Comments on: Tactics for Contemporary Sonnets

By: Robert

Robert — Sun, 21 Sep 2008 08:14:04 +0000

Sounds like a beautiful place to be working on a fascinating project. Best wishes!

By: Robin Ridington

Robin Ridington — Sun, 21 Sep 2008 07:35:06 +0000

I’m launching a book of ethnographic narrative, cultural commentary and sonnets at Galiano Island Books. If you’d like a review copy I can send one. You can see the cover & blurb at http://www.retreatisland.com. The book is called, The Poets Don’t Write Sonnets anymore.

By: Robert

Robert — Fri, 20 Jul 2007 20:42:33 +0000

Aw, shucks. Thanks for your kind words.

By: julie

julie — Thu, 19 Jul 2007 19:48:10 +0000

Thank you for your comments of late.

Your website is beautiful and sophisticated!

By: Robert

Robert — Wed, 18 Jul 2007 03:31:03 +0000

Thanks, Jim. In my undergrad days, I found it surprisingly easy to crank out sonnets (sometimes during boring lectures). Reading through some of “the greats” it occurred to me it’s not actually that hard to bang out a mediocre one. Writing a great one, however – whew!

“Look on my sonnets, yet Mighty, and despair!”

By: Jim Finnegan

Jim Finnegan — Wed, 18 Jul 2007 03:24:38 +0000

I enjoyed your thinking about this endlessly captivating form. I have had a long love-hate relationship to the form. A great sonnet gets written and then over the years hundreds of knock-offs are manufactured. Some sonnets are hard to get away from. I once wrote a shadow version of Shelley’s “Ozymadias,” realizing it only after the poem was finished. But I still kept the poem.

By: Robert

Robert — Tue, 17 Jul 2007 23:48:19 +0000

Thanks, Keith. Glad you liked this post.

Thanks also for the tip on Vendler. I’m also fond of Stephen Booth’s reading of Shakespeare’s sonnets.

Sonnet on!

By: Keith

Keith — Tue, 17 Jul 2007 13:32:02 +0000

Robert, wonderful post.

I have been going on about the sonnet (in a much less interesting way than you) for some time on my page. Posted the Martin poem a few days back even.

Yes, the Penguin book is very nice. I also picked up around the same time the Bender Squire anthology and John Fowler’s Sonnet anthology; quite a bit of overlap between the books though the Fowler book is slanted more toward British writers. All that to say, I am studying sonnets about as intensely as I can.

Am also reading a fantastic book by Helen Vendler – the Art of Shakespeare’s sonnets. A sequential study of each sonnet and a great introduction. If you have not read it, party on Garth.