[Melanie Wright]

I'm with Don Paterson on the advantages of writing in form: I also find that [the] subconscious can operate a lot more freely if I throw the left side of my brain some indigestible intellectual doggy-chew to shut it up and prevent it from interrupting.

[Shaun J. Russell]

Originally Posted by Melanie Wright

I'm with Don Paterson on the advantages of writing in form: I also find that [the] subconscious can operate a lot more freely if I throw the left side of my brain some indigestible intellectual doggy-chew to shut it up and prevent it from interrupting.

That's a fantastic quote. Sums up my view to a T.

For what it's worth, when I sit down to write, I generally DO think about how whatever ideas I have are going to fit in the form. Putting urge and inspiration aside, I find writing a formal poem roughly akin to solving a crossword puzzle: there are many words one CAN put in the various places, but there's generally just one "right" word per place.

[Marilyn Taylor]

Getting my feet wet again on this list, with much trepidation. But I want to say that I have no problem at all with a 14-line sonnet in rhymed trimeter, just so long as it carries the full payload of exactly 14 lines. I much like "Mowers Song" in its entirety, in fact-- especially its wonderfully satisfying close, which somehow reminds me of "Fire and Ice".

However, did anyone else have trouble wrapping his/her head around "The boy who mows my yard / thinks that he once was I"? What am I missing? Isn't it the other way around? Or am I being terminally obtuse? (Don't answer that.)

[Eric Chevlen]

For what this poem is, it's good enough. But to call it a sonnet so stretches the meaning of the word as to invite revocation of fhe proverbial poetic license. What the poem lacks is the grandeur and even sometimes the gravitas of iambic pentameter. There's nothing wrong with a jackdaw qua jackdaw, but a jackdaw ain't an eagle.

[RCL]

Marilyn, I'm with you on the reversal.

Ralph

[Chris Childers]

I don't disagree with Don Paterson; I feel like Yeats said something similar, or at least I was told so, once: "It gives my brain something to play with while I write down what I didn't know I knew." But "maximizing our creative abilities" is pretty banal language.

Marilyn, the very thing you point out (that reversal in L1-2) was brought up when this poem was on the boards not more than a few weeks ago. It was variously criticized and defended but the upshot is that it was not changed. Is it odd? Yes, a bit. Does that matter? I'm not sure.

C

[Scott Miller]

Dear Mr. Wyatt: please cease and desist from using the term "sonnet" to describe your work. My sonnet has an octave and a sestet, whereas you turn the last two lines into a couplet. Also, you have 10 syllables in your line, whereas there should be 11. Sincerely, Petrarch.

Now, back to the 21st century. My brother worked on a cool scientific study once. He set up computer images morphing a cat into a dog over time. Some images had the eyes change first, others changed the ears or mouth first. Then volunteers for the study would watch the video and click a button when they thought the animal had changed. Turns out, there are certain visual cues that trigger people to see dog or cat (ears are a big one, for example).

A trimeter sonnet as defined in this thread has the "correct" number of lines and a valid sonnet-like rhyme scheme. On the other hand, it varies from standard IP in a big way. Here is a bit from Julie Stoner's post in the call for submissions:

"And whether the poet follows the standard recipes for rhyme and meter and placement of the volta, or rebels against them, the audience's familiarity with the sonnet tradition must somehow inform and improve our experience of the poem". Later, she says "No volta = no sonnet". This comment was then endorsed by Catherine Chandler. So you can reject the judge's views but it seems clear that in this venue, variations on the form will fly. Certainly, our familiarity with the tradition informs this discussion!

I don't agree that sonnets in IP necessarily carry more "gravitas". Trimeter can give a pithier reading, done right, while IP can easily sound glib. "Mower's Song" seems to straddle that line a bit. It's paced well, but I also find L2 confusing. Why does the boy (how old do we think he is, given he's "no longer cute"?) think that he once was N, who seems older? The boy is father to the man?

[Mary McLean]

I don't personally like the start, but I do warm to the poem as it goes along, and the sestet in particular has a pleasing simple gusto.

[Andrew Sacks]

14 lines. One stanza. Iambic pentameter. English or one of the Italian rhyme schemes. Have I been misinformed for decades? I think not. Now, Sidney used hexameter in "To Stella," it is true--but too much license taken works against the tasks inherent in sonnet structure. Ask Robert Frost. Uh oh. Too late for that. Sorry. Frost said, by the way, "Writing free verse is like playing tennis with the nets down." Enough said.

[Roger Slater]

No one is talking about free verse (though I've sometimes reflected how interesting it would be to watch fine tennis players dispense with the net -- surely it would be harder, not easier). Frost, though, did play around with the sonnet form. In "Design," for example, he used his a-rhyme in seven different lines, and one of them was a reused rhyme (white). “The sonnet is the strictest form I have behaved in, and only then by pretending it wasn't a sonnet,” Frost once said. And surely he played around with rhyme schemes in ways that were not considered "traditional" in poems that he nonetheless considered to be sonnets.