma tell you that?

4. Sonnets aren't extinct for a reason. They're hardy, and won't die in your rough care. They're like the giant bear of an uncle who lets all the little kids pile on in football.

5. Second helpings of pie are even more inspirational.

6. So are long walks.

7. Iambic pentameter is your favorite aunt talking. She's easy to listen to, and she can count cards and make you look good when she's your Euchre partner after dinner. And she brought the pie, so thank her.

8. The sonnet form will hold your thoughts, but like a shopping bag, you have to open it up and dump stuff in. Later, you take take out your purchases, one by one, and see what fits.

9. Don't be fooled. Not everything fits. Return the baggy sweater. If you're not sure about the pleather pants you found on sale, ask your sister. She'll tell you. (Or Liz, my poetry sister!)

10. Sonnets are better than pie. I hate to say that, but the pie is all gone. The sonnets are just getting started.

Poetry Friday is hosted by Two Writing Teachers today.