Along with the terrible very bad nasty no-good weather we’ve been having in my Oregon neck of the woods, it appears also to be raining sonnets. Cloudy with a strong chance of sonnets. I reeled in three yesterday, and I caught two today, both big ones, 15 lines long. That’s an extra 7.1228% of sonnet.Continue reading “#462: Yesterday, when I was at the pet shop . . .”
Monthly Archives: April 2023
#461: My teacher Parker J. Palmer wrote or said . . .
Today’s sonnet breaches perhaps the one GOLDEN RULE of sonnet making. It’s 15 lines long. Three quatrains and a tercet! I was feeling rather naughty, although, I am nearly 100% sure that I am not the first one to write a thing that’s not 14 lines long and call it a sonnet. I don’t knowContinue reading “#461: My teacher Parker J. Palmer wrote or said . . .”
#460: There was in that crazy business . . .
Here’s the third sonnet in a trilogy, the result of a sudden sonnetplosion about my 32 years as a high school English teacher, 32 years in the same school. The second sonnet in this series pretended to be about things I’d miss about the profession, but turned out to be kind of the opposite thing.Continue reading “#460: There was in that crazy business . . .”
#459: However, there are things I truly miss . . .
Here’s the second poem in today’s sonnet trilogy. (II) However, there are things I truly miss.Not the rat race of it, the perpetualFrantic pace, the bureaucratic bullshit,Pendulum swing of best schoolhouse practice; Not the bells of it, slaving to schedules, clocks,And calendars, the battle between plansAnd grades, always decisions about whatTo neglect out of pure necessity; NotContinue reading “#459: However, there are things I truly miss . . .”
#458: It’s been ten months since I stood in front . . .
I found, every April, as a NaPoWriMo participant, that it was impossible in those 30 days not to write about teaching. In any kind of forced creativity experience, by necessity one writes about whatever presents itself in experience and thought. When I was working, teaching occupied a huge portion of my brain–something on the orderContinue reading “#458: It’s been ten months since I stood in front . . .”
#457: Let’s have more buildings about songs and food . . .
The first line of today’s sonnet is an allusion to the title of the second album by Talking Heads, 1978’s More Songs About Buildings and Food. I think it’s one of the finest album titles in rock history, but you’ll notice that I’ve spun the thing a little bit. I was thinking about how architectureContinue reading “#457: Let’s have more buildings about songs and food . . .”
#456: I camped in the rain, no, don’t you worry . . .
Eighteen I camped in the rain, no, don’t you worry,I was dry, comfortable, sometimes tipsyWith drink, but mostly with some poemsAnd an atmospheric river rising.It hadn’t let up for two straight days,So I stayed inside to read and writeAnd for meals I visited the camp siteNext door, where my sister with bad kneesAnd a brother-in-lawContinue reading “#456: I camped in the rain, no, don’t you worry . . .”
#455: Burt Bacharach and Elvis Costello . . .
Day Seventeen of Sonnetpalooza finds me writing a poem about music, a thing I do from time to time, as music, it turns out, is one of the central concerns of my life–listening, making, recording, performing. Hardly a day goes by when I am not doing one of those four things at some point orContinue reading “#455: Burt Bacharach and Elvis Costello . . .”
#454: Let’s hear your argument that a civilian . . .
Okay, today all the rules for the sonnet, except for one, have been thrown completely under the bus. Desperate times require desperate measures. I don’t have a lot to say about this one, as I hope it speaks for itself, but I will give you a bit of a heads up about the subject matterContinue reading “#454: Let’s hear your argument that a civilian . . .”
#453: If I can go one-hundred days without . . .
Fifteen If I can go one-hundred days withoutAlcohol, do you think I might be ableTo go a week without social media,Or the internet for that same matter?All that digital stuff has becomeLike the cordyceps in The Last Of Us,So inextricably intertwined in our livesSo as to make extrication seem nighImpossible. Maybe not even nigh. Again, likeContinue reading “#453: If I can go one-hundred days without . . .”
michael jarmer 