Another cockamamie idea I had once, perhaps before this nutty 30 sonnets in 30 days idea, was to write a series of poems based on idiotic news stories, or the kind of article you see nearly everyday on outlets like Huffington Post and their ilk, those pieces that either report the ridiculous, or those thinkContinue reading “#452: The headline of a HuffPost article . . .”
Monthly Archives: April 2023
#451: If Walt Whitman tried to write a sonnet . . .
On day 13 of the sonnetsplosion, I find myself thinking, this is only day thirteen. We’ve got seventeen more days of this to go. And then: why did I choose to write 30 sonnets again? It’s proving more difficult than I thought it would be. Sonnet’s are a bitch, remember. Larry Levis was right onContinue reading “#451: If Walt Whitman tried to write a sonnet . . .”
#450: When my son was young he hated April . . .
Here’s another little sonnet experiment. Let’s try to be super dumb about the rhyme at the end of the line by using the same words over and over—but enjambing some of the lines so that the repetition is less audible and dorky! It strikes me that this has been a poetic goal since the EnglishContinue reading “#450: When my son was young he hated April . . .”
#449: My brother once said that his dear dead dog . . .
Welcome to day eleven of sonnet storm 2023. Thirty days, thirty sonnets. Here’s my first little sonnet experiment, a sonnet in iambic petameter (with a fudge here and there) that does not rhyme. We call that blank verse. Ooh, but there’s a rhyming couplet at the end—a button. Now we’re cooking. And the NaPoWriMo suggestionContinue reading “#449: My brother once said that his dear dead dog . . .”
#448: I may have the wrong idea about . . .
First off, on this tenth day of the festival of sonnet in celebration of National Poetry Month, I’d like to thank the curator or curators of the NaPoWriMo website for featuring yesterday’s poem on their blog. What a lovely gift to wake up to. So many of us out here in the blogosphere often, IContinue reading “#448: I may have the wrong idea about . . .”
#447: What if I moved the cushion out into . . .
Wouldn’t you know it? That on this ninth day of sonnetpalooza, the recommended prompt for the day on the glorious NaPoWriMo website is to write a sonnet!? Now there’s an assignment I can get behind! It’s Easter, and I feel the urge, almost a third of the way through National Poetry Writing Month, to switchContinue reading “#447: What if I moved the cushion out into . . .”
#446: I went without a drink, days: sixty-five
Welcome to day eight of sonnet mania and the effort on my part, during this most hallowed of months, National Poetry Writing Month, to write a new sonnet every day for thirty days. Before we dive in, a few introductory notes. Here’s another convention of the traditional sonnet that some readers may not be familiarContinue reading “#446: I went without a drink, days: sixty-five”
#445: We really should have seen it up ahead . . .
Day 7 of Sonnetnado! Let’s talk about rhythm for a second. For the uninitiated, a sonnet, along with being 14 lines long and following a rhyme scheme, also follows a rhythmic structure we call iambic pentameter, which is a 10 syllable line with five accents, the stressed syllable follows the unstressed, so tapping outContinue reading “#445: We really should have seen it up ahead . . .”
#444: Don’t ask me why. I cannot meditate . . .
I think I have exhausted all of the portmanteau slang I can think of: sonnetpalooza, sonnetmageddon, sonnetpocalypse–so we’ll have to try something new. Welcome to day 6 of the festival of sonnet, a sonnet-storm of 24/7 sonnets, all sonnets, all the time. I’ve said this before–I am not a traditionalist or a formalist. I amContinue reading “#444: Don’t ask me why. I cannot meditate . . .”
#443: Of building and construction I have had . . .
The sonnetpocalypse continues on day 5 of National Poetry Writing Month. Here’s a home improvement sonnet with a dangling unrhymed couplet–because I can. Another note of interest, at least to me, is that the rhyming couplet at the end, before the dangler, uses an archaic phrase that I have always been fascinated by—the adverbial phraseContinue reading “#443: Of building and construction I have had . . .”
michael jarmer 