Category Archives: sonnets

Sonnet: George Witte, ‘Progress’

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From sidewalk and cracked windowpane,
demolished wall, foundation, beam,
cement, charred rebar, median,
bare highway undercut by stream,

through paver, panel, gutter, tile,
amenities exposed to snow
corroding granite, marble, steel,
oak porch and bluestone patio,

begot by fecund apertures
into an unrecorded day
green filaments emerge, gold furze,
no tool or fingertip or spray

deployed for terminal reverse—
dominion, put another way.

*****

George Witte writes: “Progress was inspired by Samuel Miller McDonald’s book of the same name, which is a history of “progress” as defined by humanity, where extraction and exploitation of resources has brought the planet to a precipice. I confess to a perhaps morbid attraction to brief poems about end times, with Frost’s Fire and Ice being the exemplar, and Byron’s Darkness being a vision.”

‘Progress’ was first published in The Sonneteer.

George Witte’s four books of poems are An Abundance of Caution (Unbound Edition Press, 2023), Does She Have a Name?, Deniability, and The Apparitioners. New poems are published or forthcoming in Dappled Things, Nimrod, Poems for Persons of Interest, and Revel.
Links: unboundedition.com/authors/george-witte
georgewittepoet.com/poems-online-george-witte

“weeds in sidewalk cracks” by nicknormal is licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 2.0.

Sonnet variation: Sally Thomas, ‘Eventide’

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The sea unfolds itself onto the sand
Again, again. It drags its yellow hem
Across our feet and back. You hold my hand

And sing to me, the first bar of a hymn:
Abide with me. The phrase, unfinished, slides
Away into the dusk. The world’s wet rim

Keeps wrinkling on the sky. The eventide’s
Upon us now, the turning of the day,
The long slow ebb as everything subsides

Into the dark. The sea in disarray
Repeats itself. There’s nothing more to see.
The waves rush thinly in, then pull away

As, louder now, you sing, Abide with me,
Above the slow unfolding of the sea.

*****

Sally Thomas writes: “Sometime in the spring, Ken Gordon of The Sonneteer mentioned to me that he’d love for me to send him something, and I said that I didn’t have anything to send. I’d just published a big sonnet sequence that I had been writing over a number of years, but I wasn’t writing sonnets currently. Well, said Ken, I’ll wait. And because he was waiting, I thought I might as well make a new stab at something. I like terza rima and the various ways you can play with tying it off, and I had Frost’s “Acquainted with the Night” at the forefront of my mind, because I’d had my spring workshop students read it. This poem fairly quickly fell into terza rima and, once it had done that, it wrote itself.”

‘Eventide’ was first published in The Sonneteer

Sally Thomas is the author of two books of poetry, Motherland and Among the Living, both published by Able Muse Press, as well as an anthology, Christian Poetry in America Since 1940, a novel, and a collection of short stories. She is Visiting Professor of Poetry in the low-residency MFA program at the University of St. Thomas, Houston, and a regular contributor to the Substack newsletter Poems Ancient and Modern. 

“#Sunset at the #laxmanpurbeach #neil #island #andaman . Thanks a lot to the #lovely #couple . #silhoutte #beach #sea #dusk #soi #streetsofindia #_mobilography_ #mypixeldiary #photographers_of_india #soi #indiaclicks #igramming_india” by KasoKaishyap is licensed under CC BY-NC 2.0.

Sonnet: Paul Burgess, ‘Sea Turtles’

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The cruelest welcome party greets their birth.
Instead of feeding at a mother’s teat,
they’re stretched upon a table for the mirth
of birds and crabs that hunger for their meat.
No time for toddling, sprinting from the first,
the lucky reach a second party where
their thinning band of comrades is immersed
in pools of creatures glad to eat them rare.

The world’s so honest with them from the start —
no lullabies, no fairy tales believed,
no revelation of the brutal part,
no sudden grief at having been deceived.
They learn so young of running for one’s life
to earn the chance to swim in seas of strife.

*****

Paul Burgess writes: “Even though I’ve spent much of my adult life far from the ocean, my hometown is Hilton Head Island, which is a barrier island off the southern part of the U.S.’s East Coast. There are many provisions there to protect the loggerhead sea turtle nesting sites and to avoid disturbing the hatchlings scrambling to get to the ocean. However, even when humans refrain from making things worse, the reality of what the turtles face from the second they hatch is one of the bleakest existential scenes nature has ever produced. The image and its symbolic potential suddenly hit me one day out of the blue, and I had to write this poem.”

‘Sea Turtles’ was originally published in Pulsebeat Poetry Journal.

Paul Burgess is the sole proprietor of a business in Lexington, Kentucky that offers ESL classes in addition to English, Japanese, and Spanish-language translation and interpretation services. He has recently contributed work to The Road Not Taken, Blue Unicorn, Light, The Orchards, Pulsebeat, Snakeskin, Lighten Up Online, and several other publications. https://paulburgesswritingandlanguage.blog/

“seagull eating baby turtle” by maveric2003 is licensed under CC BY 2.0.

Sonnets: David M. Katz, ‘Two Sonnets for Patrick Stewart, who read Shakespeare online during Covid’

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I.
You slow it down and speak the speech from home
As if admitting no impediments,
No infectious thoughts into your room,
No intrusions, anxious sentiments,
Just cadences of comfort from your couch.
As close as that. Yet you are far enough
To thwart contamination borne of touch,
Random droplets in the air, a cough.
Every day I come to sit with you
To put this ghastly time and place aside,
Inject your native lightness here anew
Into my thoughts of those who may have died,
Or may be dying, or contaminate
Those in the street who can’t self-isolate.
II.
Summoning the bard into your lungs
Might be your day’s initial antidote
Against the plague. Then, climbing up the rungs
To the apex of the ague in the throat
Of your talent, holding his lines there
As if to muster powder for a shot
At wiping out the virus with a prayer
Or spell enacted in a sacred spot,
You step into the spirit of the thing.
You’ve got us where you want, and we’ve got you,
Artful doctor. You begin to sing.
We feel as if we just might make it through.
We step into your seance every day.
You gesture, and the plague has gone away.

*****

David M. Katz writes: “These two poems are part of “These Masks,” a “diary” of 20 Shakespearean sonnets I wrote from March to May 2020, during the very start of the pandemic. When I began, I resolved to read one of Shakespeare’s sonnets a day, along with Helen Vendler’s commentary on it in her book, The Art of Shakespeare’s Sonnets, and then write a sonnet responding to what was happening in the world. Before I wrote the sonnets published here (#s 4 and 5 in the sequence) I found that the great actor Patrick Stewart had begun reading a Shakespeare sonnet a day online from his home. I had previously found Stewart’s 1995 performance in the role of Prospero in The Tempest in New York’s Central Park an inspiration to me poetically and, now, there he was, a bright light during the dark days of the plague, reading to us intimately, every day. The sonnets are in praise of that great joy.”

The ‘Sonnets for Patrick Stewart’ were first published in the Sonnet Scroll of The Poetry Porch.

David M. Katz is the author of five books of poetry—The Biographer, In Praise of Manhattan, Stanzas on Oz, and Claims of Home, all published by Dos Madres Press, and The Warrior in the Forest (House of Keys). Poems of his have appeared in Able Muse, Poetry, The Paris Review, The Hudson Review, and THINK. He is a co-host of the Morningside Poetry Series in Manhattan and posts frequently on his website, The David M. Katz Poetry Blog. He recently starred in Gully’s Paradise, a feature-length film by Shalom Gorewitz.

Photo: ‘Patrick Stewart Performs the Complete Sonnets of William Shakespeare’ is an unabridged audio book from Simon & Schuster.

Sonnet variant: Michael R. Burch, ‘Once’

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for Beth

Once when her kisses were fire incarnate
and left in their imprint bright lipstick, and flame,
when her breath rose and fell over smoldering dunes,
leaving me listlessly sighing her name …

Once when her breasts were as pale, as beguiling,
as wan rivers of sand shedding heat like a mist,
when her words would at times softly, mildly rebuke me
all the while as her lips did more wildly insist …

Once when the thought of her echoed and whispered
through vast wastelands of need like a Bedouin chant,
I ached for the touch of her lips with such longing
that I vowed all my former vows to recant …

Once, only once, something bloomed, of a desiccate seed—
this implausible blossom her wild rains of kisses decreed.

*****

Michael R. Burch writes: “Once” was submitted to The Lyric in 1999, and elicited these comments from editor Jean Mellichamp Milliken: “. . . I actually loved “Once” (better than ‘Twice,’ even), but you need a resolution—it leaves the reader hanging . . . please, please finish it. It’s such a wonderful, fiery, lyrical piece!”
The original poem was intended to leave the reader hanging. There was no resolution at the time it was written. The challenge of writing an ending couplet was intriguing, however, and “Once” was accepted (in its revised form with an ending couplet) and appeared in The Lyric along with “At Once,” “Twice” and “The Leveler.”

Michael R. Burch’s poems have been published by hundreds of literary journals, taught in high schools and colleges, translated into 23 languages, incorporated into three plays and four operas, and set to music, from swamp blues to classical, 86 times by composers.

“Sand Dunes, Socotra Is” by Rod Waddington is licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0.

Sonnet: Richard Fleming, ‘The Attic’

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The attic, once unreachable, taboo
in childhood, is a temple laid to waste.
I climb the ladder, face the overdue
clear-out of debris with a mild distaste.
A View-Master, kaleidoscope, a kite,
a rocking-horse in much need of repair,
a reel-to-reel recorder I’d recite
poems into as though speaking them ‘on air’.
I dust them off, then pack them in a case
and glimpse in a chipped mirror on a shelf,
the look of an intruder on his face,
a fellow who can only be myself,
the last one left, unsportingly miscast
as tomb-raider, despoiler of the past.

*****

‘The Attic’ was first published in a set of ten semi-autobiographical poems in The High Window, where Richard Fleming was the Featured Poet.

Richard Fleming is an Irish-born poet and humorist based in Guernsey, a Channel Island between Britain and France. Widely regarded as one of the island’s foremost literary voices, his versatile work blends lyricism, sharp wit, emotional depth, and a strong sense of place. Drawing from his Northern Irish roots and adopted home, his poetry and prose explore love, loss, nostalgia, identity, and modern life. Collections include Strange Journey (2012), held in the National Poetry Library, and Stone Witness (Blue Ormer) featuring the BBC-commissioned title poem. His work can be found on
Facebook https://www.facebook.com richard.fleming.92102564/
or Bard at Bay www.redhandwriter.blogspot.com

“VIEW-MASTER” by Kim Hanwool is licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 2.0.

Sonnet: Melissa Balmain, ‘Solidarity. On a recent explosion of fireflies across the US’

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Even my ordinarily blank lawn
is flashing this July—no bottle rocket
or Catherine wheel could match the pleasant shock it
gives me each time a tiny lamp turns on
to help a bachelor find a blinding date.
The bugs can’t read, of course, about pollution
and other woes that might spell dissolution
for all their kind, but as they mate and mate
I like to think they somehow know what’s looming,
deep in their chitin—that their sudden blooming
is nature’s way of putting up a fight,
and that these living fireworks before us
can make us hear, and heed, a timely chorus:
When darkness threatens you, crank up your light.

*****

Melissa Balmain writes: “For some reason, I’ve written a lot of bug poems lately. And I’m starting to suspect this has given insects the wrong idea about me. Memo to the ants infesting my kitchen: if you think my plans for you involve writing an ode, think again.”

First published in The New Verse News

Melissa Balmain edits Light, North America’s longest-running journal of comic verse, and teaches writing at the University of Rochester.  Her poems and/or prose have appeared in Crab Orchard Review, Ecotone, The Hopkins Review, Literary Matters, McSweeney’s, The New Yorker, The New York Times, Nimrod, Poetry Daily, and Rattle. Her latest book of poetry is Satan Talks to His Therapist (Paul Dry Books). 

Photo: “Fireflies and Star Trails No. 3” by ikewinski is licensed under CC BY 2.0.

Sonnet: John Gallas, ‘Ascension Sonnet’

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you can’t unload the caravan for one lame donkey

It’s six a.m. We’re swarming up a drain.
Someone up the front knows what we’re doing.
Me and Tich are flying up the flueing.
Snap! My leg falls off. You can’t complain:
you can’t expect an army on the trail
of half a dog and sugar-sick to stop
and say Oh dear, Goodbye. I squirm and flop
along the gutter’s edge. A wizened snail
laced up in cobwebs grins across the slime.
I hear a million footsteps fading. Tich!
The sun smacks like a snare-drum. Life’s a bitch.
My head goes dry. I’m running out of Time.
I climb a twig to face the Ant Unknown.
We have to face our last few pricks alone.

*****

John Gallas writes: “Ascension: a slightly cruel Proverb to modern ears, but of course often the case as we all bustle forwards in life. The sad demise of this Ant is done in a cod-Existential drama, and tries to mix some black humour with the Final Stand (even with a leg missing). The also-once-left-behind snail a warning to us all. Who knows how Ants talk, but they are sociable, so …”

Ascension Sonnet is one of the 100 sonnets collected in The Coalville Divan (part of John Gallas’ ‘Star City’ from Carcanet), which use as their beginnings Persian Proverbs from the Wisdom of the East series by L.P. Elwell-Sutton.

John Gallas, Aotearoa/NZ poet, published mostly by Carcanet. Saxonship Poet (see www.saxonship.org), Fellow of the English Association, St Magnus Festival Orkney Poet, librettist, translator and biker. 2025 Midlands Writing Prize winner. Presently living in Markfield, Leicestershire. Website is www.johngallaspoetry.co.uk which has a featured Poem of the Month, complete book list, links and news.  

“Trail of Ants” by McLevn is licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0.

R.I.P. Chris O’Carroll, ‘Ballynagaul, County Waterford’

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A graybeard and a girl walk on this beach.
She’s his grandmother; she’s not really here.
He stoops for shells and pebbles. His hands reach
Across a family’s distances and years.
Of her eleven children, three are left —
His father and two aunts back in the States.
He pockets bits of Ireland, reverent theft
Of relics for her blood to venerate.
She lost two brothers here, both fishermen
Who labored daily on this chill, gray sea
That one day failed to bring them home again.
That’s when her childhood ended. That’s when she
Booked passage for her children’s native land.
She’s not here; she can’t hold her grandson’s hand.

*****

Chris O’Carroll was largely known as a poet for his light verse, but even a volume with the title ‘The Joke’s On Me‘ would contain more reflective work such as this sonnet. As an expatriate child of expats, I enjoy his appreciation of the back and forth across the seas, a family aware of its roots and far away. I included this poem in the Potcake Chapbook ‘Families and Other Fiascoes‘.

Chris passed away earlier this month. Christopher O’Carroll Obituary (1951 – 2026) – Pelham, MA – Daily Hampshire Gazette. The world of light poetry will retain his glow.

“Annestown Beach, County Waterford” by mwmosser is licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 2.0.

Sonnet variation: Daniel Kemper, ‘No Matter What, You’ve Got To Strut’

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A courtly, grand, tradition; sure, but men
are men, and poets, poets; so, of course
behind their art is merry mischief, force
of guile, if not just force; but having then
been properly improper once again
with risqué sonnets, sometimes merely coarse
(if richly rhymed), how long must we endorse
these minuets? Will someone shout, A-men!?
 
Step it up and shake a foot, a
hand, a bodice: make it syncopated–
let it, having been elaborated,
settle for a minute.
Strike a pose. Then strut. And put a
little music in it.

*****

Daniel Kemper writes: “No Matter What, You’ve Got To Strut” –Yes, I’m quoting Buddy Love from Eddie Murphie’s version of The Nutty Professor! This, as you can tell from all the meta-textual wordplay (using a rime riche and then naming it [richly rhymed, and on and on]) was a lot of fun to write, but there’s a serious aspect to it as well. I’ve gone hog wild exploring sonnets and meters. This could be considered one of the culminating branches of that.

Sonnets in non-iambic meters:                            trochaic, anapestic, dactylic                                          {sonnet “space” increased by x4}

Sonnets that used more than one meter:

              Four possible meters to mix                                                                                                          {sonnet “space” increased by x64!}

Rule: One meter: one line, no changing within a line, only between them.

Most definitions of sonnets assumed iambic meter and so did not rule out the other meters. Many also implied only one meter throughout, but so long as it’s metrically consistent, it should be considered. Maybe there’s less wiggle room here, but I think I can lawyer it anyway.

Oooh, but then, in tandem with my poetic symphony inventions, I my thoughts ran down two paths at once. Other variations that I could “legally” do and, out of all the possible sonnet types, why are only a few around?

Other variations:

              Vary the line lengths: There are precedents. Shakespeare, #145 (tetrameter); Hopkins, Curtal sonnet (L11 is a half-length line), Spenserian Stanza (not a sonnet) last line is hexameter.

              Vary the rhyme schemes.

                             In multi-sonnet pieces, what effects can be achieved by moving the rhymed lines around a bit?

                            Why some combinations of rhymes and not others (bridge to second path).

So I felt leeway to go hog wild with variations—however, I was bound and determined to be “legal.” (I do not care for the lack of rigor in the thinking that allows “free verse sonnets” and “blank sonnets.”) Since I was starting with tradition, well, I started with tradition… That’s for the first half of [Strut].

I got a coder to help me run some common permutations for 14 lines. If 1.) they must all rhyme and 2.) no more than two consecutive rhymes and 3.) no rhyme is separated by more than two intervening lines, then there are 165,995 possible combinations for a sonnet. Why then do we have about a dozen and a half? Sure people “invent” new ones all the time, but those one-offs die pretty fast.

I arrived at two answers. One is historical. There are only so many poets writing formal poetry over only so many years—and poets actually tend to be conservative in bringing new forms to the canon.  The other is musical. There’s huge stuff here. Too much for this email. Suffice to say, there has to be a melodic contour, a musicality, a beat, a riff, a tension and release—NOT arbitrarily ordered rhymes. How does one define that “musicality”? It’s tough; what differentiates a melody from a random string of tones?

Back to [Strut]. Now you can see how the second half formed up in my mind and why the proliferation of musical terminology, also meta-textual. It is syncopated where it calls for syncopation. The meter before the volta and after are different. The rhyme pattern, btw, remains one of the traditional variations of the Petrarchan Sonnet.

As you look closer, you’ll notice that it’s not irregular; it’s highly structured. Key is that rhyming lines are the same length as each other, though different from others. That keeps the music in it—a kind of predictability despite change, an added degree of recognition. This is the future of the sonnet, the 21st century sonnet, IMO.”

*****

‘No Matter What, You’ve Got To Strut’ was first published in Rat’s Ass Review.

Daniel Kemper, a former tournament-winning wrestler, black belt in traditional Shotokan karate, and infantryman has earned a BA in English, an MCSE (Systems Engineering), an MBA, and an MA in English and had works accepted for publication at more than a dozen magazines, including a pushcart nomination. He’s been an invited presenter at PAMLA 2024 and presided over the Poetics Panel in 2025 and has been the feature poet at several Sacramento venues.

“2014 07 05 Street Performer Strikes a Pose” by Jerome Olivier is licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 2.0.