Of course I read Shakespeare's sonnets in high school, and liked some -- although at the time, I had little experience of trying to describe love, or fit it into carefully counted "meter" and "rhyme." Much later, I sat spellbound as poet Ellen Bryant Voigt described remaking sonnets and adding to and removing their components, for her book KYRIE.
Then a few years ago -- I think it was still during the pandemic -- in one of the online classes I took with gifted poetry professor and author Ellen Bass (who said she personally had never written a sonnet!), I explored the form all over again. And slowly, a few sonnets began to wander into my folders of my own poems.
So when Quillkeepers Press invited poets to send Shakespearean sonnets for a new collection, I polished up a pair and sent them along ... and to my delight, they were accepted, and form the finale to the new book ALL THE WORLD'S A PAGE!
In case you, like me, need to see the definition of a Shakespearean sonnet in front of you as a refresher, here it is, from the Poetry Foundation:
The variation of the sonnet form that Shakespeare used—comprised of three quatrains and a concluding couplet, rhyming abab cdcd efef gg—is called the English or Shakespearean sonnet form, although others had used it before him. This different sonnet structure allows for more space to be devoted to the buildup of a subject or problem than the Italian/Petrarchan form, and is followed by just two lines to conclude or resolve the poem in a rhyming couplet.
So here are my two sonnets. The Frost one was actually drafted at The Frost Place in Franconia, NH (and as you'll see, I was very annoyed with Mr. Frost that day); the other fits with my memoir-in-progress.
If you'd like an actual published copy of ALL THE WORLD'S A PAGE, it's here -- with lots more enjoyable poems in it to browse.
