May 3, 2005

• The Battle of the Sonnet
  

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  An Itallian sonnet has the form:
  abbaabba (cdecde or cdcdcd or cdccdc)
  The English sonnet the form:
  abab cdcd efef gg

  If I dislike something it is
  typically for two reasons; one, it truely sucks; or two I haven't
  really tried to get it and have gone on the defensive.  Here is my
  attempt to go around the first reaction I had to the sonnet.

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  I am the form sonnet Italian, to this you must resign,
  my words rolling in octaves and triplets quatrain
  whose meaning is never but obviously quite plain,
  my shape made and marked by the end of each line.
  Though what you will write is in no way a crime,
  it is gone past pleasure and is climbing into pain,
  you worry your hard work will end up in the drain,
  you wonder, is this worth my precious, scant time?
  But we are just fourteen simple lines each climbing
  soldiering over walls, confusion and into the breech.
  Place us in ranks, mustered and marshaled by rhyming,
  to arms my General, fire the cannon, to you I beseech!
  This battle is won not by whit or by luck but by timing,
  the victor has won when to the vanquished they teach.

  • 9:13 pm
  • 1 Comment