[Jayne Osborn]

Mark,
Why do you find it necessary to argue with/question everything I ever say???

I didn't even mention the finishing rhyming couplet; I said Julie's poem didn't follow all of the usual rules, and a rhyming couplet obviously does. It might surprise you that even I know that!!!!!

L9 is not strictly speaking what you'd call a volta... and head doesn't rhyme with hand, street doesn't rhyme with poetry, stained doesn't ryhyme with since....

[Julie Steiner]

I'm enjoying the conversation/argument. I don't expect anyone's mind to be changed much, but the cited poems are a treat.

[Mark McDonnell]

Mark,
Why do you find it necessary to argue with/question everything I ever say???

You said it "doesn't rhyme and it doesn't have a volta". I say it does and it does. At L12 not L9.

I'll argue with anyone, Jayne. I'm an equal opportunities pain in the arse.

[Jayne Osborn]

its publication by a London press is not a volta, Mark, which traditionally appears at L9.

[Mark McDonnell]

I meant, of course, at the turn of L12/13. From wikipedia

A turn in a sonnet is called a volta. A vital part of virtually all sonnets, the volta is most frequently encountered at the end of the octave (first eight lines in Petrarchan or Spenserian sonnets), or the end of the twelfth line in Shakespearean sonnets, but can occur anywhere in the sonnet.

[Jayne Osborn]

But you went off on a tangent, to nitpick what I said, and missed the main point I was trying to make... which was that Julie's poem is a sonnet, while Michael Spence's isn't,... in my opinion. I thought that was what this discussion is about.

[Aaron Novick]

Mark argues with everything I say, too, Jayne.

Mark, what I wanted to reply snarkily to was the "do you really think you're better than the tradition" bit. Well, yes I do! Now I'm probably wrong about that, but someone won't be, and they'll be the one to carry the tradition forward.

Cross my heart and hope to die, that's all it was. I was a bit drunk when I typed that message. A little of the sauce brings out the flowery rhetoric, I suppose. Regardless, I think any more extended discussion of my particular intent with it would truly be exhausting, for all concerned, so I'll drop it there.

[Mark McDonnell]

Oh god yes, Aaron, let's drop it there. I probably went waaay overboard haha.

[Julie Steiner]

Okay, to be fair, 35 years ago I was pretty pissed off at Pablo Neruda, after I'd struggled in vain for weeks to suss out the rhyme and meter in his 100 Love Sonnets, only to find out (when the whole class, most of it native speakers of Spanish, laughed at my frustrated question) that these "sonnets" are in free verse.

Spanish poetry uses assonantal rhyme and elided syllables so often, I just thought I was really bad at picking up on the technical elements.

(Which was, of course, also true.)

[Brian Allgar]

Broken Limerick

Jayne,
I (another Brit)
Entirely agree
With
You.