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365 Sonnets is completed! While there be no more new posts, feel free to read the sonnets and comment! :)

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Sunday, March 02, 2008

Sonnet LXII

That chocolate, melted on the tabletop
is not fondue. It's melted there because
you left it there. And now it's molten tracks
of liquid, sweetened wine of brown and black.

Don't lick it off - don't lick it off, I said.
Now get away, and turn the T.V. off.
And no, I will not play a board game NOW.
I’ve got to clean this up, so snub my vows.

My GOD! Why are the popsicles all there?!?
I told you, “Leave them on the plate – don’t touch!”
But noooooo…who disobeyed me? It was you!
You left them on the carpet, melting, too.

My brother, insolent and devious.
You charm your warden with your gentle kiss!

3 comments:

  1. Haha, good one! As a father, I can relate. You don't have kids at 15, do you? ;)

    The couplet--I can see what you're going for, but I'm not sure it achieves what you want; I always found the couplet the hardest thing about writing the Shakespearean sonnet, though--summing up in two lines and trying to be clever and stay true. It's tough. Maybe that's why I wrote Petrarchans so much, and even experimented with my own "sonnet form."

    Your rhyme scheme here is interesting and unorthodox; I notice you don't adhere to the ABAB CDCD EFEF GG scheme in your sonnets. I wonder, have you ever thought of going to that?

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  2. I've been trying to avoid the traditional Shakespearean rhyme scheme, because it's one of the few things left to alter. The couplet I wrote thinking "oh boy"...but yeah. I'm needing to revise it because it sounds so arbitrary and anti-climatic.

    And of course I have kids at fifteen! (No...I have a 6-year-old brother :)

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  3. I might revert to the orthodox rhyme scheme in sonnets with formal topics or really informal ones to create some interesting irony or to emphasize a point. I feel so lazy though...pretty naughty of me I must say....

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A word is dead
When it is said,
Some say.

I say it just
Begins to live
That day.

- Emily Dickinson

Thanks, Wordle!