I’m entirely open to publishing sonnets and other “traditional” forms (i.e pre-free verse, which is, itself, a traditional form by now). But I want the poet to show me something in the form that I haven’t seen before, and that probably results from the poet’s conducting a struggle with the tradition, or at least an exploration of what the form can be and do today.

For quick illustration: we can see, for instance, the Elizabethans adjusting Petrarch’s form (thought division and rhyming) to English ballad structure (rhymed quatrains) and Chaucerian iambics (Petrarch’s lines aren’t 10 syllables*), Shakespeare extending content and perfecting that ironic closing couplet, Milton accepting the challenge to do something that does not sound like an imitation of Shakespeare, then Wordsworth inventing his own way, then Arnold. In the U.S. Bryant’s sonnets sound imitative of Wordsworth (and English Romanticism), but then Robinson picks up on the story-telling in quatrained poems by Longfellow and Whittier, and, wanting to be a novelist, offers character sketches and tells short stories in sonnet form with Petrarchan rhyme scheme (or, wanting to write for the stage, writes a bit of monologue in sonnet form, in “How Annandale Went Out”). When Frost was inventing his “Robert Frost” persona and voice, and his organic rhyme patterns, often in iambic pentamenter lines, he applied both in sonnets. Cummings set his experiments and his voice to work in the sonnet form with such innovation that many readers of his many sonnets probably don’t notice that they’re reading sonnets.

So somebody who reads a lot of poetry today wants to see how a new sonnet responds to all that, and to today’s way of life. “Today” might mean the new forms taken by sexuality, romance, love, marriage or not, child-rearing, etc; affluence and the unequal division of wealth; pop culture; long life spans; multi-cultural democracy; megacities; terror and warfare; globalization, religious fanaticism—you tell me. Show me the form that a credible sonnet can take in my life, and let me hear a voice that is itself a saying of something. Who are these people all around me, and what is happening to them? What are they trying to say? What do they mean? Show me that the sonnet can do them justice.

*in the samples at this link, the translations are rendered in 10s, but I'm pretty sure that even allowing for maximum elision Petrarch's lines are mostly 12s or 13s (interestingly, a lot lines in American blank verse tend to run out to 11s, 12s, or even 13s; I think it's something about spoken American English).

Tom Koontz, Editor
Barnwood magazine
Barnwood Press

A letter and sonnet by Willis Barnstone.
A letter and sonnet by Michael Heffernan.
A sonnet issue of The Courtland Review, edited and introduced by Jennifer Wallace, with poems and a helpful essay by Tony Barnstone.

Reader response:

Email from Peter Davis:
and anybody writing sonnets today should also read ted berrigan's book Sonnets as he also expands/struggles with the form
from Hitler's Mustache [by PD], the mustache being creepy on the bus is a sonnet where the end words were already picked out, a "bout ryhmes" or something like that, by the editors of Court Green who had a "dossier" of these sonnets with the same end words...my contribution to the form? i used the word mustache in every line...it would have been better if i could have used it twice in every line
i've written good sestinas but i don't know about sonnets....for me the problem is how tidy they tend to be...just something about 14 lines i guess....