Sonnet Bake-off Blog

I love the word bake-off. It takes me back to those Pillsbury Bake-offs in the '50s where some nice June Cleaver-ish housewife would win for her yummy brownies, or some other delicacy.

At the time, my father was recovering from polio (which he contracted in the spring the year the vaccine became available to the public) and my mother, age 25, was not only his caregiver and physiotherapist, but also in charge of the first four of what would eventually be her seven children, all of us girls, the youngest only 1 month old.
We had to move back to PA from Poughkeepsie, NY, and thanks to my Aunt Mary Ann who owned a double-block in Wilkes-Barre, one half of which was unoccupied at the time, we had a roof over our heads.

Anyway, Mom would wistfully mention when the bake-off was on, she being such a wonderful cook, and I would dream that she would somehow be able to enter it and, of course win. But she had better and more important things to do, and to this day, she is the family's heart and soul. Unfortunately, she is quite ill at the moment, and, if it is not out of place in a blog, I would ask for your prayers, for those of you who are inclilned to do so.

Anyway, I am going off on a very wide tangent, indeed!

I issued the Eratosphere Sonnet Bake-off 2009 call for submissions today because, as noted in the announcement, I will be using what the cyberworld refers to as "snail mail" and it was felt that a few extra days would be needed to read the hundreds (I hope) of entries I will receive, select twelve, mail them to Mr. Cassity, and receive his comments in return. The first two sonnets will be posted on (ahem) April Fool's Day.

It's a great honor to have Mr. Turner Cassity as our Distinguished Guest for the Bake-off, and a special thanks goes out to Lance Levens, who made the arrangements. Be on the look-out for Lance's introduction to Mr. Cassity, coming soon.

So far today, I've received nine sonnets. Being of two minds, literally, I have decided to base my (hopefully not impaired) judgment both on my gut feelings (the goose-bump factor) as well as a decision matrix. More will follow on that.

I just want to encourage you all to send me a sonnet to catherine dot chandler dot poetry at gmail dot com and I will hopefully get very fat on all of your cakes, pies, muffins and, of course, brownies.

Love & Peace,
Cathy