[stephenspower]

Although this is a sonnet, I like how a shambling meter fits the helter-skelter aspect of the poem. That said, the lines with 12 syllables seem too much and the one with only four feet too little. A mix of 9 and 11 syllable lines, all with 5 feet, would work better to show the straining against constraints while satisfying the reader's expectations of a sonnet.

The volta is clever and subtle.

I get the symbolic value of the watch and the return to time, but it's kind of lost in the last line because it's never mentioned before, plus "this list," which also isn't mentioned before (and where did it come from), is put on a par with "this watch" by the parallel "this." Which are we to focus on? If the concluding couplet were in straight iambic pentameter, that would reinforce the message too. I'd lose "the list," personally, because it suggests a different, if related, theme (responsibility, chores) than the watch (the organizing of careless time).

Perhaps the title could refer to the watch in some way so the reader's waiting for it: "Sprung"? "Unsprung"?

[Jesse Anger]

The volta here, with its symbolic nature, is really working. I love that the shift is demarcated by the jumped fence of gender norms, then lying in the looseness of the field. That's good. The field, too, is neutral or represents both polarities. Yes, the title could use a lift. But that enjambed volta is the real deal.

J

[Misty Roper]

I'm with Shaun on this one. While the poem beautifully depicts a day from childhood, the lack of traditional meter and rhyme leaves me feeling as if I had just finished reading a free verse poem.

[Rob Wright]

I like the high-flying meter of this — although at my first reading I was surprised to find it here, considering the judges. I like the detail of the snake in the garden (okay, field) with a girl, hummm. One cannot put those elements together, for me at least, without thinking of the loss of innocence. Okay, Miltonic it isn't, but refreshing, yes. I fell headlong into breathless the rush of it. Nice to see it here.

Rob

[Maryann Delaney]

I'm with Nigel, Shaun and Misty (I now see) on this. It's not even a grammatically correct sentence, never mind a sonnet. But I am a traditionalist. - Maryann

[Janice D. Soderling]

This appeals to me and not only because I was a tomboy. My reading is somewhat different though. I hear a silent "Oh" starting the poem and when in the closing couplet I reach "and this list /of errands on a notepad, this watch on my wrist", I move from the past to the present to hear the sigh of the woman that girl became, a woman ruled by a To-Do list and time constraints. I am not saying that my reading is the "correct" one, I'm simply making the point that a good poem has some built-in ambiguity, something for everyone to interpret and take away.

Some people do still wear wrist watches, it is more polite to glance discreetly at an inner wrist than to constantly be staring at that hideous little rectangle that advertises the dullness of present company.

The sonics are gorgeous—the alliteration and consonance never feel forced, each sound recurring in a nearby word; brake of the bus, down drive, torn, red, garter, glance, shift saved. At the volta we jump not only the fence but from mad action to inaction, meals served without one's own effort, time passing smoothly as a garter snake, before the couplet returns us to present day demands.

Lovely work.

[Katherine Smith]

The imagery (that zippered dress--I remember myself one June taking a pair of scissors to a dress with a hundred tiny buttons; the snake; the watch) and structure (the volta) of Childhood are quite good, specific, giving it the vivid felt quality that is so precious in a poem.
As far as the meter goes, the opening lines deviate but are pulled back often enough that I can still hear it. I can understand that the liberty with meter in the second half of the poem mimics the liberty of letting go of the role of being a girl at school, but do think that at some point the substitutions need to be reined in a little (perhaps the line with the watch since time is regular?)
Finally there's so much going on in the poem thematically, perhaps a little too much for a sonnet? That list of errands and chores brings the gir back to the responsibilities of womanhood, but it feels a little conceptualized and abstract to me.

All in all I love this sonnet --so fresh and with a wonderful subject

[marly youmans]

I like the idea of pellmell motion for this subject, but I must be a terrible literalist because I was stopped by "To shift." For a second I thought it was an odd verbal form of "shift" as in dress because it is so close to the zippered dress. Then I thought she was driving for another instant--"to shift" gears and then brake. It took my third thought to get to the right meaning. Admittedly all that tripping over meaning happened in a flash, but I don't think it was helpful, rather like tripping over the starting block in a race.

However, I may well be quite, quite mad. Do like the whole idea for the a short poem, that sort of 100-yard dash structure.

[stephenspower]

The poem isn't a sentence itself. It's the continuation of the sentence started by the title "Childhood" and the tacit "is," followed by the poem, the author's definition of a childhood.

[R.A. Briggs]

I enjoyed the formal looseness here--the meter feels sloppy and relaxed, but I never lose the tune. (I like stricter stuff too, but it's silly to treat rules of poetry like unbreakable rules of morality, rather than genre conventions that can be broken when it suits the message being delivered.) Likewise, the enjambments suit the idea of a narrator in rapid motion. The poem plays its larger themes of gender and obligation pianissimo, where I would have been tempted to smash the piano. (Yeah, I'm often in it just see the piano get smashed.)

Love the garter snake in L11-L12.