Dear Fellow Poets,

In choosing the finalists from the sixty-one sonnets submitted to me for this year’s bake-off, I relied on the wisdom of poets, the expertise of scholars and, of course, my own gut feelings, what I call the “goose-bump factor,” which may or may not be wise, but there it is.

My decision matrix was based on the following four main criteria (weights in brackets), all of which had sub-criteria as well:

(A) craft, sound, mechanics, images,...

The submissions have been coming in from Eratosphereans and others. However, the Spherean response has not been as lively as I expected. Yes, there's still over a month left in the submission window, so I encourage everyone who can to jump with their submission in their area of interest before teh May 1, 2009 deadline. The initial announcement can be found here.

Cheers,
...Alex

In one week, I'll be posting the first two bake-off sonnets, with Mr. Turner Cassity's comments and a few of my own.

In her Introduction to The Penguin Book of the Sonnet, Phillis Levin states that the sonnet is " . . . a mode of introspection, a crystallization of the process of thought, of a self arriving at self-consciousness.”

This seems to be borne out in this year's bake-off, as no less than 72% of the sonnets submitted were written in the first person,...

I know my mind and I have made my choice;
Not from your temper does my doom depend;
-- Edna St. Vincent Millay (Fatal Interview, sonnet XLV)

Dear Poets,

The deadline for the sonnet bake-off submissions has now passed. I made no final decision until after 6 p.m. Eastern Daylight Time, just in case we had some submissions from as far away as Hawaii, but no, the last one was received at around 3 p.m. EDT.

What a ride! Sixty sonnets in total,...

In Edna St. Vincent Millay's "Afternoon on a Hill," she writes, "I will be the gladdest thing/Under the sun!/I will touch a hundred flowers/And not pick one." That's how I feel about reading and reading the sonnets submitted to me for this year's bake-off, very glad indeed.

Just a reminder that tomorrow (March 10) noon is the submission deadline. That's when "I will mark which must be mine" and then send twelve to Mr. Cassity for his comments.
...