Available bauble be the fragment not the day

sonnet no. xxxiii

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Please read further for an end-of-year update.

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Notes

This poem is an allusion. Every word and phrase has been picked out from a Sondheim lyric in an attempt to do two things: honor the memory of Stephen Sondheim in a jumbled puzzle that I think he (a lover of puzzles) would appreciate, and give a visual and musical representation of his songs as they have wandered through my mind since his death. To the Sondheim fan, I hope you hear the echoes of the songs as you enter the poem; to those without, I hope the poem has on its own merit a music and truth that is tangible. I hope I’ve been a good thief.

Aside from the puzzle of the poem, here is another: there are 22 songs fragmented into this poem (some repeat). If you think you have them, please list them in the comments. I should note that in one case the words are jumbled (and I use the wrong pronoun) and in another case I make a homophone of the original (but the original was such a cheat of a rhyme that I think Steve would’ve been fine with my cheat too).

This poem is dedicated to my mother. She is the bar-none Sondheim aficionado, and without her love for the composer instilled on her children, this poem would not exist.

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Wrapping it up for the year

Although the first sonnet of this series came out in March, I actually got started with the project in mid-December last year. Coming to the end of the first year, I’m really pleased with this project and have no wish to stop now.

That being said, I am planning to take a break from the usual weekly process of writing the sonnet to explore some other writing and spend some time thinking back on what this project has accomplished, so far, and where I think it could head in the next year. For that purpose, this will be my last published sonnet for 2021; the next sonnet will be Monday, January 3rd, 2022.

If some of you are new subscribers, please visit this Substack page where all the poems of the year have been archived.