The sonnet. Chaos in 14 lines?

Perhaps.

It was old Sylvia Wubnig at Montgomery Blair High School that got us all to write a sonnet. Most struggled through it. I never stopped. I guess I got the idea that, next to a piece of well wrought music, it was a paramount seduction tool.

Here are two, acrostics both. (That is, the name of the intended recipient appears spelled out by the first letter of each line.)

Compelled by fate to meet at closing time,
our one last word dissolving fast in air
not fit for breathing. Ah, but life’s not fair:
not worth the loss of sleep our “perfect crime”
involved. “Involvement” ! There’s a word that keeps
each reaching unto each. We get involved,
evolving, cell by cell, we are dissolved.
My thoughts become my deeds by fitful leaps.
Compelled to think of you and all you’ve said,
keep hearing songs you sang or said you liked,
each line of verse, each smile, each mile you’ve hiked,
no child of dreams I dream will go un-fed.
No life of mine will ever be the same
as long as I find meaning in your name.

8-1-88

A Dare

Let down that skein of long red hair and stop
insulting me about this sonnet thing!
So write your own, you clever bird. Take wing!
A dare. You try it. See what you can top.
Elizabeth could do it, so can you.
Count not the ways, for it’s been done.
Just count the feet and see if you have fun.
Or let the language do what it will do.
Read Will’s He’s good. The best, the best by far.
Don’t let that slow you down. You too can write,
and art is not the sort of thing you fight,
not that I think you won’t come up to par.
Ken thinks the world of you, so prove him right.
Become a poet and expose your light.

7-25-96