[Newspoetry] Why the Blank Verse Sonnet?

[William Gillespie]

Dear Paul, I want to hold your hand.
Whoops, I forgot about the Iambics, I just did a syllable count. I went
10-4.
What do you call these things again? Sonnets?

Late to Work

I am the devil, asleep til 8:12.
I arrive late, fluorescence smothering
Here where the dry air never moves, I curse
Beauty. I stand at the water fountain
Measuring my sold life: antiseptic
Water, that fluid we are made of, my
Thoughts an angry chaos, bitter coffee.
Here where the walls are made of beige burlap,
Sound-proof, light-proof, air-proof, thought-proof, me-proof
Riot-proof, tornado-proof, beauty-proof
Architecture, holy mausoleum.

I want to bang this job against the wall
Until it opens its eyes, sees itself.
I am not a slacker, but what difference?
Inert, drowning in salary, numb, dead.


Paul Kotheimer wrote:

>         Why the Blank Verse Sonnet?
>
> For spite.  To prove the sonnet isn't dead.
> Because Italian rhymes too easily,
> and those sing-song Petrarchans never said
> too much besides "I wanna hold your hand";
> and then, the 'Lizabethans had the perk
> of word-inversion.  Rhymes, I say, are dumb
> (_Onegin_'s the exception to the rule)
> but meter speaks the heartbeat of the verse.
>
> --And heroes, queens, and fops spoke English thus;
> and so did poets, every now and then;
> and "flowers fresh for vases old" and such;
> plus, Herbert says a composition should,
> first off, constrain itself in terms of length,
> and six and eight works well enough for me.
>
> --pjk
>
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