First twelve sonnets
A glib retrospective
Thanks to everyone who has reached out these first twelve weeks of this project: it has been nice to hear your feedback. I’ve really enjoyed writing these sonnets and hearing which ones spoke to you.
Last week (Memorial Day) I got my first Monday off since starting this project, and it couldn’t come too soon. I spent the week fast drafting new poems, and spending some time thinking about where this project is going. Here were some of my thoughts (in no particular order).
On causation. There is no room in a sonnet to dwell on what inspired it. The cause is addressed in a single line and then forgotten in a sequence of associated images, rhythm and sound.
The best sonnet’s first line was its cause, the rest of the poem the effect. The worst sonnet was too muddled up in explaining cause it allowed no room for the effect.
Everyone opened this poem, whose title rates #1 as click bait. In fact, it is only click bait: the substance of it incredibly shallow. It was a parlor trick of a poem, pretending to mean something. Even my best critic was politely quiet about this poem, and yet it received the most opens. Which says something about click bait.
Terrance Hayes’ American Sonnets for my Past and Future Assassin was very close to the keyboard for all these poems — but have you met Wanda Coleman?
Every morning at just about six a.m. one of our maple tree squirrels jumps from the tree to the roof of the chapel, its thud always taking me out of whatever I’m writing. Squirrels apparently have a schedule to keep.
Contrary to my expectations, there seems to be something to say about being a white cisgender heterosexual, gender-conforming male, except its very very dark. It’s easy to see why most white cisgender heterosexual, gender-conforming male poets leave their identity out of it. That’s a cowardice (??).
Most of the poems I wrote suffered from proximity: it always helps to set the poem down and walk away for a bit, but the rigor of this schedule — a poem a week! — didn’t allow for it. Therefore, I’m changing the schedule a little bit, and will be publishing five (5, v) poems for 5 (v, five) consecutive weeks, then taking two weeks off to fast draft and brood. I may change it up again if that pace is too leisurely.
In the interim of the 2 weeks off I hope to run smaller posts that are more expository, something offered to paid subscribers (see below).
Subscriptions
A few of you have asked why I don’t open up a paid subscription, which is a generous idea. Initially, I haven’t done so because I do not depend on this project financially, and if I did have paid subscribers I would feel under pressure to write paid-subscription posts, which I don’t know what that would entail.
As this first twelve weeks has progressed, I’ve given more thought to the paid subscription. I’m not sure if people notice that each post comes with a free image from Pexels, where many amateur photographers post plenty of images for use, usually asking for a donation. I have been giving a modest donation to the photographers as a way of saying thanks; subscribers to this substack would help with that donation (and even increase it). So in the next week or so I’ll be setting that up: it will probably be the cost of a coffee per month. The extra posts will be intermittent, and probably be about poetry and process, taking its inspiration from Richard Hugo’s “The Triggering Town”.