A Photographer in Words
The sonnet has always held a charm for poets writing in English, though it has gone in and out of fashion. The Elizabethan and 17th-century poets—from Shakespeare to Milton—mastered the form, which they imported from Italy. In the 18th century, the heroic couplet surged to the fore, but the Romantic poets revitalized the sonnet when they rebelled against the neoclassicism of Alexander Pope. In subject matter and mood, such Romantic-era sonnets as Shelley’s “Ozymandias,” Keats’s “When I Have Fears,” and Wordsworth’s “Composed upon Westminster Bridge, September 3, 1802” couldn’t differ more dramatically from the amatory seduction and religious devotion sequences of the late Renaissance. Among modern masters of the sonnet, I immediately think not only of Edna St. Vincent Millay and Robert Frost but also of less well-known poets such as Elinor Wylie and Delmore Schwartz.
Are we witnessing a revival of the sonnet? Ken Gordon, who edits a Substack blog called The Sonneteer, thinks so; he has published some splendid examples, and team NLP has now furnished more evidence. Our February prompt called for a sonnet on either regrets or resolutions. No fewer than 114 comments—both entries and responses to them—turned up.
A tip of the fedora to all who posted sonnets: The quality was remarkably high. Of the many poems that pleased me, I would like to highlight some that manage quite wondrously to adhere to a demanding rhyme pattern without resorting to the never-never land of poetic fancy.
Not the least striking thing about Elijah Blumov’s “Moses Upon Nebo” is that the end words themselves amount to the concentrate of a poem. But I would lay more emphasis on the poem’s biblical epigraph and the intellectual problem it poses:
<< I have caused thee to see it with thine eyes, but thou shalt not go over thither. — Deuteronomy 34:4
Jerusalem has only been a dream.
Every night I writhed upon the sand
I saw it: this adored, forbidden land,
which now appears only at the extreme
edge of my life. My Lord, I understand:
No man can gaze upon what is supreme
and live, unless it be the faintest gleam,
and even this the mind can hardly stand.
So only others, those who cannot see,
may dwell amidst the splendor of your kingdom,
while those who have known beauty, such as I,
must tremble in a partial ecstasy,
this being but the limit of our wisdom,
and hopelessly in longing, love and die. >>
Preparing to meet his death, Moses on Mount Nebo must also make his peace with the knowledge that he will not be allowed to enter the Promised Land. It is a lesson in humility, puzzling even after one modifies the view that God is omni-benevolent in human terms.
In Deuteronomy, we learn that “there arose not a prophet since in Israel like unto Moses, whom the Lord knew face to face.” If Moses is denied entrance, what about the rest of us, “who cannot see”? Sight and vision are exactly what the Lord grants Moses: the sight of “this adored, forbidden land, / which now appears only at the extreme / edge of my life.”
The story and its significance—the “partial ecstasy” that makes one “tremble,” the wisdom that has a “limit,” the idea that “no man can gaze upon what is supreme / and live”—these are complicated matters, and Elijah treats them with graceful ease. He achieves sublime effects contrasting the man “whom the Lord knew face to face” with those of us “who cannot see.”
If we judge by the number of thumbs-up likes, Pedro Poitevin’s “After Watching Cars 3 on Father’s Day” was the most popular submission:
For years I’d kept ahead of him on laps
around the track between his soccer games.
Today my son blew past me. Aging claims
its wins, but this one—sweetness in collapse—
alone among the losses I’ve been handed
felt less like grief than love. And when the screen
lit up tonight with Pixar’s saccharine
and swelling horns, I sniveled, if I’m candid,
my legs quite ready to concede some points.
But then the movie snob in me awoke
and pierced the Randy Newman score; he spoke:
This kitsch won’t do. Tomorrow–damn my joints–
the blushing sun will prick the morning’s skin
and find me training for my comeback win
Pedro’s use of the A-B-B-A rhyme scheme, culminating in a couplet that expresses the poet’s resolution, is inspired (“screen” paired with “saccharine”), as is his handling of the theme of fathers and sons. Among other things, I admired the phrase “sweetness in collapse” and the command of iambic pentameter. The poem is “almost disturbingly well-crafted,” wrote Michael C. Rush. “Bravo!”
Michael himself scored with a February 14th special, “Declining the Valentine”:
Again I resolve to temper my regret,
and again the pull toward self-blame returns
to void my pledge and vex the sense that spurns
my aim for calm, that casts me back in debt
for missteps by all forgotten, beset
by cerebral flames, ornamental burns
across my heart, scars of remorse, patterns
to remind me of the self-delivered threat.
My fingers linger loath to leave unread
this bloody valentine of self-regard
and self-condemnation, but, cold, my head
resists my desperate efforts to safeguard
self against the well-spring of my dread:
I’m left again self-feathered and self-tarred.
The rhyme pattern—A-B-B-A for the opening stanza, then C-D-C-D-C-D—works as both a restraint on the poet’s natural expansiveness and a reminder that the boundary line between poetry and music may dissolve to our delight. Millicent Caliban admired the sestet (the poem’s final six lines) as “especially lovely,” and Diana Ferraro, seconding the motion, applauded the “contrast between suffering and a powerful voice.”
Of the several fine sonnets submitted by Amanda J. Bradley, “Enduring Love” charmed me with its lovely alliteration (“I’m loathe to speak of love in lieu of friends”), but if I had to choose just one, I’d pick “Upon Reading Berryman’s Sonnets”:
What so sexy in a sonnet lurks?
Is it between the lines as legs or sheets
hide wonders lovers clamber to repeat,
or is it the tradition that it works?
Does language force the mental tongue embark
on crevices and larks that tempt to heat
the flush and pulse of skin that suffers sweet,
such lush and ample games of toward remark?
If you, my dear, would love me half as well,
your touch incline me to such ecstasies
as when I read the pain in what you write,
I would not rise from bed to answer hell,
nor salvage purity on bended knees.
I dare you, love. Mindfuck me through the night.
Amanda’s sure-handedness with iambic pentameter—“as when I read the pain in what you write,” ten perfect monosyllables—is matched by the stunning audacity of her conclusion.
Among sonnets that eschewed rhyme, Charise Hoge’s “Open-Ended” boasts a great opening line, a splendid music track, and a day-after atmosphere marked by “Leftover champagne and strawberries / rank in the refrigerator.” Note how the enjambment enhances the meaning of lines two and three:
Life, an unfinished sonnet.
Leftover champagne and strawberries
rank in the refrigerator, unkempt
handkerchiefs and bedding.
Alexa plays Tony Bennett, Sinatra,
Coleman Hawkins, personal bests of
a nonagenarian. Colliding eras
travel through you, time absolved
for running its course. Enjoy life…
your adage before ever-waning talk,
the leave-taking from two daughters. Rife
with resolutions, January has starts and stops.
Your eyes captive to… what? Arms that adjust
folds of space, lift and reach through gravitas.
Heather Newman‘s “Regret” winningly focuses on a minor annoyance to drive home the truth that “Some things / you just live with.”
It’s not the needle in a haystack
but a splinter in the sole of my foot
that reminds me. Some things
you just live with. A sliver, a shard,
even that needle of hay can nestle in
deep. But you walk and you walk
and it gets worked out or you stop to address
the pain. Some do it gently with a soak.
I prefer a jab with sharp tweezers.
Wound care sounds dramatic– it’s not like
I stepped on a cactus. As these things go,
the bottom of a foot might be the best place
of defense. No heartburn padding around on
orthotics, painting toe nails, hiding the scars.
And additional congratulations to Heather, whose book Unidentified Domestic Object has just been published.
Other excellent sonnets brightened my day—too many to quote here. But let me at least mention Rachael Watson, who hooks the reader with her opening lines: “You must let rhyme break your ego he said, / dangling brilliance like a fresh, wriggling worm.” Millicent Caliban revisits Eden: “The juice was sweet and quickly bred desire. / Eager I was to share it with my mate.” Emily Vogel uses great-sounding end-words—res, curds, lez, fuzz, buzz—and makes the point that “we hijack words,” as in the line “I texted a lover with jasmine burning.”
For next time, two options occur to me as equally compelling prompts:
- Observe someone or something—a child, a pet, a tree—and write a brief poem, the briefer the better, describing the object of your attention. Leave yourself out of it. Omit adjectives and adverbs. Be a photographer in words.
- April 1, the deadline for submissions, is also April Fool’s Day—the first day of “the cruelest month” (T. S. Eliot), the month of showers preceding May’s Write an April-themed poem in 14 lines or less: a good jest in verse or a parody, perhaps; an explanation or refutation of Eliot’s line; or simply a salute to the advent of spring.
Deadline: April 1, 2026.
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