#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 . . .”

#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 . . .”

#442: I named my undergrad creative thesis . . .

Welcome to sonnetmageddon, day 4. Not even 1/6th of the way through the month, I have a sense of something taking shape in the way of a connective thread, beyond the repetition of this formal structure, the sonnet. Just four poems in, it might at this point be pretty oblique–so I mention it here justContinue reading “#442: I named my undergrad creative thesis . . .”

#441: The bug for travel does not sit with me . . .

Welcome to day 3 of my sonnetpalooza. All sonnets, all the time. 24 hour sonnets. I’m feeling pretty groovy about my progress. I find myself, even, a bit ahead of schedule. As of this third day, I have composed five of these babies. The jury is out about whether I will post more than oneContinue reading “#441: The bug for travel does not sit with me . . .”

#439: The poet Larry Levis said or wrote . . .

Greetings! Happy April Fool’s day. Far be it from me, though, to play a prank on you, dear reader. So, I begin today holding true to the self-challenge of writing 30 sonnets in 30 days in celebration of National Poetry Writing Month. For this first one, I have decided to be faithful to the ShakespeareanContinue reading “#439: The poet Larry Levis said or wrote . . .”

NaPoWriMo 2023: A Sonnet Festival

Don’t ask me why, not just yet anyway, but I am moved this year as I anticipate the first day of National Poetry Writing Month to veer away from my annual practice–not by skipping it, or by doing something different, like working on prose, for example, like some fiction writers do in the fourth monthContinue reading “NaPoWriMo 2023: A Sonnet Festival”

The Book I Read: I Got the Music in Me–Talking Heads 77 and Annie Kim’s Award Winning Eros, Unbroken

Listen to the podcast version of this blog entry! I’m writing ’bout the book I read I have to sing about the book I read I’m embarassed to admit it hit the soft spot in my heart When I found out you wrote the book I read David Byrne, from “The Book I Read,” TalkingContinue reading “The Book I Read: I Got the Music in Me–Talking Heads 77 and Annie Kim’s Award Winning Eros, Unbroken”

The Book I Read: Works Unfinished, Finishing the Appalachian Book of the Dead, and a Prayer for October

Listen to the Podcast version of this blog entry here! True confession: I often abandon books before I finish them. Sometimes I go back, sometimes I never do. The reasons for the abandonment vary–but rarely, is it because I am disinterested. Only a couple of times have I ever stopped reading because I thought theContinue reading “The Book I Read: Works Unfinished, Finishing the Appalachian Book of the Dead, and a Prayer for October”