[RCL]

Nonce Sonnet? He's on It!

My muse and I design a sonnet,
Italian style; its resonance,
we plan, will generate nonce sense
from carefully cobbled rhymes on it.

Sonnet nicely echoes bonnet:
we like a blue one on Frost’s fence
above a freckled flower, its ambience
vague—so readers ask, What’s on it?

But then my muse, a curse on it,
growls, whines, barks and coughs
up sonics. Our mental state is so not
sane! We juggle lines to laughs

on tightropes over a so-so net,
and falling howl our nonsense sonnet.

[Michael Cantor]

Beta Model

Welcome to Adobo SonnetShop,
Advanced Petrarchan Writer, Version II.
(Our beta model will now walk you through
how simple this new program is to op-

erate.) Let’s start! Select some key words you’ll
be using - and a theme - and then the Me-
terMentor software guides you through a three-
step sonnet writing program. (This new tool,
which handles rhyme and meter rule-by-rule,
is also azure as an ancient school.)
The Contest Level section too, is cool,
Achilles, turquoise, darkling, duckling fool.

Note: Your use of SonnetShop must stop.
Please call Adobo to obtain a new,
updated program on a no-charge swap,
and Exit now before your screen turns blue.

[Catherine Chandler]

Here's one I wrote ages ago, instead of a "Love Sonnet," it's called "Sonnet Love."

[Erik Olson]

Freestyle (quasi-Petrarchan*)

Our hallowed form is cheapened when a throng
Chomps at the bit to cry they did a sonnet
Like some twee frill in vogue, a retro bonnet.
The form, despite examples that are strong,
May suffer ill-repute before too long
If treated like—a hat, lines formed to don it,
Or bandwagon with scribblers jumping on it—
The Sonnet sinks some by the bulk worn wrong.
We wish we fashioned with the finest art
A proper Sonnet to the lovely May;
Not that I rush to tip the apple cart,
Though . . . Study Will is all I have to say!

Carping upon poor ones in this freestyle
Yet added to the whopping sorry pile.

*More like a Petrarchan crossed with a Shakespearean sonnet for the sestet, actually, I suppose.

[RCL]

Scorn not the Sonnet
By William Wordsworth

Scorn not the Sonnet; Critic, you have frowned,
Mindless of its just honours; with this key
Shakespeare unlocked his heart; the melody
Of this small lute gave ease to Petrarch's wound;
A thousand times this pipe did Tasso sound;
With it Camöens soothed an exile's grief;
The Sonnet glittered a gay myrtle leaf
Amid the cypress with which Dante crowned
His visionary brow: a glow-worm lamp,
It cheered mild Spenser, called from Faery-land
To struggle through dark ways; and, when a damp
Fell round the path of Milton, in his hand
The Thing became a trumpet; whence he blew
Soul-animating strains—alas, too few!

Nuns Fret Not at Their Convent’s Narrow Room
By William Wordsworth

Nuns fret not at their convent’s narrow room;
And hermits are contented with their cells;
And students with their pensive citadels;
Maids at the wheel, the weaver at his loom,
Sit blithe and happy; bees that soar for bloom,
High as the highest Peak of Furness-fells,
Will murmur by the hour in foxglove bells:
In truth the prison, into which we doom
Ourselves, no prison is: and hence for me,
In sundry moods, ’twas pastime to be bound
Within the Sonnet’s scanty plot of ground;
Pleased if some Souls (for such there needs must be)
Who have felt the weight of too much liberty,
Should find brief solace there, as I have found.

[Michael Cantor]

Teach a Man to Write

Give a man a book, they say,
and he will read it through the day;
but teach him meter and some rhyme,
and see how he, in little time,
fights sleep to write, and with first light
makes coffee, then will re-recite
the sonnet that he gibble-gabbled
at all night: what once was babbled

now will form a half-defined
and vague, but metrically aligned
melange of words he’ll stir, then stuff
with metaphors, until enough
is there to fester, seethe and cook.
(Oh Christ! Just give the guy a book!)

[Michael Cantor]

Still another from my endless supply of youthful excesses.

From the Tomb of the Unknown Executive

When I set forth in industry each day
my thoughts were parsed in sharp execu-tese:
nouns turned to verbs the proper corporate way
by bulleting on focused strategies.
I dreamed in PowerPointed pros and cons:
strengths, weaknesses, advantages and threats -
replaced emotions with comparisons -
this gain, that loss, those assets and these debts.

But now I scribble lines bemusedly
as sonnets with a touch of dithyramb;
select with pentametric pedant’s glee
each shadowed word; and carefully enjamb
the diverse turns of life and poetry
in one last twist: I think, therefore, iamb!