Of course it's a sonnet, just as "Paradise Lost" is unmistakeably a limerick.

I'm not a purist about what a sonnet can be. I like to see people play with the expectations of the form. I love the one-syllable lines of George Starbuck's "Space-Saver Sonnets" in hemimeter. But I feel there is too much omitted in this poem for me to grasp more than a yearning from it.

Susan

I think it's an admirable poem, but it works - with the spaces added - as a unique poem, not as a sonnet. As originally posted it was more sonnetaristic (recognizing we all have our individual definitions), but I didn't think it was very interesting. The spacing makes a big difference, but I no longer think of it as a sonnet.

Double post - sorry.

Yes, as a poem. No, as a sonnet.

No single line in this short a poem carries enough weight by itself to constitute a sonnet line in my undistinguished opinion. There is something about lines to be considered here: 14 lines yes, but what is a line in a sonnet? I believe each couplet is holding itself as a line, with some connection(s)/ tensions developed in each of those lines. I don't believe a line is any set of words ending in a line break, but, particularly in a sonnet, where the "lines" are counted, is an element that picks up a thread of meaning and partially develops it or contributes to its development. Each "line" of dimeter in this piece seems to have a strong need for its "mate" in the couplet. In one of the more favored couplets for ex,
Each line alone does not stand really but needs the other line.
Thus much Unjust itself doesn't do anything. The poem has 7 "sonnet-style" lines.

These ideas however only apply to a sonnet, I think. I love the spacing and what it does, but that technique, however sophisticated and useful, is not one of the techniques of a sonnet. Call it something else, I rather like it! But a sonnet is not just a poem with 14 lines, "lines" being any group of words that ends in a line break. Each line should be a line in a more traditional sense, and it should "work" without the use of spacing techniques. Give those techniques, and this form, a name, and let it have its own competition...

Old Guard Schoolmarm Naysayer

Whether or not it's a sonnet, this is the liveliest of the four that have appeared so far. Since it's close enough to qualify, I think the DG did the right thing by including it. (Yes, the DG was no doubt sitting up all night worrying about whether I approved of his/her actions.)

I read this as sort of "insta-sonnet mix": if you were to add a bunch of details and stir, you'd get a conventional sonnet. I wouldn't enjoy eating a sonnet baked that way (which is actually how I feel about the other entrants so far), but eating the mix straight out of the box is awesome.

Reminds me a bit of this limerick.

There seems to be an agreement among critics that Elizabeth Bishop's "Sonnet" (not the first one written as a teenager but the second one written not too long before her death) can be called a sonnet -- even with it's short lines and a sestet that comes before the octet. If that is the case, I think that this poem deserves to be thought of as a sonnet. I am actually wondering if the author of this is using Bishop's poem as a model since, for me, the turn happens with the colon at the end of the sixth line. Maybe this could be thought of as a sonnet form -- something a bit different like Hopkins' curtal sonnet.

I did find this poem much more compelling with the indentations of the second line of each stanza.

loses the melody in the fourth verse, are they all this bad?

Well. Somewhat intriguing, perhaps. The nursery-rhyme feel mentioned by the DG is one of the things it has going for it.

But--and I speak as one who likes to bend the boundaries of "sonnet" a bit--it seems to me too much of a stretch to call this a sonnet, just because the word "sonnet" is in its title, and choose it as a finalist in a contest meant to be specifically for sonnets!

I felt hugely jarred in every way at "nonplussed,"-- a word that definitely has its place in poetry and prose, but this place in this poem is not it.

I do rather like the last four lines...

For the first several readings, I also thought that "nonplussed" was a bad choice. But then I tried to find another word that would fit better -- and came up with nothing that, for me, expressed the kind of confusion the N is feeling. Something extremely hurtful has happened and the N can't -- even after many years -- understand why. There is almost a desperate need for resolution. The more I read, the more I like "nonplussed" and the way it occurs just as the poem turns. And the more I like the poem.