Sunday, November 26, 2017

Sonnets for Everyone, Historical Ignorance, Shut-In Rehearsal



I’ve needed some motivation for a while to pick up the pen and get back to some good old-fashioned formal poem-writin’, and I finally got a kick in the pants to do so. As a result, I started playing around with sonnets. It’s not a form I felt particularly drawn to in the past, but they’re relatively simple and brief, good for a gentle transition back into formal verse. As I was poking around on the internet looking for sonnet examples, I came across the best thing I have ever seen in my entire life: Pop Sonnets, a Tumbr site of sonnets based on pop songs. I have no words. Just read it. Also, if you want a more intellectual deep dive into the sonnet form, enjoy this piece by Annie Finch. It’s an excellent introduction to sonnets and a good analysis of the form. It hasn’t helped me finish the last two lines of my dead mouse sonnet, though. I keep thinking that if leave the poem alone and come back to it few hours later, the lines will have magically written themselves. That’s not happening, either. It seems that I’m going to have put actual effort and thought into it. Bleh.

Speaking of anthropomorphizing, last night I did something completely out of character for me and watched “Sing” in its entirety. I am neither a fan of pop music or nor a fan of cutesy animated films, but I needed some serious brain bleach, because, also out of character for me, I’ve been brushing up on history and recently started reading the “The Gulag Archipelago” by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn. It’s beyond disturbing, and I wasn’t going to sleep well with that content being the last thing on my mind before I nodded off. I can’t put my finger on exactly what led to this new-found interest in history, except that I know that I’m ignorant of it, and I’m growing increasingly uncomfortable with that. My teachers in high school and junior high could not have made the subject less interesting. I couldn’t for the life of me muster up excitement about who conquered who in some obscure battle in ancient Persia. While I do blame the utterly dismal early “education” I received in history for my life-long distaste of it, I’m a grown adult now and perfectly capable of availing myself of the endless resources one can get totally for free online. I feel the increasing need to be armed with historical knowledge, and there’s plenty of it out there.  

I have pretty much holed up in the apartment over the long holiday weekend. I haven’t gone to the gym or out walking or even to the corner store for chips. It’s utter garbage outside and I think it’s probably dangerous to go out there. It’s actually dark, and there’s a freezing cold rain, and a heavy wind is blowing the last of the fall leaves all over the place and it’s probably best to just stay inside, where it’s warm and things can’t at get me. Besides, I have to practice up for when I inevitably become a full-fledged shut-in. I guess it’s back to puzzling through my dead mouse sonnet. Stay safe out there, folks. 

--Kristen McHenry

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