[Julie Steiner]

Noooooooo! I just spent a good hour or so writing a whole dissertation on the subject!

Anyhoo, below are some observations from my decade or so of Sonnet Bake-Off participation:

1.) To become a Sonnet Bake-Off finalist, a sonnet has to be a good POEM first and a good SONNET second. Simply filling in the blanks of rhyme and meter is, frankly, not going to be enough to make the cut. Likewise, departing from the usual sonnet prescriptions is not going to disqualify an entry, if that variation is purposeful and effective--i.e., it clearly serves the message or sensibility of the poem. (In contrast, technical glitches and attention-drawing gimmicks for the sake of gimmickry detract from the message or sensibility of the poem.) By the way, headless lines and trochaic and anapestic substitutions are pretty standard metrical variations, so new sonneteers are advised to find out what these are, lest they embarrass themselves by calling such things mistakes when commenting on the finalists.

2.) It should be obvious that the poem inherently demanded to be expressed as a sonnet. The glass slipper should fit Cinderella perfectly and effortlessly, with no evidence that a shoehorn (or toe amputation) was required. And whether the poet follows the standard recipes for rhyme and meter and placement of the volta, or rebels against them, the audience's familiarity with the sonnet tradition must somehow inform and improve our experience of the poem. Otherwise, why bother to write a sonnet at all?

3.) No volta = no sonnet. Sorry, but it's just a fourteen-line poem if the whole thing moves in the same direction. The turn needn't shift things in the opposite direction, but it must take the poem in a new direction, either in terms of argument or technique. As I hinted in 2.) above, the poet is free to play with (or against) the audience's expectations in terms of turn placement: it need not come at the traditional Petrarchan octave-sestet break, or as a Shakespearean couplet. But at least the ghost of a volta must be in the poem somewhere, however subtly, or the poem is not a sonnet. Period.

4.) Generally, in adjudicated poetry events like this, it's a good idea to Google the judges, to get an inkling of their taste by seeing what kind of stuff they write themselves. That said, Eratosphere's Sonnet Bake-Offs are a bit different from the average poetry contest, because the focus here is more on generating good conversation than on showering accolades on a handful of poems. For that reason, some of the past judges have chosen to highlight flawed but interesting sonnets rather than to pick the ten or so sonnets that they deemed "the best of the bunch".

Given the impossible pickiness of some of the comments, being named a Bake-Off finalist is a very dubious honor sometimes. :-) But the real winners of this event are the whole community, who have fun trying to recognize Eratosphere regulars among the anonymous finalists, and who generally help each other explore the limits of what a modern sonnet can and can't do, and why.

You can look at the finalists of past Eratosphere Sonnet Bake-Offs by going to the index page for the Distinguished Guest board, then choosing to view all posts from the beginning. This lets you scroll back to find Bake-Off related threads.

I hope this is helpful.