[Catherine Chandler]

God May Forgive You

[God may forgive you but I never can: Queen Elizabeth I]

For Jesus there can be no final straw:
The Saviour welcomes every Sinner in,
And loves the Sinner, though He hates the Sin,
But that’s His job and that’s what Heaven’s for.
Down here it’s time for totting up the score:
I’ve stuck to you like glue through thick and thin
And, let me tell you, thin is what it’s been
For years, for bloody years – not any more.
Have I found someone else? Why should I want to?
Simply to spend my money might be nice.
Further acquaintance with the dogs you’ve gone to
I just don’t need, and ditto your advice,
But what I do need is your absence pronto,
So bugger off. Don’t make me tell you twice.

Comment by Mr. Gwynn:




I haven’t seen this one before, but its voice is unmistakable (If I’m wrong about the author’s identity then I too should bugger off). The easy handling of cliche piled on cliche (“stuck to you like glue through thick and thin”) followed by the surprise twist of the blade (“And, let me tell you, thin is what it’s been / For years, for bloody years”) is, lacking a better term, a hoot. We can all learn something from “Further acquaintance with the dogs you gone to” about the little ups and downs of diction that can make poetic idiom so delightful. The rhymes, of course, especially the feminine ones, are flawless. I suppose I should say something negative. Ok, maybe the commas in l. 7 aren’t necessary.

[Catherine Chandler]

The poet makes it absolutely clear, in (mostly) hard-nose, end-stopped lines using slangy diction, that s/he will never follow the example set forth in The Lord’s Prayer, albeit N stops short of the physical violence said to have been meted out by QEI to the dying Countess of Nottingham .

This Petrarchan sonnet uses the rima alternata, or Sicilian, variation of the sestet. To combine that challenging form with a plethora of clichés (loves the sinner, hates the sin; stuck to you like glue; through thick and thin; the dogs you’ve gone to; bugger off) and still pull it off is no mean feat.

Again, my main nit is with the capitalization of all lines.

[Ed Shacklee]

I expect this poet could -- and very well might -- make every cliche I've ever heard sound delightful. A period after 'score' in L5, and a semicolon after 'thin' in L6; those are the only changes I'd suggest. I'd love to hear this put to music.

Ed

[Ann Drysdale]

An easy, singing - nay, swingeing - sonnet. Every time I read it, I grin and utter an almost inaudible Yesssss.

This one is high on my list and I'm afraid I see the initial caps as part of the fun. It's the obedience to all the rules bar gravitas that puts it in a class of its own.

[Petra Norr]

Continuing on my path of getting every poem in this bake-off wrong...
I thought the narrator WAS Elizabeth I. Why did I err from the start? Obviously it wasn't the epigraph alone. It must have been the combination of the epigraph and the capitalized nouns. It's more in line with the 16th century to capitalize "Sinner" and "Sin", and of course "Saviour" and "Heaven" just add to the flood of capitals (not to mention the margin).
So, I read the poem thrice, and regretted that I didn't know my history better -- I felt I should know whom Elizabeth was talking to. Somehow, after seeing some of the critiques, it straightened itself out -- I think. This is a man or woman talking to a partner or some such? Okay. But now I'm thinking that the poem is very remindful of the Cold Windows poem, and unfortunately suffers for not being as creative and delightful as that one.

[Roger Slater]

Great fun. The "dogs you've gone to" line is the high point, but then there's the wonderful "pronto" capper that sees you through to the end. The rest of the poem I see as a fine container for delivering this particular rhyme triad. Well done venom mixed with levity. It's like one of Sor Juana's tell-off poems reincarnated for a new century. If I didn't know better, I'd think Maz might have written this.

It doesn't bother me, but I don't know why we need the Queen quote to set this up.

[Maryann Corbett]

This one's become my new favorite. I'm considering two suspects for author, one male and one female, and on the whole I hear a female voice speaking this one. That's one thing the epigraph accomplishes: it places the thought in the mind and mouth of a decidedly pissed-off woman.

[Philip Quinlan]

My candidate is definitely female. And, of course, English.

Joint first favourite for me at present, again because it takes liberties in its language and subject matter. Not a love sonnet, but one of disgust.

Philip

[Jean L. Kreiling]

Absolutely delightful!

I might rewrite L10 for smoother meter, something like "Just spending my own money might be nice," and I think that a comma before "pronto" might give that word appropriate emphasis.

But what a perfectly argued, well-crafted dismissal!

Best,
Jean

[Petra Norr]

I don't think every sonnet needs a volta, but I'm wondering if this sonnet has one? I don't understand this sonnet at all; to me, it's just telling someone they're a jerk. Nothing wrong with that per se, but where's the punch, the twist, the creativity, to make it stand out as different from any other rant? The clichés, in my opinion, are nothing other than lazy language.