I like this one a great deal. Readers who disapproved of sonnet 1 on the grounds of irregular meter and slant rhyme can have no such objection to this one. One could pick at it, I suggest, for not having a real turn. But I enjoy it too much to pick.
Like 1, this one also has subtleties: I especially like the suggestions, in L5-7, of fantasized sex, which raise the question of how long the two have remained together without romance, and what that might have to do with their being childless. But one has to set those lines against L4, a line I especially admire, which stresses the care in their routine.*
Every detail here is part of a picture that we could call stereotyped; it's certainly well-known. But the way the picture is drawn parries that criticism by its artful use of parallel structure, sound devices like present/pressed, choice of assorted details, and pacing toward the list's final item.
Fourteen lines--a hundred forty syllables--is not much space, and a great deal will depend on picking a situation readers recognize. And that's why writing a truly original sonnet is so !@#$@# hard.
This one just jumped to my number one spot.
*It has dawned on me that this line is also richly ambiguous, since it depends on the sort of scene the TV actors are playing.
Last edited by Maryann Corbett; 07-17-2013 at 10:01 AM.
Reason: Seeing more in the poem. This is likely to continue.
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