This Is Not a Sonnet
- for Gretchen -
Line 1 I’m ending with something easy to rhyme.
In the second I’m approaching a choice -
Shakespearian vs. Petrarchan? Just in time,
I opt for the first, though with only “voice” and “Joyce”
at my instant disposal - the former
which I’m only now developing, the latter
who never wrote sonnets except as a dormer
with the Jesuits. It doesn’t matter,
as now in Line 9 I begin a new quatrain,
which must continue to fall metrically square
with the format and what it will contain
after so many lines, no extra shoes to spare
any loose and straggling feet. Although that sounds mean,
by the 14th line it must come out clean.
(Please note: This isn't a sonnet. Here’s Line 15.)
And Neither Is This (a Sonnet)
- (although it is also) for Gretchen -
I’ll begin once more with a word that can’t go wrong.
Now, by golly, I’ve got that choice again:
the Brit or the Italian (our Spenser’s pen
also claims, of this form of unmelodied song,
I should add ((his Faerie Queene is so long
that it’s rarely been finished by women or men,
though I certainly make the attempt now and then)),
ownership, though his claim is not that strong).
Voila! There’s the octave for you, though the grammar
begs a bard’s license with that parenthetical
within the parenthetical, cleaving
verb from object like an orthographic hammer.
“Awkward and aesthetically unethical!”
cries the sestet as it ends its weaving.
(A fifteenth line here just seems hypothetical...)