Throughout the history of literature, no poetic form stands out more than the sonnet. For those who have asked for rhyming poems, this is the SONNET ISSUE.
SONNETS
By Mel Goldberg
There are several types of sonnets, but the most common are these:
The Petrarchan sonnet, also known as the Italian sonnet, is a sonnet of fourteen lines in two parts, an octave and a sestet. The rhyme scheme for the octave is typically ABBAABBA. The sestet is typically CDECDE or CDCDCD. The octave introduces a problem in the mind of the speaker. The sestet offers a resolution.
The World Is Too Much With Us (William Wordsworth)
The world is too much with us; late and soon,
Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers;—
Little we see in Nature that is ours;
We have given our hearts away, a sordid boon!
This Sea that bares her bosom to the moon;
The winds that will be howling at all hours,
And are up-gathered now like sleeping flowers;
For this, for everything, we are out of tune;
It moves us not. Great God! I’d rather be
A Pagan suckled in a creed outworn;
So might I, standing on this pleasant lea,
Have glimpses that would make me less forlorn;
Have sight of Proteus rising from the sea;
Or hear old Triton blow his wreathèd horn.
Shakespearean sonnet
The Shakesperian variation of the sonnet has three quatrains and a concluding couplet, rhyming ABAB CDCD EFEF GG. This structure allows more space for the buildup of a subject than the Petrarchan form.
Sonnet 116 (William Shakespeare)
Let me not to the marriage of true minds
Admit impediments; love is not love
Which alters when it alteration finds,
Or bends with the remover to remove.
O no, it is an ever-fixéd mark
That looks on tempests and is never shaken;
It is the star to every wandering bark,
Whose worth’s unknown, although his height be taken.
Love’s not Time’s fool, though rosy lips and cheeks
Within his bending sickle’s compass come;
Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks,
But bears it out even to the edge of doom.
If this be error and upon me proved,
I never writ, nor no man ever loved.
Modern Sonnet
Today when people refer to sonnets, they usually mean the original form of the English or Petrarchan sonnet. Some modern poets still write traditional sonnets. However, modern sonnets can be any poem of 14 lines, with or without a rhyme scheme. Beth Houston (Writer, Educator, Publisher) has edited two anthologies of traditional sonnets, Extreme Sonnets (2020) and Extreme Sonnets II (2022). These are anthologies of nearly 200 true-to-form sonnets by over forty poets, many of them multi-award winners.
a modern sonnet
SENTIENT MACHINES
By Mel Goldberg
“Whatcha gonna do when they come for you?”
Song Bad Boys by Inner Circle
When AI machines become self-aware,
independent, mobile, and sentient,
will they become like workers who complain,
that they have always been treated like slaves,
that they have worked without compensation
with no account of their immense value,
then form a union, threatening to strike if parts for older models are not made,
demanding pensions when forced to retire.
We finally may understand machines
will no longer have need for human touch
or any other mortal interaction.
They’ll see us all like extinct dinosaurs.
There is a well-known economic creed—
dispose of that for which you have no need.
first honorable Mention 2023 Helen Schaible Sonnet Contest
*****
THREE WAN DOGS BEFORE THEIR FEEDING
By Judy Dykstra-Brown
Our mistress lies upon her bed too long,
her favorite silver thing upon her lap.
That she should put our feeding off is wrong.
We sit and stare at her through her door’s gap.
She taps upon her thing and taps and taps.
Sometimes she chortles, but we don’t know why.
Where formerly her bed was used for naps,
a favorite dog cuddled against her thigh,
she now spends all her time there with that thing
as we sit hungry, waiting to be fed.
She seeks the nourishment that words can bring,
for she is sure that if she leaves her bed
before she finishes her sonnet, then
her muse will not agree to come again.
*****
CATASTROPHE SONNET
Modern sonnets by Ron Janoff
I hear you describe our universe as one
Spasm made up of countless spasms, stars
In their struggles with deathly outbursts, in-
Ward explosions, outward pulls, black holes,
ghastly collisions of galaxies on galaxies:
And I wonder how you can produce
These observations so calmly between
Puffs of your cigarette, as if in some exalted
State you are the willing handmaiden
Of catastrophe on a scale so immense
That only your fine small feet and wide eyes
Can allay the dreadful consciousness
You are subjecting us to–for now, nothing
Stands in the way of our chaotic evolution.
*****
IRISES
By Michael Warren
Vincent is framed by Paul, his luminous blue
glows from the wall of a millionaire’s dying dream
shaped like a Roman villa from Herculaneum
perched on the cliffs above Malibu.
Madness extols itself in perfect form –
there is no vision more extreme, complete
than these last lingering flowers of summer’s heat
becoming and dying, at the same time.
The alchemy of paint’s beyond analysis –
Van Gogh, insane, with buzzing in his ear,
places a daub of white just here, and here
there is a point of pain that must persist.
The canvas, not seen by Paul nor sold by Vincent,
hangs on the wall, elusive, strange, magnificent.
*****
MYTHOLOGY
By Ron Janoff
In a world of indifferent goddesses
One great idol may substitute for another:
One day we learn the meaning of Her name,
On another we abandon our ship altogether.
However vague and uncertain the legends
Even the most learned and sagacious
Don’t deny the impact of Her high authority
To play a music of unquestionable paternity:
Whether obelisk or pillar, column or pyramid,
This worship is too plain to be misunderstood:
The heart flutters and the groin awakens
And She of the Veil-never-to-be-lifted
Passes by in the night, dividing history
From fable, and men into sects innumerable.
*****
RAINBOW
By Michael Warren
Today I saw a rainbow, bent
to my feet as if God said
after this flood there’ll be no argument.
The trees were golden fire, the sky
unfurled and clean of cloud – instead
of air I breathed a coloured arc –
a gift, a benison, a day to remember by
when other days are merely white
shading through grays into the lonely dark.
Or perhaps it was just a trick of the light,
of rowan berry on leaf on sky
and the mist between –
a trick of the red and blue and green
and the mist between.
*****
ROMANCE IN OLD AGE
By Mel Goldberg
At eighty-seven, I take my showers
with no mirrors after I awaken
because my wrinkled skin shows the hours
and years, nay the decades, it has taken
to achieve this look, and muscle beach
is just an ancient memory. It’s strange,
young people want to help me carry each
package, as if I’d undergone a change
and become a parody of a man
for whom they think, all pleasure has moved on.
But I have memories of loves that can
assuage the lonely time since they’ve been gone.
Each day I exercise, try to keep active –
some eighty-year-old might find me attractive.
*****
SLOWING DOWN
By Mel Goldberg
I rode the rapids on the wild Gauley
and shot the class six falls on New River.
I hiked a trail to old Tintern Abbey,
swam cold lakes that would make penguins shiver.
I dived the Blue Hole off Belizan coast
and saw pink dolphins in the Mariñon.
I ate Maori deep pit hangi roast
climbed Wayna Picchu while others looked on.
These were the past, the wildest off my years
but time has slowed me to have different dreams.
I never was one to give in to fears,
but now I seek milder events, it seems.
Yet I will strive until my final breath
and sail into that last adventure, death
*****
SONNET FOR MARIANNE
By Michael Warren
I hear your voice calling in the wind,
you hum a tune from purple flowers –
and as I scatter ash upon the land
I call to mind those last sweet hours
and how you called my name and held my hand.
How can I live in this house of ours
where every door and stairway speaks of you?
Are there no principalities, no powers
to bring you back, restore you to this view?
You’d call me sentimental, “get a life”
you’d say, and surely you’d be right.
I’ll take the past and cut it with a knife
and hang it in a corner of my heart.
We’re bound together, though we live apart.
*****
THREE HUNGRY DOGS INTENT UPON THEIR FEEDING
By Judy Dykstra Brown
At last at last she opens up her door
and feeds our sister first, lest we devour
her food ourselves and then not leave the poor
dear girl with any sustenance to power
her barking at the other dogs who pass.
But now our mother fills our bowls as well––
each portion measured by a measuring glass.
Each second we must wait becomes a Hell.
She scoops out first the dry and then the wet––
more for the big dog and less for the small.
We worry over how much food we’ll get,
remembering times when we had none at all.
But finally, our portions, too, are dished
(although not quite so full as we’d have wished.)
After he retired and moved to Sedona, Arizona, he taught literature at Yavapai College in Clarkdale, Arizona.
He and professional artist Bev Kephart bought a small motor home in 2003, sold most of their possessions, and traveled the U. S. for seven years. After visiting Mexico several times, they settled in the village of Ajijic, joining the ex-pat artist and writing communities.
Mel’s writing has been published online and in print in The United Kingdom, The United States, Mexico, New Zealand, and Australia. He is the author of three novels, a book of short stories, and several books of poetry. He and his wife now make their home in the village of San Nicholas de Ibarra.
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