healing my relationship with sonnets | for Lee Harrick
beloved formalists will say
with feet and toes and rhymes and song
that sonnets must be writ this way
fourteen lines and quatrains strong
what they don’t know is that they’re wrong
and why they’re wrong they’ll never guess
and why my poems won’t belong
and why sonnets get bad press
fundamentally poetry is anarchy
word-fields rewilded by sumptuous metaphor and over-long lines and long-held grudges
begrudgingly relinquished into uncooperative line
breaks
I will take up whatever space I want thank you very much and if my poems have feet
it will be for dancing
6 thoughts on "healing my relationship with sonnets | for Lee Harrick"
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Ha! Love they playfulness in this poem, the resolution to not be so serious. Well done!
Ha! Great turn in line nine. You make your point, which was also Diane Seuss’s point, and Terrance Hayes’s point etc….
Clever, fun. Have no idea if it’s a sonnet. Not sure it’s not.
Yes!!!
This needs to be shown in a few classrooms!
Fabulous!
Funny poem! I’m fond of writing “fractured” sonnets. Structure is nice to a point!
Fun! And with a bold touch of anarchy!