There’s a reason I call this place a Sonnetarium. My second wife and I raised two children (step-children to me, and the biological father is just missing), we both worked fulltime, and, at the time I really started working with sonnets, we both played in a band—thank goodness, the same band. She does mosaic and quilting, the quilting entirely by hand. She likes to watch TV while she sews. I can’t write (nor can she design) with the tube on. She’s a former Army sergeant, horse trainer, and prison guard, and got tired of my complaining about time to write. “Fine,” she said. “You get an hour and a half alone every day. But you’d better show me something for it.”
So ninety minutes. I didn’t even know how to get started in 90 minutes, and after a week or so it looked like I was going to lose the time she’d generously granted me. It occurred to me that a sonnet has 140 syllables (about 70 words) and a structure which strongly suggests how and when you turn for home. There’s an end in sight, even at the beginning, and I found that immensely freeing. There have been times when for a month at a stretch I’ve been able to “finish” a sonnet every day—that is, get a rhymed and metrically proper (not polished) poem done without too much violence to ordinary speech. For two years I wrote practically nothing but sonnets; twice I posted nearly-daily sonnets online. Those were my first Sonnetaria.
And out of all that there came some good work, I think. I’ve collected 44 of those sonnets and put them into a homemade, handsewn chapbook cleverly called 44 Sonnets. (For a review that would make me blush if I had any shame, go here.) You can get your own copy either by trade or by clicking on the cleverly named “Buy Now” button in the sidebar. Below is this week’s sample sonnet from the chap:
Faithless Anyhow
If all goes well, the first to go is the
heart.
A moment then, then nothing anymore.
Others may grieve, if that’s their chosen part,
But not for long — their own hearts shut that door.
They’ve better things to do, or better have.
That long-legged boy just took a second look,
And now a third, and oh, his look could salve
More grief than fills the saddest storybook —
At least until his own heart fails, or yours,
Or worse, a palsy shakes those legs, a cancer
Boils in your blood, stroke snaps the ligatures
Of thought and when you call there is no answer,
Only his heart’s relentless pantomime,
Since no one’s there to know it’s closing time.