The schedule this week has changed. In lieu of class on M & W, you will have two projects to work on: 1) this week’s poem, a Sonnet (see below), and 2) the second set of annotated poems (due on Friday in class, 11/13). We WILL meet on Friday, 11/13, and start workshopping Group B’s Sonnets.
“Give me a Sonnet with a twist”
No, that’s not a new kind of cocktail. This week you’ll be playing with the sonnet form(s), reading everything from poems that strictly follow classic sonnet form(s) of structure and content, to sonnets that challenge the Petrarchan “beloved” as object, to sonnets that are quite badly behaved and probably aren’t invited to family reunions (but oh, their parties are so much more interesting).
Your assignment is to write a sonnet – in any of the various forms below – with the subject of either a Personal Ad, or an Insult (prep for assignment! Read: 13W, read Chapter 12, “Sonnets: Exploring the Possibilities of Fourteen Lines;” sonnets in SM Poetry Anthology, and Karenne Wood's ME “Smoke” (43). Also, read SM poems for “Personal Ad” and “Insult”).
In other words, this can be a kind of love poem (as in, looking for love), or an anti-love poem (as in, you suck, and here’s why). It just needs to be in sonnet form.
STRUCTURE
Most of you are familiar with, at the very least, the Shakespearean sonnet. Wendy Bishop’s chapter in 13 Ways gives examples of more traditional sonnets such as “That time of year thou mayst in me behold” and “My mistress’ eyes are nothing like the sun.” This form uses the English sonnet, what Bishop calls “a small, often passionate or philosophical song” of 14 lines in iambic pentameter, with the usual suspects in rhyming patterns. However, she also notes these kinds of sonnet possibilities:
a sonnet written in couplets
a personal (invented) rhyme scheme (called a ‘nonce sonnet’)
sonnet sequences, such as a ‘crown of sonnets,’ using the Italian form (see page 318)
a monorhymed sonnet
double sonnets (28 lines)
reversed Shakespearean sonnet
retrograde sonnet (reads the same backward as forward)
non-rhyming sonnet of 14 lines
shorter lines (a ‘skinny’ sonnet)
CONTENT
Traditional sonnets developed as a vehicle in which male poets praised their female beloveds in a predictable and objectifying manner, or as Julia Alvarez says, “The sonnet tradition was one in which women were caged in golden cages of a beloved, in perfumed gas chambers of stereotype … a heavily mined and male labyrinth.” Although few men complained about the male-centricism of sonnets, perhaps Shakespeare himself rebelled against the necessity of constant praise when he wrote “my mistress’ eyes are nothing like the sun,” a sonnet that paints a less than flattering picture of the supposed-beloved.
Like Shakespeare, if you can’t find the form you need, tweak the one you have. Bishop’s chapter contains sonnets about rape (“Leda and the Swan”), a sonnet that won’t behave (“The Bad Sonnet”), the loss of a finger while shoeing a horse (“One Morning, Shoeing Horses”), a diabetic seizure (“Fourteen”), and so on.
On the web, check out http://www.sonnets.org/newsonnets.htm which has many links to contemporary sonnets.
Here are other examples that might inspire you.
Margaret Melamin’s collection Blue Collar Sonnets gives us the sonnet in a new light:
The Hobo
Deep in the vast Missouri’s slimy silt
there lies what was a man. He has been dead
these seven decades, and his flesh has fed
huge catfish and a boxcar rider’s guilt.
There were no jobs. My uncle slept in trains
that ran along the river in KC
where hoboes gathered. It was here that he
jumped from a car and panic filled his veins
as someone stepped from shadow. It was here
he pulled his gun and dropped the man forever.
Quickly he rolled the body to the river
and watched it sink. He lived in guilt and fear
from that day forward, dreamed of Cain and Abel.
Who was the man? Who missed him at the table?
Plumbers
Up to their shins in human nastiness
of every ugly kind, how do they keep
from choking on their vomit when they sleep?
How do they free their nostrils of the mess
and find their appetites at dinner hour?
Do they just wash their hands of all of it,
the hairballs and the condoms and the shit,
and think of lilacs while they’re in the shower?
These are the men we call when septic tanks
rebel, when sewer lines regurgitate
their stinking contents. They investigate
our murky underworld for little thanks
beyond their union scale, but when they’re through
they know more secrets than the tabloids do.
The Molly Maguires
John “Blackjack” Kehoe Speaks
Oh yes, our hands were bloody, but in part
from lifting murdered brothers off the ground.
We came to this great promised land and found
that we were beasts of burden, saw the heart
of Ireland being trampled in the mud
by ruthless men who broke us, showed us hell
and left our shriveled bodies where they fell.
I’ll not deny we shed some rich men’s blood.
We wanted schools and doctors, shoes and bread.
We got betrayal, treachery and filth
while villains bribed our priests with tainted wealth
and winked at murderers who blamed their dead
on Mollies. It was perjured oaths alone
that hanged us not for our crimes but their own.
Marilyn Hacker’s amazing collection Love, Death and a Changing of the Seasons chronicles a love affair from first blush to final break-up:
“Didn’t Sappho say her guts clutched up like this?”
Didn’t Sappho say her guts clutched up like this?
Before a face suddenly numinous,
her eyes watered, knees melted. Did she lactate
again, milk brought down by a girl’s kiss?
It’s documented torrents are unloosed
by such events as recently produced
not the wish, but the need, to consume, in us,
one pint of Maalox, one of Kaopectate.
My eyes and groin are permanently swollen,
I’m alternatingly brilliant and witless
—and sleepless: bed is just a swamp to roll in.
Although I’d cream my jeans touching your breast,
sweetheart, it isn’t lust; it’s all the rest
of what I want with you that scares me shitless.
And Eavan Boland’s fascination with mythology and metaphorical descriptions of what’s been lost shows up in this one:
Atlantis—A Lost Sonnet
How on earth did it happen, I used to wonder
that a whole city—arches, pillars, colonnades,
not to mention vehicles and animals—had all
one fine day gone under?
I mean, I said to myself, the world was small then.
Surely a great city must have been missed?
I miss our old city —
white pepper, white pudding, you and I meeting
under fanlights and low skies to go home in it. Maybe
what really happened is
this: the old fable-makers searched hard for a word
to convey that what is gone is gone forever and
never found it. And so, in the best traditions of
where we come from, they gave their sorrow a name
and drowned it.
“Give me a Sonnet with a twist”
No, that’s not a new kind of cocktail. This week you’ll be playing with the sonnet form(s), reading everything from poems that strictly follow classic sonnet form(s) of structure and content, to sonnets that challenge the Petrarchan “beloved” as object, to sonnets that are quite badly behaved and probably aren’t invited to family reunions (but oh, their parties are so much more interesting).
Your assignment is to write a sonnet – in any of the various forms below – with the subject of either a Personal Ad, or an Insult (prep for assignment! Read: 13W, read Chapter 12, “Sonnets: Exploring the Possibilities of Fourteen Lines;” sonnets in SM Poetry Anthology, and Karenne Wood's ME “Smoke” (43). Also, read SM poems for “Personal Ad” and “Insult”).
In other words, this can be a kind of love poem (as in, looking for love), or an anti-love poem (as in, you suck, and here’s why). It just needs to be in sonnet form.
STRUCTURE
Most of you are familiar with, at the very least, the Shakespearean sonnet. Wendy Bishop’s chapter in 13 Ways gives examples of more traditional sonnets such as “That time of year thou mayst in me behold” and “My mistress’ eyes are nothing like the sun.” This form uses the English sonnet, what Bishop calls “a small, often passionate or philosophical song” of 14 lines in iambic pentameter, with the usual suspects in rhyming patterns. However, she also notes these kinds of sonnet possibilities:
a sonnet written in couplets
a personal (invented) rhyme scheme (called a ‘nonce sonnet’)
sonnet sequences, such as a ‘crown of sonnets,’ using the Italian form (see page 318)
a monorhymed sonnet
double sonnets (28 lines)
reversed Shakespearean sonnet
retrograde sonnet (reads the same backward as forward)
non-rhyming sonnet of 14 lines
shorter lines (a ‘skinny’ sonnet)
CONTENT
Traditional sonnets developed as a vehicle in which male poets praised their female beloveds in a predictable and objectifying manner, or as Julia Alvarez says, “The sonnet tradition was one in which women were caged in golden cages of a beloved, in perfumed gas chambers of stereotype … a heavily mined and male labyrinth.” Although few men complained about the male-centricism of sonnets, perhaps Shakespeare himself rebelled against the necessity of constant praise when he wrote “my mistress’ eyes are nothing like the sun,” a sonnet that paints a less than flattering picture of the supposed-beloved.
Like Shakespeare, if you can’t find the form you need, tweak the one you have. Bishop’s chapter contains sonnets about rape (“Leda and the Swan”), a sonnet that won’t behave (“The Bad Sonnet”), the loss of a finger while shoeing a horse (“One Morning, Shoeing Horses”), a diabetic seizure (“Fourteen”), and so on.
On the web, check out http://www.sonnets.org/newsonnets.htm which has many links to contemporary sonnets.
Here are other examples that might inspire you.
Margaret Melamin’s collection Blue Collar Sonnets gives us the sonnet in a new light:
The Hobo
Deep in the vast Missouri’s slimy silt
there lies what was a man. He has been dead
these seven decades, and his flesh has fed
huge catfish and a boxcar rider’s guilt.
There were no jobs. My uncle slept in trains
that ran along the river in KC
where hoboes gathered. It was here that he
jumped from a car and panic filled his veins
as someone stepped from shadow. It was here
he pulled his gun and dropped the man forever.
Quickly he rolled the body to the river
and watched it sink. He lived in guilt and fear
from that day forward, dreamed of Cain and Abel.
Who was the man? Who missed him at the table?
Plumbers
Up to their shins in human nastiness
of every ugly kind, how do they keep
from choking on their vomit when they sleep?
How do they free their nostrils of the mess
and find their appetites at dinner hour?
Do they just wash their hands of all of it,
the hairballs and the condoms and the shit,
and think of lilacs while they’re in the shower?
These are the men we call when septic tanks
rebel, when sewer lines regurgitate
their stinking contents. They investigate
our murky underworld for little thanks
beyond their union scale, but when they’re through
they know more secrets than the tabloids do.
The Molly Maguires
John “Blackjack” Kehoe Speaks
Oh yes, our hands were bloody, but in part
from lifting murdered brothers off the ground.
We came to this great promised land and found
that we were beasts of burden, saw the heart
of Ireland being trampled in the mud
by ruthless men who broke us, showed us hell
and left our shriveled bodies where they fell.
I’ll not deny we shed some rich men’s blood.
We wanted schools and doctors, shoes and bread.
We got betrayal, treachery and filth
while villains bribed our priests with tainted wealth
and winked at murderers who blamed their dead
on Mollies. It was perjured oaths alone
that hanged us not for our crimes but their own.
Marilyn Hacker’s amazing collection Love, Death and a Changing of the Seasons chronicles a love affair from first blush to final break-up:
“Didn’t Sappho say her guts clutched up like this?”
Didn’t Sappho say her guts clutched up like this?
Before a face suddenly numinous,
her eyes watered, knees melted. Did she lactate
again, milk brought down by a girl’s kiss?
It’s documented torrents are unloosed
by such events as recently produced
not the wish, but the need, to consume, in us,
one pint of Maalox, one of Kaopectate.
My eyes and groin are permanently swollen,
I’m alternatingly brilliant and witless
—and sleepless: bed is just a swamp to roll in.
Although I’d cream my jeans touching your breast,
sweetheart, it isn’t lust; it’s all the rest
of what I want with you that scares me shitless.
And Eavan Boland’s fascination with mythology and metaphorical descriptions of what’s been lost shows up in this one:
Atlantis—A Lost Sonnet
How on earth did it happen, I used to wonder
that a whole city—arches, pillars, colonnades,
not to mention vehicles and animals—had all
one fine day gone under?
I mean, I said to myself, the world was small then.
Surely a great city must have been missed?
I miss our old city —
white pepper, white pudding, you and I meeting
under fanlights and low skies to go home in it. Maybe
what really happened is
this: the old fable-makers searched hard for a word
to convey that what is gone is gone forever and
never found it. And so, in the best traditions of
where we come from, they gave their sorrow a name
and drowned it.
Finally, if you are in dire need of an insult jump-start, try the Insult Generator at http://www.pangloss.com/seidel/Shaker/ which pulls up random insults from Shakespeare for your enjoyment. Thou unmuzzled guts-griping popinjay! See also the Shakespeare Insult Kit link on that page at http://www.pangloss.com/seidel/shake_rule.html
And on the Personal Ad front, an excerpt from Poplicks.com:
I read a collection of personal ads in Sunday's LA Times Magazine that I assumed was the brainchild of a creative genius.On second read, I realized that the ads were real personals pulled from various sources spanning several years. (I confirmed that a few were from Craigslist.)
Here are some of the more delicious ones:
Liberal man seeks a conservative (neocon or better) woman for discreet affair. You blast Sean Hannity while dominating me in the back of my Prius. Weekdays only.
Young man, moderate circumstances, with glass eye, would like to make acquaintance of young girl, also with glass eye or other deformity not more severe, for matrimony.
Portly screen legend, reclusive, with unabashed Japanese fetish wishes to turn over new leaf and find a nice Chinese girl to spend remaining days with.
My name is Bubbles. I reside in a shed with 28 kitties. I refurbish grocery carts, which I steal from the local Wal-Mart. Just kidding. I'm Tom. I'm looking for local female for coffee and maybe more.
Broken guy with only a guitar and a Dodge Dart, looking for barely legal runaway who won't judge him for being an abject failure.
SWM cultural imperialist foodie seeks goofy hipster chick to drive to San Gabriel so we can brag about being the only white people at a filthy C-grade restaurant.
Stoner seeks same.
No comments:
Post a Comment
Note: Only a member of this blog may post a comment.