The Low Country
What business have you Netherlanders whittling
the sonnet down? I will not see it wrecked
by low types from Nijmegen or Utrecht!
It doesn’t need your Amsterdam belittling!
And don’t read snels aloud; these short-stack frolickings,
like all your lingo, sound like "a lot of bollockings"!
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Dutchifying
I scanned my sonnets, hoping to convert
this one or that to stump proportions, snel.
To me such drastic cutting seems like hell:
Ten lines are “curtal”; six are more like curt.
Since when is two point three times six too much, man?
No way six trumps fourteen, or I’m a Dutchman.
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Decapitation
Back when I sometimes Deep End dunked a sonnet
a Tim or Alan often would suggest
I cut the octave, keep the nether best,
the last six lines. I’d say, “I’ll ponder on it.”
In truth I was — though this I left unsaid —
too squeamish to cut off a sonnet’s head.
[This message has been edited by Henry Quince (edited August 02, 2008).]
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