A certain charming devil of a New Formalist recently overcame my natural defenses and persuaded me to join his Critical Seminar on the sonnet at West Chester in June. If I could simply take cheap shots at academics and blather on about myself, I'd be happy as a clam, of course, but part of the deal is that I have to do a 20-30 minute talk on some aspect of the contemporary sonnet and I'm not sure I can get away with the plan I just outlined.

I've got a few thin, diffuse ideas at the moment, but wondered whether anyone out there who is smarter and more disciplined than I am has some suggestions for underexplored territory that might not totally bore a roomful of serious people.

Thanks in advance.

Well, maybe just take a look at the Nemerov sonnet winners and the sonnets in a couple of formalista journals and see if anything jumps out at you. Are there patterns in terms of subject matter? Devices? Forms?

Where does the form stand in relation to other forms? Are there any differences in what people talk about in sonnets versus, say, villanelles?

Quincy

Check out Wilbur's essay, "The Bottles Become New, Too," and you can easily lift twenty minutes of insight.

"The sonnet, I suppose, is the riskiest form of all for an English or American poet to try, if he is troubled by a good memory. There are so many good sonnets in our langauge --or languages-- that it is particularly easy in writing one to bear 'The second burthern of a former child.'"

I don't want to type more. The essay isn't about sonnets, per se, but makes the point that there is nothing antiquated per se about forms like the sonnet, nothing that dates them or links them to particular era, and the only reason people think otherwise is that forms (and rhyme and meter etc.) have been done so much that it takes particular skill not to accidentally invoke older examples and thus make the form seem old fashioned.

I've garbled the message, but I think it's close enough for you to make sense of it.

Maybe look at the topics contemporary sonnets address. The sonnet started out as a love poem and for many years was only that (though early on there were exceptions, e.g., the Early of Surrey's "The Assyrians' King in Peace With Foul Desire"). But the contemporary sonnet deals with social issues, politics, popular culture. Maybe this is something to go on.

I show my students works like "Love Sonnet for the 90s" (about HIV and AIDS); "As Time Goes By" (about Casablanca); and a really weird one called "Moscow Zoo" (politics) to illustrate how the range of sonnets have changed. This may be too boorishly simplistic but I think one mark of the contemporary sonnet is this exploration of topics outside the traditional scope of topics with which sonnets have traditionally dealt.

Perhaps you could discuss translating Petrarch into modern idiom, you idiom.

How about the sonnet as a form of aggression? It is an argument, after all. I think a lot of people think it is a particularly decorous form, but it can be ferocious.

Susan

Along Susan's line, as a form of irony especially when set as a dramatic monologue. How many voices can the sonnet accommodate?


S&MD,

Bob

[This message has been edited by Robert J. Clawson (edited February 14, 2008).]

I'm like Benjamin Franklin--I like to quote myself. A thought to piggy-back on the earlier one: because the sonnet was originally a form for love poetry and still has that identification to a degree, when poets use the form for different topics, immediately a sort of subtle irony is set up. Here is a love poem talks about movies, politics, etc. So this flavor delightfully colors sonnets that venture out of the Petrarchan and Sidneyesque modes into other ares. It is sort of a delightful dissonance that develops from the expectations of the form and the transgression of those expectations. You might bring this in as a point of interest.

dwl

I think if you put together what David is saying about love and what Susan said about aggression, you are in really interesting territory which would allow you to argue that the sonnet is the most subversive form. I think it is! Both troubling and trouble-making.


Cally

David: That zoo poem does sound really weird--maybe I could do "Sociopaths and Their Sonnets" or something like that... Mike