Tag Archives: sonnet

Sonnet: Juleigh Howard-Hobson, ‘What a Shame Spell’

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To ruin anyone’s potential, you
Will need things like this: shell from a chicken’s
Egg that broke when it fell from its nest to
The ground, unhatched. Unfastened safety pins
That were found, not bought. Seeds, germinated,
Then boiled before the first leaves unfurled and
Turned green. Dead caterpillars. Negated
Contracts. Unopened catalogues. A hand
From a working clock. Beads from a wedding
Dress that was returned. At least one item
Must have been stolen from your target. Bring
These together, dig a 6 foot hole, then
Bury them. As you bury, state the name
Of who you want ruined, adding: ‘What a shame’.

*****

Juleigh Howard-Hobson writes: “This wicked sonnet was inspired by jealous fairytale stepmothers, and characters like Daphne Du Maurier’s Mrs. Danvers. Oh, and coming upon a bunch of dead green caterpillars lying under a tree…  Besides first appearing in Coffin Bell, it is included in my book, Curses, Black Spells and Hexes: a Grimoire Sonnetica (Alien Buddha). Of all the spell sonnets I’ve written, this is one of the wryest. I wouldn’t wish it on my worst friend.”

Juleigh Howard-Hobson’s work can be found in Think Journal, Able Muse, New Verse Review, Coffin Bell Magazine (including this poem), The Deadlands, Autumn Sky Poetry and other venues. She has been nominated for “The Best of the Net”, Pushcart, Elgin & Rhysling Awards. A member of the HWA and the SFPA, she lives on the coast of the Pacific Northwest. In a poetically haunted house. 
X: poetforest

“Try Digging A Whole On the Big Island” by Tommys Surfshack is licensed under CC BY 2.0.

Sonnet: Marion Shore, ‘Embarking’

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Despite the dreams and yearnings that lie drowned,
the flotsam of desire, the fearful straits,
the capsized hope, the passion gone aground,
the tides too treacherous to navigate,
you lift your gaze each time love reappears
like an ocean liner gliding through the dark,
without a thought you rush down to the pier
and climb aboard and once again embark,
and stand upon the deck ablaze with light,
and raise your glass beneath the glittering stars,
and watch the harbor slowly fade from sight,
not caring where you’re going, or how far —
knowing the odds are slim that you’ll survive,
yet never having felt quite so alive.

*****

Marion Shore writes: “Embarking is a riff on Petrarch’s sonnet Passa la nave mia colma d’oblio (Canzoniere 189), contrasting the festive departure of the ocean liner into the unknown, with the inevitable shipwreck of Petrarch’s beleaguered vessel. You could say “Embarking“ is sort of a prequel to Petrarch’s poem–with a hint of Titanic thrown in.”

Marion Shore is the author of For Love of Laura: Poetry of Petrarch, a collecion of Petrarch’s poetry in translation published by the University of Arkansas Press in 1987. Her work has also appeared in Poems from Italy; Petrarch in English; 150 Contemporary Sonnets; and Rhyming Poems: A Contemporary Anthology. Her poems and translations have been published in numerous journals including The Formalist, Light Quarterly, Iambs and Trochees, First Things, and Measure. Recipient of the 2010 Richard Wilbur Award for Sand Castle (from which this poem is taken) and two-time winner of the Howard Nemerov Sonnet Award, she lives in Springfield, MA.

Photo: “Berlin Cruise liner docked at Waterford” by mike65ie is licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 2.0.

Marcus Bales, ‘A Rainy Day in Cleveland’

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A rainy day in Cleveland. I almost said
“The skies are gray.” Of course the skies are gray,
It’s raining, so — what could they be instead?
I meant to mow the rest of the lawn today,
But it’s a day to watch the garden grow.
The finches, flashing in the too-long grass,
Are pecking dandelion seeds, and glow
Their special yellow through rain-dotted glass.
The internet is off. I sit and watch
The irises and roses in the rain,
And do not read about the ugly botch
The greedy criminals in charge sustain
So they can strut around, so white, so male,
And cheat and lie to keep themselves from jail.

*****

Marcus Bales writes: “The rap against democracy has until now always been that the public, once it realized they could simply vote themselves money and benefits, would bankrupt the state voting themselves benefits and money. For 250 years the US public managed not to do that, though the reactionaries always accused them of it. It turns out the real danger is that if you have enough money you can just buy the government and operate it as a racket to benefit yourself and your cronies, even when there are laws in place that you have to break in order to do so. The problem with democracy, it turns out, is not that people are irresponsible but that the wealthy are liars and thieves.”

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.

Photo: Danny redd Photography https://www.facebook.com/watch/?v=1605166609548538

Sonnet: Gail White, ‘Catherine Howard’

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(Fourth Wife of King Henry VIII)

The teenage bride the Norfolks gave the king
lacked only brains and her virginity.
Henry was in no mood for questioning
his rose without a thorn.  If only she
had borne a son, he never would have doubted
her purity.  But as the months went by
her youthful dalliance with boys was outed,
then the king’s young attendant caught her eye
and there were secret meetings, hide and seek.
It all came out.  She wrote to beg for grace,
pleading that men were bold and girls were weak,
and Henry wept, but nothing could efface
her crime.  The headsman ended all her pains.
Sometimes it pays a woman to have brains.

*****

Gail Whie writes: “After reading Gareth Russell’s excellent biography of Catherine, Young & Damned & Fair, I decided to take a leaf out of Daniel Galef’s Imaginary Sonnets and give her a sonnet of her own.  I figured that any woman who would commit adultery while married to Henry the Eighth must be either desperate or spectacularly stupid.  And on the path to inevitable execution, I think she really broke the king’s heart.”

Gail White lives in the Louisiana bayou country with her husband and cats.  Her latest chapbook, Paper Cuts, is available on Amazon, along with her books Asperity Street and Catechism.  She appears in a number of anthologies, including two Pocket Poetry chapbooks, five Potcake Chapbooks, and Nasty Women Poets.  She enjoys being a contributing editor to Light Poetry Magazine.  Her dream is to live in Oxfordshire, but failing that, almost any place in Western Europe would do.

“Catherine Howard” by Stifts- och landsbiblioteket i Skara is licensed under CC BY 2.0.

Sonnet: Jane Blanchard, ‘Between Rounds’

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Year after year the very best in golf
head to Augusta. Fans come, too, and those
who live and work here either take time off
to travel or adopt a Masters’ pose.
One local woman hosts a party for
alumni of our alma mater. I
attended with my husband once. The hors
d’oeuvres were delicious, drinks well worth a try.
Invitees wandered through the house into
the garden, where the talk had lots of fizz.
One liquored man when asked “What do you do?”
replied: “I fly for Delta—soon to Rome.”
My husband looked my way as I looked his;
we both were more than glad to stay at home.

*****

Congratulations to Jane Blanchard, who has just had her collection ‘Furthermore’ published by Kelsay Books. (Blurbs by Steve Knepper among others can be found at her Amazon listing.) I asked her for a favourite poem to represent the book, and she sent me ‘Between Rounds’, originally published in Valley Voices: A Literary Review.

A native Virginian, Jane Blanchard lives and writes in Georgia. Her collections with Kelsay Books include Metes and Bounds (2023) and Furthermore (2025).

Shakespearean Sonnet: J.D. Smith, ‘Drunkard Watched from an Upper Floor’

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His weaving adds up to a hapless cloth
on both sides of the street: just short of falling,
he staggers, with a stop to vomit froth.
He’d go far safer if he took to crawling.
A brace of cans, though, and a paper sack
are taking up the hands his legs could use,
as gales inside his head tell him to tack
and sway but hold his cargo fast, to choose
the service of his thirst above all pride
or fear that he might offer easy prey.
The spirits he has taken as his guide
make him loop back to take another way.

Ten minutes pass. He’s near where he began,
reminding me of when I’ve been that man.

*****

J.D. Smith writes: “Between typical youthful indiscretions and self-medicating for untreated depression in earlier life, I have had some tipsy times. The obvious negatives aside, recalling those experiences has made me more sympathetic than I would naturally be in contemplating others’ frailty. The rhetoric of the Elizabethan sonnet structure, moreover, compelled me to bring precision to the experience of seeing oneself in another.”

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, and his seventh collection, The Place That Is Coming to Us, will be published by Broadstone Books in 2025. Smith works in Washington, DC, where he lives with his wife Paula Van Lare and their rescue animals.
X: @Smitroverse

Photo: “Onward Ever Downwards” by Stephan Geyer is licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 2.0.


Barbara Lydecker Crane, ‘My Letter to Sonnet Insurance’

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    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.

Sonnet: Shamik Banerjee, ‘To Mr. Banerjee (Senior)’

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Without black tea, his mornings never start.
The newspaper should be upon his bed;
Not finding it will make his eyes all red.
As if examining a piece of art,
He reads each page. Loud oohs such as ‘My heart!’,
‘Another swindle!’, or ‘So many dead!’,
Are heard as if the earth’s weight’s on his head.
Harrumphing, he jumps to the Cultures part.
A pensioner today, back in those days,
He was a banker. Now, he saunters, plays
Carom with me, or spends the noontimes planting
Camellias —- a work he finds enchanting.
At times, he sits before some dusty files,
Puts on the glasses, thumbs through them, and smiles.

*****

First published by Borderless Journal.

Shamik Banerjee is a poet from Assam, India. Some of his recent publications include Spelt, Ink Sweat & Tears, Modern Reformation, San Antonio Review, The Society of Classical Poets, Third Wednesday, and Amethyst Review among others.

Photo: “Bentley Tea Cup” by snap713 is licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 2.0.

Using form: Shakespearean sonnet: Susan McLean, ‘Foreshadowing’

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You’re a holiday.
—”Holiday,” The Bee Gees

One month from when you met me, when you brought
the first of many gifts, a 45
of plaintive praise and longing, who’d have thought
that forty-five years later we’d survive
on weekends, holidays, and summer breaks,
a foretaste of the end in every start,
anticipation ballasted with aches
as we put love on hold and live apart?

You are a holiday. The working week
unspools like toilet paper from a roll.
My attitude goes airborne when we speak,
and when we meet, my heart swoops like a shoal
of fish. Would we have lost this giddy glow,
living together? Better not to know.

*****

Susan McLean writes: “It makes me feel ancient to realize that for younger readers I will have to explain that a 45 was a record with one song on each side, which played on a record player at 45 revolutions per minute. Love poems themselves tend to feel old-fashioned these days, though this one is about a relatively modern problem, the long-term, long-distance relationship in which both people are employed full time at jobs far apart from one another. The form, a Shakespearean sonnet, mirrors the content, in that the rhymes are separated from one another until the end, when they are reunited. The poem was originally published in the online journal of female formalist poets Mezzo Cammin, and it later appeared in my second book of poetry, The Whetstone Misses the Knife.

Photo: “File:45 record.png” by laurianne is marked with CC0 1.0.

Sonnet: Jenna Le, ‘Guilty Pleasures’

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Half of my favorite works of fanfiction
are stories that anesthetize the pain
produced by the original’s depiction
of harsh events: the person whom the main
character loved who met a tragic end
is resurrected in the fan-made sequel;
the star-crossed couple gets a chance to mend,
and consummate, a bond that has no equal.

The other half are stories that prolong
the pain and also boost its magnitude
deliciously until my nerves all tingle:
near-misses multiply, and roadblocks throng;
epiphanies loom close yet still elude;
misunderstandings keep our heroes single.

*****

Jenna Le writes: “I believe there’s been a fair amount of published scholarship in recent years about fanfiction and fanfiction culture. I admit I’m not up-to-date on any of it, really, and am only really conversant with such aspects of it as I have personally chanced to encounter. I can only say there seems to have been recent movement toward increased legitimization of the field: in 2019, one of the prestigious Hugo Awards for speculative fiction was awarded to a body of fan-work/transformational work, for instance. Just as for other flavors of fiction, there are probably infinitely many ways to classify and subclassify fanfiction. Novelist Naomi Novik‘s work and interviews are maybe a good place to start looking, for people curious to learn more.”

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), https://press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/distributed/M/bo185843950.html The sonnet ‘Guilty Pleasures’ was first published in Snakeskin.

Photo: “guilty pleasure” by ohmann alianne is licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 2.0.