A billboard seen in Toronto read Sonnet Insurance.

Dear Sonnet staff: I’m eager for your plan!
I’ll want an underwriter old-school-based,
Petrarchan or like Larkin in his taste:
he’ll speak my terms. I’ll benefit from your man
adjusting rhymes, making meter strict,
assuming the risk of an errant anapest.
Does your firm ensure I’ll stand time’s test?
Do you pull strings to have each effort picked
by a premier publication? One quick draft
in the condition of a pre-existing sonnet,
and the English-speaking world might dote upon it.
But truth be told, my first attempts aren’t craft.
Sonnet Insurance, kindly file this letter;
insure me later, when it’s written better.

*****

Barbara Lydecker Crane write: “I am a shameless pun lover; seeing this billboard, though, certainly begged for some.  “My Letter to Sonnet Insurance” was published a few years back in Light.“

In 2024 Barbara Lydecker Crane won the Kim Bridgford Memorial Sonnet Crown Contest and First Prize in the Helen Schaible Contest, modern sonnet category. She has twice been a finalist for the Rattle Poetry Prize. Able Muse recently published her fourth collection, You Will Remember Me. She enjoys making and looking at art, travel, and her family, which includes four fast-growing grandchildren and one near-perfect husband: he does not read poetry.