[Bruce McBirney]

I think this is the personally felt gem many were waiting for.

I love the poem's "twinship"/heartbeat metaphor; the layers of meaning in the title (no, don't rename it "The Trochee"!); the well-chosen slant rhymes coalescing at the end in the perfect rhymes bound/found/sound; the whole feel and sound of it.

This strikes me as something different and lovely. Kudos to the writer!

[William A. Baurle]

A touching and deeply meaningful poem. Somewhere in the future there's an anthology with this in it.

[Janice D. Soderling]

A lovely sonnet in every way. Very original content but with careful heed to form. It will get one of my top three votes, I'm pretty sure but I'm waiting for the new postings. And who knows, we might even get a bonus or two. That happens sometimes.

A lovely event, the annual sonnet bake-off is.

[Eileen Cleary]

Or maybe someone named Ann wrote it from the twin's perspective.

[Andrew Frisardi]

I'm on board with everyone else here in liking this poem a lot. Along with the craft, I enjoy the subtle play of thought in it.

The mention of "Ann" made me wonder if there's a metaphor embedded in the name, and a google informs me that Ann, from Hebrew Hannah, means "He [God] has favored me." That fits the sense of the poem, obviously. At the same time, the poem's title is "The Iamb," which is a homonym for "The I am," which is what G-d self-names in the Bible. If there's anything in that reading, dropping the "The" from the title, as someone suggested, would lose a possible layer of meaning.

I like that this poem has so much going on in it, on so many levels.

[Shaun J. Russell]

Yeah, this is pretty damn magical, and certainly of the breathtaking quality one hopes for in a bakeoff.

I typically dislike slant rhymes, but they're handled so expertly here that one almost doesn't even notice.

I generally agree with the muted nits mentioned above about the title being "trochee," but then that takes away from the lovely double entendre of Iamb = I am.

I wonder if it will turn out that this poem is by someone who is not a regular 'Sphere poster. The voice sounds very unique to me.

Definitely the best of the eight in my book.

[Spindleshanks]

Admirable stuff. Likely my number one, though I have a couple of issues with it.

As a metaphor for the twinship, the iamb doesn't hold up, as some have noted. A trochee would be more apt. If limited to N's summation of herself (L11) it works, but where the octave seems to apply it to the 'weaker beat,' the echo trailing the stronger, it simply doesn't fit. I think it's a stretch to see reference to the Deity in it—it just adds to the confusion, suggesting N sees herself as God, given that the title is self-descriptive. (Unless the title is intended as descriptive of Ann. Then L11 becomes questionable.)

L9 is awkward syntax, switching to the parenthetic "the one named Ann." I would favour "my sister Ann" as an address that could be seen as affectionately sardonic.

I think the choice of title bears rethinking to untangle the confusion. It's an unnecessary distraction.

That said, the sonnet reveals a master's touch and I'm suitably impressed.

[Elise Hempel]

I'm still thinking about names here. Why would the N. need to mention the name Ann -- one syllable, "defined and certain" -- at all? (The word "iamb" is a trochee by itself, of course, but its meaning is the opposite.) Perhaps the N's name is an iamb -- Lynette, Renee, Jenelle, whatever. Same question: Is it a flaw in the poem that the N's name isn't mentioned? Would that make things clearer?

I, too, have just a teensy problem with the too-close rhyme of "missed" and "dismissed" in the octave, as someone mentioned early on. Only teensy....

[Roger Slater]

That's the third time you've asked that question in this thread, Elise. It would seem that nobody else has a problem with mentioning the name Ann. But I can only speak for myself. I don't really see the issue.

By the way, I just happened to be glancing at a very old thread here at Eratosphere discussing an aspect of teaching meter to children, and Alicia Stallings suggested likening iambs to heartbeats. I was reminded that this is a familiar way of describing an individual heartbeat, so the title here is apt even if Ann's heartbeat followed by the fainter heartbeat of the speaker come together as a trochee.

PS--
Apropos missed/dismissed, I suppose they are technically non-rhyming if one speaks in perfectly delineated syllables, but I tend to blend the "s" into the "m" so it's more like rhyming "missed" with "smissed", which is a perfect rhyme.

[Michael Cantor]

Once again, our DG picks an interesting subject and approach - but this one also features a strong poem - one of my favorites. Nits:

- I found the opening "still before/the eyes of ultrasound" confusing.

"just" as the ending of L7 bothers me. Possibly:

- the second heart, my late and weaker thrust,
as just an echo, bouncing off of yours.

I assume the narrator's name is an iamb ending on a long vowel. "Uma", as Julie suggested, or equivalent.