Malcolm Guite
NOTE: Anglican priest, songwriter and poet poet Malcolm Guite is becoming a favorite of VFTE. His work reflects that playful but profound interplay between the particular and the universal that is poetry’s great gift. Here’s Malcolm’s post for today.
A sonnet is made up of fourteen lines
With just ten syllables in each of them–
Which means for people reading on their phones
Some lines are split–which really is a shame.Almost all of old sonnets had a rhyme
On every other line for the first twelve.
Which works just fine almost all of the time,
But sometimes words are very hard to melve…The first four lines of this end with “half-rhyme.”
This is a trick that helps a poet make
More choices–not repeating all the time
The same old rhyme… A sonnet may then takeAn image to go far beyond the words–
Though some seem quite forced: two flying birds!
– Steve Shoemaker, Urbana, IL, New Years Day, 2014
Views from the Edge 