I'm not a huge fan of difficult forms. It would be fine if everyone practiced and practiced and practiced, and then threw out their practice exercises, saving their stamps for the excellent poems they eventually produced. Instead, it seems to me a lot of people say to themselves, "Eureka! I've successfully completed the technical requirements for a (villanelle/triolet/whatever)! Good for me!" and send the thing out to be published by easily-impressed editors. In general, I'm not fond of anything that smacks of the classroom, or clever-cleverness, or bored poets rummaging around for something to write about because they think they have to publish a hundred poems a year.
So, just to spite me, someone wrote this poem, which I shouldn't like (difficult form, Shakespeare allusions, cleverness up the wazoo), and dammit, I find it charming. It's an example of a
sonnenizio, a form invented by
Kim Addonizio. In a sonnenizio, you start with a line from someone else's sonnet; then you repeat one word from that line in each line of your own sonnet.
I'm sure all you former child prodigies not only know this one's first line comes from Shakespeare's Sonnet 73, but know all of Shakespeare's sonnets by heart. I'll post it anyway, for the benefit of my fellow dumbasses.
That time of year thou mayst in me behold
When yellow leaves, or none, or few, do hang
Upon those boughs which shake against the cold,
Bare ruined choirs where late the sweet birds sang.
In me thou see'st the twilight of such day
As after sunset fadeth in the west,
Which by and by black night doth take away,
Death's second self, that seals up all in rest.
In me thou see'st the glowing of such fire,
That on the ashes of his youth doth lie
As the deathbed whereon it must expire,
Consumed with that which it was nourished by.
___This thou perceivest, which makes thy love more strong,
___To love that well which thou must leave ere long.
[This message has been edited by Rose Kelleher (edited May 03, 2008).]