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”
Tag Archives: sonnet
#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”
#418: Zygote, 17 Years Later, Goes to Rock Show with His Dad–a Sonnet on April 13, 2022
It’s no longer accurate to call him a zygote,because he is, after all, a 16 year old boy, but “Zygote, 17 Years Later, Goes to RockShow with His Dad,” I thought, was a funny title for a poem. For all intents and purposes, and oddly, given that the parents who broughthim into the world areContinue reading “#418: Zygote, 17 Years Later, Goes to Rock Show with His Dad–a Sonnet on April 13, 2022”
#364: In Case of Emergency
(for Trisha Wick) Twenty-four years ago I wrote a poem, a sonnet, about the flood of ’96. It described the six feet of river water in my wife’s parent’s basement, that whole devastation, and the kids and families in the neighborhood who came to help restore and repair the house, the home, and hope. AContinue reading “#364: In Case of Emergency”
michael jarmer 