CATHY CHANDLER'S COMMENT: “Film Noir” is a finely crafted Spenserian sonnet, where the rhyme scheme weaves from quatrain to quatrain, ending in a couplet in IP. The shift comes at precisely the right moment it should in this rather difficult sonnet form. The poet has set the tone perfectly with the italicized word must in line 1 and the snide reversal of the phrase “passion bittersweet” in line 3. I’m not sure about “upped their applecart” as opposed to “upset” (a metrical fix would be needed), and the repetition of the word “some” in lines 5 and 7 may be construed either as an oversight or, again, irritable sarcasm. Though line 14 is good, I feel its tone is weaker than what we’ve seen in the previous lines.
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