October 2-3

HOW TO CONSTRUCT A SONNET  by Bruce Bennett

Mexican American Sonnet by Iliana Rocha

American Sonnet for the New Year  — Terrance Hayes

Sonnet by Billy Collins

American Sonnet — by Billy Collins

For Example  by Adrienne Rich

You Say You Said  by Marianne Moore

We Are Saying Yes, But Who Are We to Say  BY KHALED MATTAWA

Cleverness!  Bruce Bennett''s playfulness takes alternating rhyme, includes a volta, and off we go,

abab Donne... aha!  we go Shakespearian... make another choice at line 8, open or closed?

As for the term "American Sonnet" , much can be found about the liberties (perhaps a sonnet's pursuit of happiness?) by the adjective.

"The American Sonnet was the creation of James Gates Percival (1795-1856)

His sonnets are beautiful productions. Illegitimate in form, they yet show a true conception of what the sonnet ought to be, in tone, general structure, and character of melody. In several cases the poet invented a form of his own, by a novel and a not ineffective disposition of rhymes"

  For a Mexican-American  sonnet,  the rhyming words paint a picture of the Mexico of the speaker : "tenedors" with cathedral floors; want with "Verdad"; asks/pasts; hurricane/migraine; inwardness/sadness.  The note "about the poem" mentions that the "ultimate rebellion of Chicansas is through sexuality" but neither group noted it.  "To disrupt a hurricane's path with our own inwardness" coupled with the rhyming words, "migraine and sadness" points to what the poet calls "internalized self-hatred... the irony being "while individuals with racist and discriminatory views are erroneous in their worry about the negative effects of immigrants on the external world, it is the world of the Mexican speaker of the poem, that her internal world is under duress.  

We loved the Terrance Hayes poem -- the use of adverbs, the pile up of repetitions. 

Things do get terribly ugly incredibly quickly.  3 end rhymes of quickly... and one reads it quickly...
the word "ugly" repeated each line except the penultimate... "regularly, truly quickly things got really incredibly and hopefully ends it up.

The Billy Collins sonnet is a playful , demonstration of unrhymed 14-liners.  The American Sonnet, adopts the same playful spirit, written in tercets -- playing on "stanza" by calling the space "little room" like a postcard poem on vacation  and ending with "Back in the typed line/was room for everything."
It's in quotes...  Perhaps he is referring to the Adrienne Rich poem... perhaps graffiti?  
Lots of lovely sensory details... but also poking fun at human nature... the "postcard-sized" trivialities we express to each other.

The Adrienne Rich poem is intriguing and alluring… and also refers to "sounds too // that live in a typed line"...   The title starts in media res... 
For Example...  
What is the context?  By the end of the first tercet, you know it's about poetry... 

The Marianne Moore, also makes a commentary on the treachery of language. Her title, "You Say You Said" is intriguing...and needs the first line "Few words are best" in quotes to be understood.   Her line breaks, indentations, repeat of Disgust .. first, in a short sentence, for its discretion, (like  the equinox/ all things  in /One.  The rest of the poem in 13 lines gives voice and is the voice of disgust.  One participant summed it up this way: disgust helps me against dishonesty… It certainly intimates the 20’s aggressive isolationism/. immigration laws… 

A twist on the title,  We Are Saying Yes, But Who Are We to Say  BY KHALED MATTAWA.  We listened to him read his poem: it is read with intense anger. emphasis and power, changes tone at the end. The  Arab Spring 32 years ago… comes out in  "do I go back?" in this  narrative of wrestling… Oh dear lord... and it
feels there is answer to his prayer, where the  real baby does indeed ensure a new beginning