Tag Archives: sonnet

Ekphrastic sonnet: RHL, ‘Ghosts of Dead Parents’

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Her ashes spread on Skirrid that she loved;
and his bones buried by the Harbour bay…
Why choose views for the dead? Once in earth shoved,
dirt in the dark is all they’d see, not day,
even if they lived. And if cremated, well…
So is it for our own guilt’s absolution?
Or status, that their graves our standing tell?
Or rites for social change’s resolution?
Those who were always here are here no more –
Their alwaysness runs out when they decease,
and life will now sound different from before,
like insect shrills not heard until they cease.
Dead ghosts sleep twittering in our heads’ domed caves,
waking to fill night skies from dreams and graves.

*****

This sonnet was published by The Wee Sparrow Poetry Press as a response to their ekphrastic challenge for the illustration, a painting by Žofia Katriňáková. It was written for my parents who, although they died decades ago, are still a background to my thoughts. My father is buried by the bay of Governor’s Harbour, my mother’s ashes were scattered on Skirrid Fawr, the Welsh mountain she loved and lived within sight of in Abergavenny. And I have another short poem for them, published in the Amsterdam Quarterly:

In the night’s jam jar of my memory
my long-dead parents live as fireflies.
My thoughts of them worn by time’s emery,
their faint light still suggests where my path lies.

Is it reasonable to hope to be a firefly for your children and grandchildren?

Sonnet: Marcus Bales, ‘Walking in the Rain’

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Today when we went walking it was raining,
Not so hard to keep us from it — still
Distinctly wet. We thought about abstaining,
But March this year has lost its normal chill,
So on we went. She did her bombs away,
I bagged, and she looked up, with fur-soaked skin,
And shook some water off, as if to say,
Open up the door let’s go back in.
Well you’re the one who brought us out this far
I said as if I thought she had a plan.
She body-languaged Well, since here we are,
We’ll sniff back slow and get wet as we can.
And now we’re on the rug here, somewhat dryer,
Breakfasted, and dozing by the fire.

*****

Marcus Bales writes: “If ever a poem cried out for explication, this poem is that poem. Its hidden meanings and elusive innuendos chase each others’ tails with such sly allusions that even the b in subtle seems to thrust itself forward in comparison.

“The depths this poem sounds, the heights beyond which it reaches, evinces nothing of the feline grace other poets aim for and achieve. Nothing here looks at the reader and refuses to respond to the call for extra petties. This is a poem that trots wetly over and rubs eagerly against knees, and receives the towelling-off and the “Who’s a wet one, eh, who’s a wet one, today?” with effervescent attempts to put its muddy feet on the reader’s shirt. This poem has but one thing to say, and it says it by leaning in for another pat on the head, and then swiftly shaking that fine final spray of mist into the reader’s face before they can back quickly enough away.

“It is the doggily doggish dogness of the thing that dogs the dogging dog of this poem, and makes it so, well, dogilicious.

“Cry havoc, and let slip the hounds of love.”

*****

Not much is known about Marcus Bales except that he lives and works in Cleveland, Ohio, and that his work has not been published in Poetry or The New Yorker. However his ‘51 Poems‘ is available from Amazon. He has been published in several of the Potcake Chapbooks (‘Form in Formless Times’).

“Walking in the Rain” by h.koppdelaney is licensed under CC BY-ND 2.0.

Using form: Sonnet: Josh Geffin, ‘A Guide to Renting in London’

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So, when it says delightful take it as
a word for small. Make sure to steer away
from cosy – that just means it likely has
no place to put your things or even pray.

A huge and gorgeous room is medium size
while well-maintained denotes a certain lack
of charm and won’t be winning Best Home prize.
A friendly house is code for watch your back.

And please avoid affordable single room –
you’ll have to fall or jump from door to bed
(no space to walk around the side). Assume
your rent will cost no less than half your bread.

For something nice you’ll need a partner to live with.
That or move to Hull – or Aberystwyth.

*****

Josh Geffin writes: “A Guide to Renting in London was inspired by my own experience living in London and my frustration at trying to find reasonable rental accommodation. It was also a response to a writing exercise that was part of a video course by Billy Collins on masterclass.com. The writing exercise was to write a strictly rhyming sonnet with a strong metre! I enjoy working with fixed forms, and with humour.”

Josh Geffin is a folk musician and writer from Dorset, based in London. He works as a guitar teacher, composer and performer and his music has appeared on Netflix, BBC, and Sky. Josh’s often playful poems explore themes of mindfulness, memory and belonging. His poems have been published in The Rialto, Acumen (where this poem was first published), Allegro and The Friday Poem. ‘Shronedarragh, Co. Kerry’ won second prize in the Jack Clemo Poetry Competition 2023. He has also been commissioned to write poetry for Montcalm Hotels.
Follow or buy his music at his Bandcamp page: https://joshgeffin.bandcamp.com/music
Contact: joshgeffin@gmail.com
Instagram: @joshgeffin

“Tiny Room” by Peter Kaminski is licensed under CC BY 2.0.

Louise Walker, ‘Octave/Sestet’

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With each deep breath, the flute will utter prayer,
its voice vibrating with the purest note
of G in the first octave. Then you can float
up to the next because you know it’s there.
The painter knows how to balance sea and air,
concealing rules that have been learned by rote;
the same that give the poet secret hope
that all will be in order, nothing spare.

But look – the sunflower makes a perfect turn
with each new seed; at heart it knows the code
which gives each one sufficient space to grow,
facing the light. It never had to learn
to ask the question Fibonacci posed
of eight and six, the golden ratio.

*****

Louise Walker writes: “After 35 years of teaching English to 11–18-year-olds, I retired to have more time for writing,but I also started flute lessons. Learning my first instrument is fascinating, exhilarating and frustrating by turns; the experience has found its way into my poetry in unexpected ways.
In ‘Octave/Sestet’ I’m exploring the idea that there is a beauty in the proportions of the natural world, which finds its way into painting, architecture, the musical scale and the sonnet. I love the idea that we respond to this beauty instinctively, without conscious recognition of the maths – not my strongest subject, by any means!
Don Paterson’s introduction to his anthology ‘101 Sonnets’ was the final push to get me started on this poem. I often write sonnets, sometimes unrhymed, sometimes with slant rhyme, because I find the division into eight and six really helpful in developing my ideas. But here, I was faithful to the rhyme scheme and iambic pentameters of the Petrarchan sonnet. Recently, I’ve been trying forms such as triolets and terza rima, inspired perhaps by A.E. Stallings who I saw read in London last Spring.”

Louise Walker’s poems have appeared in anthologies by the Sycamore Press and Emma Press, as well as journals such as South, Oxford Magazine, Acumen, and Prole. She was Highly Commended in the Frosted Fire Firsts Award in 2022; in 2023 she was long-listed by The Alchemy Spoon Pamphlet Competition and won 3rd prize in the Ironbridge Poetry Competition. Commissions include Bampton Classical Opera and Gill Wing Jewellery for their showcase ‘Poetry in Ocean’. She is working on her first collection; at its core is her journey onwards from the sudden death of her brother in his/her twenties.
Instagram @louise_walker_poetry; direct message if you would like one of the last few
copies of her pamphlet ‘An Ordinary Miracle’.
‘Octave/Sestet’ was first published in Acumen; you can read a couple more sonnets here:
https://foxglovejournal.wordpress.com/2023/02/14/longwood-louise-walker/
https://acumen-poetry.co.uk/louise-walker/
and a prize-winning psalm:
https://pandemonialists.co.uk/ironbridge-poetry-competition-2023/

Photo: “Sunflower” by auntiepauline is licensed under CC BY-NC 2.0.

Using form: Sonnet: David Stephenson, ‘Hold My Beer’

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One day a great idea just comes you,
like using some old stuff stored in your shed
for some pyrotechnic derring-do,
and you can’t get the thought out of your head,
and you’re excited but a little scared,
since carrying the stunt out would require
some tricky timing. You feel unprepared
and think of all the ways it could backfire…

And yet key elements are on the scene—
the tires and lumber, and most critically
a full two-gallon can of gasoline—
as if assembled there by destiny.
You know you won’t rest till this thing gets done.
Carpe diem. Light the fuse and run.

*****

David Stephenson writes: “On the background for the poem (just published in Rat’s Ass Review), I thought of the title first, as sometimes happens, and was trying to think up some verse that would go with it.  I have habitually written sonnets for years, but hadn’t written one in a while when I was working on this, and I thought it had potential for a good sonnet, since most things do.  One thing I like about the form, in addition to the technical challenge, is its endless flexibility.   Some of the details comes from bonfire videos that I’ve seen on Youtube, in which somebody pours a couple of gallons of gas on a woodpile and lights a match, resulting in an explosion.  I find these videos fascinating and always wonder what they were thinking.  I was also thinking of one of my favorite quotes, from the Kurt Vonnegut novel Galápagos:
“That, in my opinion, was the most diabolical aspect of those old-time big brains: They would tell their owners, in effect, ‘Here is a crazy thing we could actually do, probably, but we would never do it, of course. It’s just fun to think about.’ And then, as though in trances, the people would really do it…”

David Stephenson is a retired engineer.  He writes: “I worked in the automotive business and have lived in Detroit for many years, although I am originally from the same part of rural Illinois as Carl Sandburg, my favorite poet.  I was a technical expert in machining operations, first at General Motors and later at Ford.  My mother was a school teacher and my father was a skilled craftsman who worked in various factories for John Deere, mostly the big ones along the Mississippi River in Moline.  I write poetry out of a desire to make music; if I could play an instrument and was more presentable, I would have formed a band instead.  I have two collections out, Rhythm and Blues, which won the 2007 Richard Wilbur Award, and Wall of Sound, which was published by Kelsay Books in 2022.  Both are available on Amazon.  And as you know, I am also editor of Pulsebeat Poetry Journal.”

Photo: “Fire man!” by redeye^ is licensed under CC BY-ND 2.0.

Using form: Acrostic Sonnet: Mike Mesterton-Gibbons, ‘Lonely As A Cloud’

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Life’s trials left me lonely as a cloud
On high until I found some daffodils,
Not in an adventitious golden crowd
Extending by a lakeside near some hills
Like Wordsworth in his poem, but below
York’s city walls on sloping grassy banks,
Arrayed in row upon enticing row.
So I plucked half a dozen from the ranks
And clasped them and, like Wordsworth, felt a rapt
Companionship that filled me with renewed
Light-heartedness … until a copper tapped
On my left shoulder and rebuked me—”Dude,
Unlicensed flower picking’s stealing”—then
Detained my blooms … to leave me lone, again.

*****

Editor’s comment: Mike Mesterton-Gibbons has produced a Shakespearean sonnet acrostically spelling out the title and theme that references one of the best-known poems in the English language. A full discussion of Wordsworth’s original (text, background, modifications, reception, various photos, etc) is in Wikipedia – including the suggestion that Wordsworth originally came up with “I wandered lonely as a cow” until his sister Dorothy told him “William, you can’t put that.” But rather than Wordsworth’s blissed-out ending, Mesterton-Gibbons goes full circle to a rueful police-induced return to loneliness.

Mike Mesterton-Gibbons is a Professor Emeritus at Florida State University who has returned to England to live in York, where he once attended university after going to school in Cumbria near the Lake District.  His poems have appeared in Autumn Sky Poetry Daily, Better Than Starbucks, the Creativity Webzine, Current Conservation, the Ekphrastic Review, Grand Little Things, Light, Lighten Up Online, MONO, the New Verse News, Oddball Magazine, Rat’s Ass Review (where this poem was first published), the Satirist, the Washington Post and WestWard Quarterly.  Links to all these poems can be found at  https://www.math.fsu.edu/~mesterto/Unscramble/wordplay.html

Photo: “York: City Walls and Daffodils” by jack cousin is licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 2.0.

Sonnet: J.D. Smith, ‘Elegy’

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We weren’t allowed the time to contemplate
What talents he in time might come to show,
What fame or wealth he might accumulate,
What love and other passions he might know.

We had, instead, the chance to see him crawl
And graduate to solid food, to take
Some wobbling steps that ended in a fall,
To hand an uncle’s dog a piece of cake.

To say more is to claim a flare’s bright arc
Could have reached high, though it had scarcely flown
Before dissolving in the larger dark.
We fall back on the facts, which stand alone.

He seldom cried. He used to point at birds.
And now he will be missed beyond all words.

*****

J.D. Smith writes: “I will not say much about this poem, as it is based on actual events. I took  liberties with details in following formal constraints, but the sense of devastation is unchanged.”

J.D. Smith has published six books of poetry, most recently the light verse collection Catalogs for Food Lovers, and he has received a Fellowship in Poetry from the United States National Endowment for the Arts. This poem is from The Killing Tree (Finishing Line Press, 2016). Smith’s first fiction collection, Transit, was published in December 2022. His other books include the essay collection Dowsing and Science. Smith works in Washington, DC, where he lives with his wife Paula Van Lare and their rescue animals.
X: @Smitroverse

Photo: “Sleeping Child Tombstone Baby Grave Woodlawn 115-1593” by Brechtbug is licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 2.0.

Barbara Lydecker Crane, ‘Justin Case’

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Justin Case is a very cautious man.
He keeps a cache of bottled water, food
and a pair of spares in the trunk of his sedan.
Others think that he’s aloof or rude
when he inspects each fork and spoon for germs.
His sisters know he swivels out of kisses.
He navigates the office on his terms;
Justin shuns each outstretched hand–and misses
clinching business deals. He cannot fathom
why colleagues eye him strangely when he hits
an elevator button by lifting past them
his wing-tipped toe. With snakebite kit
and mosquito netting, he’s ready to embark 
upon his lunchtime stroll in Central Park.

*****

Barbara Lydecker Crane writes: “This poem, first published in the Atlanta Review, was one of the first persona poems I wrote: I’ve written several dozen over the years, and I find I love trying to speak for another person, real or imaginary. Maybe the process develops empathy, as well–who knows?”

Barbara Lydecker Crane was a finalist for two recent Rattle Poetry Prizes. She has received two Pushcart nominations and various awards from the Maria W. Faust and the Helen Schaible Sonnet Contests. Her poems have appeared in Atlanta Review, Ekphrastic Review, First Things, Light, THINK, Valparaiso Literary Review, Writer’s Almanac, many others, and in several anthologies. Her fourth collection, You Will Remember Me (ekphrastic, persona sonnets) was recently published by Able Muse Press, and is available from Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/You-Will-Remember-Me-Ekphrastic/dp/1773491261. Barb lives with her husband near Boston.

Photo: “i’m so scared you know” by timsnell is licensed under CC BY-ND 2.0.

Sonnet: Shamik Banerjee, ‘A Lesson From Zaheer, Our Fishmonger’

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All things are measurable, son: the food
You have, the sprawling mains, for man has power
Over the world; He deems what’s bad or good;
Determines if a plant should wilt or flower.
But ordeals measure us—we take the test
Of mercy when affliction’s cavalry
Threatens to loot the kindness off one’s chest
As in the massacre of ’83,
When every lane had reeked of Muslim blood,
My Abba Jaan had fallen to the sword
Held by your neighbours; trembling on the mud,
He mumbled, “What’s my sin? My faith? O’ Lord,
Don’t charge them for their deeds.” Love was his wish
That lives through me, for I still feed them fish.

*****

Shamik Banerjee writes: “This poem was first published in Fevers of the Mind. The incident described by our fishmonger is the Nellie Massacre, which took place in central Assam (an Indian state) during a six-hour period on February 18, 1983. The massacre claimed the lives of 1,600–2,000 people. The victims were all Muslims. Abba Jaan is an affectionate term for one’s father (used by Muslims).”

Shamik Banerjee is a poet from India. He resides in Assam with his parents. When he is not writing, he can be found strolling the hills surrounding his homestead. His poems have appeared in Fevers of the Mind, Lothlorien Poetry Journal and Westward Quarterly, among others and some of his poems are forthcoming in The Hoogly Review, Dreich and Sparks of Calliope.

Photo: “Old man inside Jamu Masjid, Fatapur Sikri” by nilachseall is licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 2.0.

Using form: Semi-formal: RHL, ‘Hunting’

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The Osprey splashes, misses, and flies by
skimming the waves, rising, five yards away.
What’s its success rate? Does it care?
The Stingray searches, gliding, mouth to sand
five yards beyond the shallows where I stand.
Its Roomba-work’s its own affair.
The water splishes, burbles random rhythms.
The sun confuses, over-hot, then hidden.
The Oystercatcher calls. The Osprey rocks
on its branch in a casuarina,
flaps down-beach to another.
Along the margins of the shore, alone, each stalks.
They hunt for food
and I hunt them for what they mean, or could.

*****

There are elements of the sonnet about this semi-formal poem: it’s in iambics (though with uneven lengths of line); it has rhyme (though some only slant rhyme, and not patterned); it has 14 lines and a final couplet (though not with a clear volta where you would hope, after the 8th line). But I think the disjointed nature of the poem, its stop-and-go lines of different length, is suitable for the nature of the hunt: the searching, the sudden swoop, the pause, the restarting. In that sense the form is appropriate for the subject matter, and therefore good. It may be that I was too lazy to beat the whole thing into pentameters with a regular rhyme scheme… but it may also be that this was the right place to stop for this particular poem.

‘Hunting’ was originally published in Obsessed With Pipework, and has just been reprinted in Green Ink Poetry (motto: “We Welcome Chaos, Calamity, And The Natural World. Hope Punks & Witches” in their current collection with the theme of ‘Forage’.

Photo: “Osprey” by Mick Thompson1 is licensed under CC BY-NC 2.0.