[Edmund Conti]

Not a sonnet, but using the form to describe itself.

http://ramblingrose.com/folly/2006_10/sestina.html

[Michael Cantor]

Here's one I published years and years and years and years ago in the Cumberland Review - one of the many magazines I have outlived.


The Perfect Sonnet

I’ve been at this forever and I think
the perfect sonnet should consist of one
long sentence which will elegantly slink
around caesuras; have a little fun
with word-play as it sets its feet upon
good meter and an intertwining rhyme,
and then, just when it seems it will run on
and on without an insight worth a dime -

sublimely superficial, laced with wit
that sidesteps the realities of life -
shall open up a bit and half admit
concern about old age, finances, wife;
so that, instead of running out of gas,
it turns around and bites you in the ass.

[Michael Cantor]

And here's another from those thrilling days of yesteryear - so far back that I had not yet started crapping on people for writing poems about poetry. This one was in the Umbrella Journal, and is a sonnet about a villanelle - or possibly a villanelle about a sonnet. Or a villanelle about a villanelle. Or something.


Do Not Go Gentle into that Quenelle

I wish I could create a villanelle
With poet’s flourish, and a sous-chef’s care,
As sweet and subtle as a plump quenelle.

A proper, formal Miss, of classic phrase,
Her soft, hypnotic voice can weave a spell
That leaves this anxious suitor in a daze:
She is my siren of the villanelle.

I must find piquant lines that mingle well
(The recipe demands a perfect pair)
With which I could create that villanelle

As easily as I take shrimp and shell
Them, grind them, beat in egg whites full of air
And sweetly, subtly, raise a plump quenelle.

Those retold lines and oft-repeated rhymes,
Old-fashionedly romantic Gallic pace,
The ease with which she makes each point four times,
Accent her elegance, her form, her grace.

But overlabored tercets will not swell
My dish - If I could blend their essence with the flair
I wish, I would create a villanelle

That marries words and verbs in parallel
With nutmeg, cayenne, heavy cream; prepare
It sweet and subtle; as a plump quenelle,

And if she seems to stutter, just as well -
No twists or turns or sonnets’ clever ways
Disturb the quiet, mesmerizing swell
Of every echolalic, encored phrase,

French-kissed with fruits de mer and bechamel,
A mix to metaphorically declare:
I wish I could create a villanelle
As sweet and subtle as a plump quenelle.

As I begin to see that I adore
A nagging and reiterative bore.

[Michael Cantor]

Trochees Are The Perfect Fix

I love a line of trochees now and then
Snort them up - my ear will tell me when
I’m due again - set for that metric hit -
the off-beat rush I need to discomfit
and chop the chain of pure iambic verse
that spreads a sonorous Shakespearean curse
across my winter sonnet’s boring drone.

Trochees are the poet’s perfect fix – stone
fences that provide a periodic high
to lift a rhyme through dull New England sky
to a caesura; punctuate the hills
with jig-saw boulders, frozen silver spills
of rock, the drift of snow on wind-tossed
lake, two paths uncrossed, a touch of frost

[Edmund Conti]

A perfect sonnet, Michael, with a perfect Cantor ending.

Ah those days of yesteryear when no one interfered with our poems and no one published them.

[RCL]

There is a poet who put out a book in which he describes many poetic forms within poems, usually humorous. I own the book (hiding somewhere), which is very thin. Does anyone out there recall the author or title? I cannot.

I now have it, thanks to a note in Robert Pinsky's The Sounds of Poetry: John Hollander, Rhyme's Reason.

[Mark McDonnell]

Hey,

These all great! It's nice to know I'm just at the tail end of a long amd nobly silly tradition. Roger, love it, very cunning not to use 'Bumbershoot' as your rhyme word. With a little metrical twisting it's infinitely adaptable to any journal! Michael, your Perfect Sonnet is just that.

Cheers all!

[Brian Allgar]

Here's one from a Spectator acrostic competition.

Wouldst write a sonnet in the style of Will?
I’faith, thou couldst have found no better master;
Learn well from one who’s expert with the quill,
Lest inexperience lead thee to disaster.
Study my verse, and ponder long upon it;
Heed rhyme and metre; add, upon a whim,
A little sauciness to spice thy sonnet,
Knowing thy readers love a hint of quim.
Senescent bards there be who favour Petrarch;
Perchance his forms may please some dullard soul
Enjoying but the spoils of a tetrarch.
A quarter-share? Nay, let the prize be whole!
Reserve some fancy for thy final line;
Ere long, the extra fiver shall be thine.

(No, it didn't get the extra fiver - chiz!)

[John Isbell]

Lovely, lovely. Thank you for this thread, everyone.

Cheers,
John

[John Isbell]

R.D. Laing's Life before Death just occurred to me:

To write a sonnet in this day and age
May seem to some an almost wanton waste
Of ink upon a page...

Cheers,
John