[Tim Murphy]

Our next guest Lariat will be Dick Davis, a spectacularly fine sonneteer whose “Baucis and Philemon” is probably the best such poem of my generation. I’d like to invite all of you to send me your best published sonnet. I shall select a group of them, and Dick will critique and lead a discussion of each poem. The author of the best poem will have a $100 donation made in his or her name to St. Alex of Ablemuse.

Dick will join us on May 1, so please email your entries now to timmurphyis@att.net. I shall be posting a number of Dick’s poems on Mastery and filling you in on his distinguished career as a poet, translator, and savage critic well before that date.

Michael, many thanks for your continued good service to the Sphere. I’ve posted Samuel Maio’s lucid foreward to your splendid Petrarch on your Mastery thread, and we hope you’ll continue to look in on your colleagues as often as your schedule permits. And of course! I look forward to receiving your entry in our sonnet contest.

[Len Krisak]

Dear Tim,

Dick Davis is a fine selection--a powerful
sonneteer and translator and a fine person as well.
(I've had the benefit of his counsel for the last
two years at West Chester). But a "savage" critic????

Could you possibly be exaggerating a wee mite?
I've always found his criticism modest, temperate,
and highly constructive. In fact, I suspect he'd
blanch at that term "savage" !

At any rate, looking forward to his arrival.

Len

P.S.--How about reserving this question as a starter for Dick? Somewhere in "All the Fun's... ," Tim Steele says that "of course" one should save a spectacular or ingenious or highly "marked" rhyme for the second of any pair (or later rhyme in any scheme). In his sonnet class at West Chest, Dick advised just the opposite, pointing out that by doing that (bland rhyme word followed by attention-getting rhyme), the poet lays himself open to the charge of appearing to have settled on the second word out of desperation. Turned in the other direction (wild rhyme followed by bland), the process makes the rhyme pair look "natural" and inevitable.

I'd be curious about his response and also about whether Tim Steele has anything to say about Dick's advice.

[Solan]

I second that question, Len. In particular since I have Steele's advice in the back of my mind whenever I rhyme.


[This message has been edited by Solan (edited April 15, 2002).]