loose threads

Happy October! This is my favorite month; heat starts to subside, the sun hits that wonderful angle, leaves change, life feels possible again after all that summer SAD (even though this summer was the best summer I’ve had in years).

My project for October is sonnets. It is going HORRIBLY! The second I start imposing rules on myself, I lose the ability to think. One reason I wanted to focus on sonnets was to give myself more lyrical writing practice. I’m not good at it, and I’m really jealous of lyrical writers and musicians who just…can do it like it’s breathing to them. I want to breathe like that too, dammit! But apparently, I am not that lyrical. I am just a mess of thoughts that I dump onto paper and then I shove them at you and go “ok done.”

So to start, I’ll share a couple of sonnets I’ve read over the past month or two that I enjoyed and then share four lines of an extremely rough draft that barely resembles a sonnet but has some nice alliteration. And I’ll share a song to really get you in the mood!

My goal is to write one sonnet (in whatever format I can handle) by the end of the month. Wish me luck!

For your listening pleasure, Sonnet by The Verve

“What lips my lips have kissed, and where, and why”
by Edna St. Vincent Millay

What lips my lips have kissed, and where, and why,
I have forgotten, and what arms have lain
Under my head till morning; but the rain
Is full of ghosts tonight, that tap and sigh
Upon the glass and listen for reply,
And in my heart there stirs a quiet pain
For unremembered lads that not again
Will turn to me at midnight with a cry.

Thus in the winter stands the lonely tree,
Nor knows what birds have vanished one by one,
Yet knows its boughs more silent than before:
I cannot say what loves have come and gone,
I only know that summer sang in me
A little while, that in me sings no more.

source

Sonnet On Famous And Familiar Sonnets And Experiences
by Anne Sexton
(With much help from Robert Good, William Shakespeare, 
John Milton, and little Catherine Schwartz)

Shall I compare her to a summer play?
She is too clever, too devious, too subtle, too dark:
Her lies are rare, but then she paves the way
Beyond the summer's sway, within the jejune park
Where all souls' aspiration to true nobility
Obliges Statues in the Frieze of Death
And when this pantomime and Panama of Panorama Fails,
"I'll never speak to you agayne" -- or waste her panting breath.

When I but think of how her years are spent
Deadening that one talent which -- for woman is --
Death or paralysis, denied: nature's intent
That each girl be a mother -- whether or not she is
Or has become a lawful wife or bride
-- 0 Alma Magna Mater, deathless the living death of pride.

source

Astrophil and Stella 1: Loving in truth, and fain in verse my love to show
by Sir Philip Sidney

Loving in truth, and fain in verse my love to show, 
That she, dear she, might take some pleasure of my pain,— 
Pleasure might cause her read, reading might make her know, 
Knowledge might pity win, and pity grace obtain,— 
I sought fit words to paint the blackest face of woe; 
Studying inventions fine her wits to entertain, 
Oft turning others' leaves, to see if thence would flow 
Some fresh and fruitful showers upon my sunburn'd brain. 
But words came halting forth, wanting invention's stay; 
Invention, Nature's child, fled step-dame Study's blows; 
And others' feet still seem'd but strangers in my way. 
Thus great with child to speak and helpless in my throes, 
Biting my truant pen, beating myself for spite, 
"Fool," said my Muse to me, "look in thy heart, and write."

source

Untitled Draft
by Rhonda Merrill

He sings to calm Ægir’s daughters, foaming sea
Bloody hair, transparent, lifting strands of salt-blushed water
Upon my lips as sails billow in an invisible breeze
Loosened from the lungs of the languid night