Sonnet
I've been thinking about the sonnet lately. Frankly, the form scares me! It's quite formal with its 14 lines melding the octave (8 lines) with a sestet (6 lines) AND a rhyming scheme of stressed and unstressed syllables! Stress, indeed.
However, this is the thing: the sonnet includes a volta, or turn, toward the end, when the entire thought turns back on itself to consider its opposite. A sonnet can hold the strongest emotion, and then hold another equally strong emotion, too. Together. I think that's amazing, and a skill worth honing these days.
While we all know Shakespeare's love sonnets, the form has been adopted by many contemporary poets, and I want to point you to Terrance Hayes, who wrote a collection of 70 sonnets, all titled "American Sonnet for My Past and Future Assassin," immediately following the election of Trump. He wrote one per day. He didn't mess around too much with precise rhyming or iambic pentameter; instead, inspired by Wanda Coleman's American Sonnets from 1994, he let loose with his rage, and then turned it all around to hold love, too, with the volta toward the end.
- Here, take a look at this 3-minute video: Terrance Hayes Talks About His Work
- Sample poem #1: I lock you in an American sonnet that is part prison
- Sample poem #2: Probably twilight makes blackness dangerous
Our prompt: Write an American sonnet, ie, a sonnet that is a little loose with the rules. Choose an experience that has produced a very strong emotion - love or hate, joy or rage, pleasure or pain. Sketch it in 14 lines. Once you have a draft, go in and play with the language. And don't forget the volta toward the end: turn around and face the opposite of what you've written. What happens?
Maybe you'll write a couple of sonnets. Who knows?
As with all Re/Re/ReWrites, "writing" can be drawing, painting, singing, coding... Or writing.