Category Archives: sonnets

Using form: Sonnet: Jenna Le, ‘Purses’

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When our Quiz Bowl team of eighteen-year-olds snagged
a berth in the finals, held in New York City,

my small-town Minnesotan brain cells dizzied—
at last I’d be some place that mattered. Swag

was my teammate Anne’s fixation: knockoff bags
peddled in Chinatown, affixed with glitzy

Kate Spade labels. Anne bought a sack of six,
then forgot it on the airport shuttle’s shag

seats; someone swiped it within minutes. Kate,
I learned a fact of womanhood that year:

even we knockoff girls, cheap, desperate
to look like someone else, to imitate

a finer woman, have our value; we’re
wanted, wanted, until we disappear.

*****

Jenna Le writes: “The anecdote narrated in the first ten lines of the poem poured out of me easily and naturally enough. It was an anecdote that had been knocking around inside my brain for many years, but it wasn’t until I sat down to write the poem that the incident’s metaphorical meaning — that is, the epiphany contained in the poem’s last four lines — seemed to crystallize in the air in front of my eyes — and, to me, made the whole poem worthwhile. Honestly, until I sat down to write the poem, it had never even occurred to me that such a slight-seeming anecdote might have any metaphorical meaning at all. I sat down to write the poem more or less on a lark, and then the sonnet form just sort of took over and forced me to look deeper, to see more depth in my own material. This is one of the reasons I love the sonnet form.”

Jenna Le (jennalewriting.com) is the author of three full-length poetry collections, Six Rivers (NYQ Books, 2011), A History of the Cetacean American Diaspora (Indolent Books, 2017), and Manatee Lagoon (Acre Books, 2022), the last of which is the collection in which “Purses” appears and which can be purchased here: https://press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/distributed/M/bo185843950.html

Photo: “DIY Kate Spade Owl Purse” by Stacie Stacie Stacie is licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0.

Weekend read: Sonnet variation: Michael R. Burch, ‘Erin’

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All that’s left of Ireland is her hair—
bright carrot—and her milkmaid-pallid skin,
her brilliant air of cavalier despair,
her train of children—some conceived in sin,
the others to avoid it. For nowhere
is evidence of thought. Devout, pale, thin,
gay, nonchalant, all radiance. So fair!

How can men look upon her and not spin
like wobbly buoys churned by her skirt’s brisk air?
They buy. They grope to pat her nyloned shin,
to share her elevated, pale Despair …
to find at last two spirits ease no one’s.

All that’s left of Ireland is the Care,
her impish grin, green eyes like leprechauns’.

*****

Michael R. Burch writes: “My poem is set in the present and really has nothing to do with poverty. All that’s left of Ireland of yore is the young mother’s red hair, fair skin, a tendency toward melancholy (“despair), and her train of children. She’s a practicing Catholic except for a few affairs. Otherwise she’s a modern woman, drinking and flirting in a pub. I was trying to capture a bit of Ireland in a young mother, very loosely inspired by one of my Irish cousins who was a bit of a “wild child” in her youth.”

(Editor’s aside: My bad for thinking that “All that’s left” implied poverty, which was not in Michael R. Burch’s mind at all. True, Ireland goes through enormous swings of fortune, but the Ireland of even some years ago no longer matches the fabulously rich Ireland of today – the people are 50% richer than Americans or Norwegians…

2024 top GDP.png

… putting the UAE and Switzerland in the shade as well.)

Michael R. Burch’s poems have been published by hundreds of literary journals, taught in high schools and colleges, translated into 22 languages, incorporated into three plays and four operas, and set to music, from swamp blues to classical, 61 times by 32 composers. He is also the founder and editor-in-chief of The HyperTexts.

Photo: “Irish Fire at the Barn” by Trey Ratcliff is licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 2.0.

Sonnet: RHL, ‘Walls of Work’

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With walls of work that never wear away
my house is halfway hilled above a plain;
ghosts of unwritten books moan and complain;
I step out on to scree, sloping and grey.
I’ve tried for thirty years to build up high,
raising five kids free of smog, vice and town;
the treacherous slope of scree slips, I fall down,
am shown – kids grown and gone – more work’s a lie.

Now I’m spreadeagled on the eager shale,
not daring move, gripping at slipping fears
of sliding down to sneered-at country vale
where poor folk pick, don’t buy, fresh fruit from trees
and I could go, unknown, to known warm seas,
run barefoot on the beach of my ideas.

*****

First published in The Road Not Taken – The Journal of Formal Poetry in Summer 2016 (but written a decade before that); thanks, Dr. Kathryn Jacobs!

“While everybody on the beach is relaxing, this chap runs by like he stole running.” by Gerald Lau is licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 2.0.

Sonnet: Matthew Buckley Smith, ‘Youth’

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I miss believing that I’ll never die,
Or is it that there won’t be a tomorrow?
Both lines work out about the same: deny
The day you’ll have to pay back what you borrow.
It used to be I never went to bed
A second night with any girl I found.
No breakfast in those days–a smoke instead,
Then out the door before she came around.
Last night I passed a toppled garbage bin,
Its liner sagging with a rat’s remains.
He sank a little when I squinted in
And seemed embarrassed by his greedy pains.
And so much like a man, the way he sat
Still in his death, and so much like a rat.

*****

Matthew Buckley Smith writes: “I wrote most of Dirge” (his first book of verse, winner of the 2011 Able Muse Book Award. – Ed.) “in a summer. I was wading through a bad depression, and having written almost nothing but free verse to that point, I set myself the challenge of writing one sonnet a day for the rest of the summer. ‘Youth’ is a survivor of that experiment, written while walking late at night through the campus of Johns Hopkins on the way to the apartment of the woman who is now my wife.”

Matthew Buckley Smith is the author of Midlife (Measure, 2024) and Dirge for an Imaginary World (Able Muse, 2012). He hosts the poetry podcast SLEERICKETS and serves as Poetry Editor of Literary Matters.
https://www.matthewbuckleysmith.com/

Photo: “rats” by Lance McCord is licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 2.0.

Sonnet: Janice D. Soderling, ‘September Morning’

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Across a sun-lit pane, deft, unconcerned,
a spider struts the steps of an old dance,
a set design, in no part happenstance:
and I again to sun and rune returned.
Stumbling along, half blind, half deaf, half-learned,
in yet a day of quarrel and circumstance,
I turn from cluttered web to view askance
night’s daughter, she who never can be turned.

Sleek spider dame with one plan, to consume,
to suck the juice from each unwary fly,
with no grand need to query or presume
if there was meaning in your quarry’s sigh.
Here, in the corner of my fog-filled room,
Atropos grins, her scissors lifted high.

*****

Janice D. Soderling writes: “I don’t write much these days, preferring to use the shortening days to read. But I woke up this morning with the last two lines in my head, and knowing it was an ending to a sonnet, I proceeded to write the rest. Perhaps it asks too much of the reader. Perhaps it is a pretentious piece, of interest only to me. Never mind, I shall keep it, having poured three hours into it.”

Janice D. Soderling has published poems, fiction and translations in hundreds of print and online journals and anthologies over the years. Her most recent poetry collection is ‘Rooms and Closets‘ available at all online bookshops.

Photo: “Spider In Window” by trekkie313 is licensed under CC BY 2.0.

Sonnet: ‘Maz’ Griffiths, ‘The Bateleur’

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She was returning to the gauntlet when
some dolt yee-hawed a horn. She slewed left, fetched
off course, alarmed, towards the misty fen.
I heard the sharp cries of the crowd, and stretched
my ungloved wrist out wide. She landed there
as softly as a stork re-sits its nest.
She gazed at me and I absorbed her stare.
She preened her wind-combed quills, then came to rest
sphinx-still, her eyes a blaze of feral gold.
The handler bustled up to break the charm.
He mentioned luck, unlocked her talon-hold,
and claimed the eagle from my unscathed arm.
Between her wingbeats, Nature spurned the rule
that beauty shows no mercy to a fool.

*****

Margaret Ann Griffiths, aka Maz, aka Grasshopper, was a British poet known almost exclusively for her online work. She had been active on Eratosphere, and when she died in 2009 ‘The Bateleur’ was a frequently mentioned poem by other contributors remembering her. In his Preface and Personal Recollection to her posthumous collection ‘Grasshopper‘ (Arrowhead Press and Able Muse Press), editor Alan Wickes writes: “There is much in the poem that typifies Margaret Griffiths’ art. The subject matter seems both ancient and modern simultaneously. The sonnet itself is wonderfully organised, metre, form and meaning honed into a rich amalgam. Most of all the poem is beautifuly phrased. Maybe it seems a bit far-fetched to suggest the way the startled eagle settles upon the poet’s ungloved wrist is a metaphor for the power of art over nature, nevertheless there is something mythic about the bird’s return. It is a magical piece in the best sense of that over-used word.”

“Bateleur (eagle), Terathopius ecaudatus at Kruger National Park” by Derek Keats is licensed under CC BY 2.0.

Sonnet: RHL, ‘Zombies and Wolves’

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Women I’ve failed or wronged or left behind
approach my thoughts like zombies for the kill;
I’ve literary walled defences – still
given the chance, they’ll eat my brains, my mind.

Through forest, orchard, farmyard in decay,
a shadow of a wolf slips greyly in,
my thoughts of death, grim, wasted, ill, rib-thin,
tracking my weak resolve, hungry to slay.

Mountaintops blown apart, forests clear-cut,
where’s there to hide? Nature doesn’t exist;
her landscapes crushed in patriarchal fist.
This former farmland hides my ruined hut.

Impotent, I still write, thus giving birth
to future wolves and zombies of the earth.

*****

This sonnet was originally published in Candelabrum (a twice-yearly print magazine of formal verse that ran bravely from 1970 to 2010… now sadly defunct, eaten by wolves or zombies or whatever snacks on print poetry magazines), and republished in Bewildering Stories #1039, a decades-old online magazine of primarily speculative fiction.

Photo: “Full ‘Wolf’ Moon – January 22, 2008” by Rick Leche is licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 2.0.

Sonnet: Sue Parman, ‘Kaizen: How to Build a Poem’

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Ignore your hand and focus on the pen,
which writes without your knowledge of the whole.
Do not insert the personal. Avoid translation.
The changes made are small and gradual.

Commas herd their letters toward a distant
goal of rhymes and metaphors but do not
specify a conscious “I” or soul,
a bold new vision or a school of thought.

Write like a dancer making small mistakes.
What is wrong to you fulfills your friend’s desire.
Cuttings and shit are what it takes
to grow a garden from a funeral pyre.

A poet will die unless she learns to laugh.
Do not hit DELETE. Save everything as DRAFT.

*****

Sue Parman writes: “When I was four years old, my father asked me, ‘When is a door not a door?’ His answer, ‘when it’s ajar,’ infuriated and then intrigued me. I began to keep a journal in which I wrote down sentences such as, ‘If the Devil is evil, God is odd.’ Puns were my intro-duction to poetry, a form of verbal play that taught me that words, rather than being a lifeline to truth, could be slippery and contain many truths at the same time. One of my favorite poets is Kay Ryan, the queen of poetic puns (see her ‘Bestiary’). As an anthropologist, I consider them a vital contributor to mental health, since they satisfy the needs of large-brained mammals to avoid epilepsy by indulging in surprise.”

Sue Parman is an anthropologist and award-winning essayist, short story writer, poet, and playwright. She is the author of two poetry books, “The Thin Monster House” and “Carnivorous Gaze,” and her poems have been published in a variety of journals and anthologies, including the above poem in Rattle. She writes in a number of other genres as well, including anthropological travel memoirs and mysteries. Her most recent publications include a short story, “Gannets and Ghouls,” which appeared in the September/October 2024 issues of Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine; and a nonfiction essay, “You Can’t Get There from Here,” that was awarded the Travelers’ Tales Grand Prize for Best Travel Story of 2024. After teaching anthropology in California for thirty-five years, she moved to Oregon in search of water, and travels frequently in hopes of getting lost. https://www.sueparman.com

Photo: “PDCA-Cycle-Kaizen” by Tagimaguitar is licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0.

Shamik Banerjee, ‘Masjid Road’

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Fishmongers’ cleaver knives don’t rest at all;
Their heavy thuds outdo the termless spiels
Of colporteurs dispensing large and small
Versions of holy books. On mud-sunk wheels,
Waxed apples, sapodillas, apricots
Effuse their fragrance, trapping passersby
Who check the rates, then stand submerged in thoughts—
Some fill their punnets, some leave with a sigh.
Outside the mosque, blind footpath dwellers wait
To hear the clinking sound—the sound of true
Relief—while dogs, flopped by the butcher’s gate,
Get jumpy when he throws a hunk or two.
Loudspeakers, placed on high, say “call to prayer”
And all work halts; there’s silence in the air.

*****

Shamik Banerjee writes: “Crammed with saree shops, bakeries, small abattoirs, vegetable vendors, holy book distributors, toy stores, and sundry other things, Masjid Road is one of the very few tireless market places in Guwahati, my hometown. As a frequent visitor to this place of never-ending commotion and bustle, I have always been fascinated by these sellers’ devotion to their work. Though rest is a distant guest here, all activities come to a standstill right when the nearby mosque sends out the call-to-prayer through towering loud speakers.”

Shamik Banerjee is a poet from Assam, India, where he resides with his parents. His poems have been published by Sparks of Calliope, The Hypertexts, Snakeskin, Ink Sweat & Tears, Autumn Sky Daily, Ekstasis, among others. (‘Masjid Road’ was first published by Bellwether Review.) He secured second position in the Southern Shakespeare Company Sonnet Contest, 2024.

Photo: “Indian Shops” by Scalino is licensed under CC BY-NC 2.0.

Sonnet: Melissa Balmain, ‘Memo to Self, in Bed’

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Don’t think, while you are holding him, of deadlines,
of monster Visa bills you haven’t paid,
of NPR reports on gangs and breadlines
and kooks with nukes available for trade.

Don’t think of whom you owe a three-course dinner,
of editors you wish you had impressed,
of whether you should be two sizes thinner
and twice as nice to look at when undressed.

Above all, never think of how time’s racing
toward commonplaces you’re afraid to name–
white halls, bleak calls, the foregone mortal ending;

how you or he (which one?) will soon be facing
long nights where solitaire’s the only game.
Don’t think: just wink at him and keep pretending.

*****

From Walking in on People © Melissa Balmain, 2014. Used by permission of Able Muse Press.

Melissa Balmain writes: “Like many formalist poets, I miss the Nemerov Sonnet Award (for which this poem was a finalist). The Nemerov spurred many of us to write more sonnets, and gave us terrific ones to read when the winners and finalists appeared in The Formalist and, later, Measure. Other contests have emerged to fill the post-Nemerov void, including the wonderful Kim Bridgford Memorial Sonnet Contest, sponsored by Poetry by the Sea. Still, I’d love to see the Nemerov come back somehow–the more good sonnets, the merrier.”

Editor’s comment: In addition to the sonnet’s expected rhymes at the end of each line, Melissa Balmain has thrown in a bonus internal rhyme at the beginning of the last line of each quatrain and tercet. It is quietly done, but adds lightness to a poem that is both light and dark in subject matter.

Melissa Balmain’s third poetry collection, Satan Talks to His Therapist, is available from Paul Dry Books (and from all the usual retail empires). Balmain is the editor-in-chief of Light, America’s longest-running journal of light verse, and has been a member of the University of Rochester’s English Department since 2010.

Photo: “New Bedding!” by Andrew Love is licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 2.0.