Amateur Sonnets

Recently I've been sort of into writing sonnets. I'm not a particularly poetic person, but in the past few months I've been reading more poetry than I ever have before and I've been learning a lot about it.

When I first started learning to write serious poetry (aka not the silly rhymes we all wrote in grade school), sonnets were my favorite. Despite my love for writing and creative things, I'm really more of a left-brained person. I like things to be organized and logical. And sonnets are very organized and make a lot of sense. I never really liked how poetry was considered so "free," etc. etc. I felt like that just meant that we ended up with a lot of stupid poetry.

Sonnets, though, are a challenge to write no matter what. No complete amateur could write a sonnet. (Although of course, there are plenty of stupid sonnets out there. But that's not the point.) Even after I've written a dumb sonnet, I feel pretty good that my meter and my rhymes are right on.

So here are my amateur sonnets. You will probably see more of these as time goes on and I try to really learn the art of the sonneteer.

This was a sonnet I wrote in the Petrarchan form, about the Petrarchan form.


So, Petrarch, I hope you're happy now?
Now rookies, pros alike have used and torn
apart your form, a tiny lamb now shorn.
Without its wool, does sheep become a cow?
The last I heard, the word ABBA, you know,
referred to an eighties band, not a rhyme form.
I think, Petrarch, it might be time to mourn
the painful death of your sonnet. But how
could we, just maybe, save its loveliness?
Convince the world it's not worn out and sick?
That there's still more to say about that girl
with eyes like flowers, skin like snow, and tresses--
No, now the world is fixed on politics.
Petrarch, your sonnet's for a better world.

Get the irony? ...Eh? Eh? Okay, moving on.

This is one that's rather more corny, but I'm pretty attached to it. It's in the Shakespearean form.

Photo by Felix Neiss on Flickr

A Literary Halloween

Okay, I'm going to be honest. Normally, Halloween isn't my favorite holiday. But this Halloween is different! Special! Exciting! Frightening! Bloody! Gory! Ghastly! Ghostly! Ghouly! Literary!

Literary?

As any writer, reader, or English major knows, the best way to improve a holiday is to literar-ize it. I mean, look at Christmas. You have Charles Dickens's A Christmas Carol. Look at Valentine's Day. You have stupid rhymes written on hearts posing as gifts. Look at Thanksgiving. Those lame paragraphs about a fantasy land of pilgrims and Indians loving each other (aka great fiction) that you had to read in grade school.

And out of all these wonderfully literarized holidays, you get Halloween, which, if you can believe it, is exponentially more literary.

Dracula. Frankenstein. Edgar Allen Poe. Wuthering Heights. Twilight.

(What? No--Twilight isn't on there because it's about vampires. It's on there because it's frightening how rich Stephenie Meyer is for such horrific writing.)

(Har, har. English major joke. If you like Twilight, no offense was meant.)

Anyway, I decided to "literarize" my Halloween by reading Frankenstein! I've heard so many great things about it, and I'm excited to read this classic piece of literature for the first time.

Also, even more fun, I have written two zombie haiku. Here they are, for your reading pleasure, so you can literarize your Halloween!

The invitation
said "Please bring finger foods." Guess
what the zombies brought. 

This one is dedicated to my fiance:

He likes me for my 
Brains, not my body. I knew
he was a zombie!

Happy Halloween!

Don't Say it was a Dream

My steps were timid and hesitant as I walked across the junior college campus in the light rain. The campus was eerily quiet at night without the ordinary hustle and bustle of students. Repeatedly checking a slip of paper in my pocket, I searched the walls of buildings for numbers. Finally discovering the right building, I stole inside.

            I peered uncomfortably around the cheerfully lit hallways and checked my paper yet again, noting the room number for the thirtieth time. There it was, up the stairs. I opened the door and stared uncomfortably into the lecture room.

            Although I enjoyed creative writing and was even planning on being an English major, I had never attended a poetry reading. Even the words “poetry reading” conjured up images in my mind of unkempt flower children standing too close together, closing their eyes and swaying, ending the gathering with a group singing of “Kumbaya.” In contrast, about half the seats in the calm, brightly lit lecture room were filled with well-dressed students and intellectuals in sweaters, quietly murmuring to each other. I quickly chose a seat not too close to the front and pulled out my copy of Ilya Kaminsky’s Dancing in Odessa to review absentmindedly.

            I suppose I had expected deaf, Russian poet Ilya Kaminsky to resemble my imagined poetry-obsessed hippies; he surprised me with his short curly hair, baby face, rectangular glasses, and boyish grin. After graciously accepting the compliments made in his introduction, Ilya Kaminsky began to read.

            Startled, I resisted the urge to glance around at other members of the audience to gauge their reactions. Was everyone else hearing what I was hearing? The unintelligible, gibberish yelling? Although Kaminsky’s eyes were on the pages on his book, the alien sounds coming from his mouth were unrecognizable. I quickly flipped open my book to find the poem he was supposedly reading. With some difficulty, I waded through Kaminsky’s thick Russian accent and deaf pronunciation. As I listened and read, I discovered the words on the page.

            I truly discovered them at that moment. When I had read them before, I had heard in my mind the clear voice of an English professor, calmly and concisely pronouncing the words. I had not, nor could I have, imagined them being raggedly sung so hotly and richly in the way of Ilya Kaminsky. As I listened and read, I caught hold of one golden thread from Kaminsky’s life, and clasped a silver rope of my own.

The city trembled,

A ghost-ship setting sail.

At night, I woke to whisper: yes, we lived.

We lived, yes, don't say it was a dream.

            Flooding to my mind were a thousand memories; roller-skating down my street, singing in the shower, running the last few yards to the finish line, arriving in Sorrento at sunset, eating ice cream, tickling my baby nephew, crawling through mud caves, sobbing in my bedroom at night; a ghost-ship setting sail. The whisper resonated with me: yes, we lived. I lived! Yes! Don’t say it was a dream.

            And in me was awakened a sense of wonder at this world of poetry I had so long ignored. I never knew that words could do this. I never knew that one page of so few words could lift the blindness from my eyes so completely. I lived, yes. Don’t say it was a dream. 

Sonnet

Hearing Aids

Who knew that life could be so sharp and bright?
Tiny pins burst the bubble of quiet
as thick as cake icing. Now the searchlight
holds in its beam the truth that I edit:
the sounds, the beating drums, the fireworks.
This is life, apparently, so they tell
me, that's reality! The eel that jerks
away my cushion of peace, my soft shell
of comfort. But do I want to go back?
Will I watch while the world can hear
the silent prayer, the whisper and the crack
of jewelry sliding down the stairs? Revere
all that is lost, I will, I will. But I
might stay in all the peace I got here by.