This is the sister page to SONNET, a literary magazine dedicated to the sonnet structure of poetry. SONNETIST features the poets who write sonnets.
Good News for our poetry and sonnet enthusiasts! Our first issue of SONNET 2018 titled, The Early Italian Sonnet, has been approved for publication as an open access journal. Stay tuned for the link which should be available by the summer of 2024, as we translate the journal for online access. Thanks,everyone, for your support and encouragement in making SONNET accessible to a larger readership.
Clearest image ever taken of Pluto.
Donne's "Holy Sonnets" demonstrate poetic structure's ability to build tension and release. Some scientists believe that this structure enables a rush of dopamine as we consume poetry.
—Alisha Isherwood, September guest editor for . https://bit.ly/3YUomOQ"
Happy Birthday Shakespeare 🎉🎉🎉
(You don't look a day over 459!) 😉
It's the big man's birthday! Here are (some of) the ways you can join in William Shakespeare's birthday party.
Sonnetists are such rebels.
https://daily.jstor.org/the-heretical-origins-of-the-sonnet/?fbclid=IwAR3GJm8C5Dh-zEIhWIRugZuwpsXTKT0eJG3-RZvslrU9XevPKjEBDDOIq8U
The lyrical poetic form’s origins can be traced back earlier than Petrarch.
I used to find the work of contemporary poets intimidating and inaccessible. Now it makes up 20% of my reading. Here's how that happened.
Mnemosyne: Sonnets of Lost Time is complete. I just wrote the final sonnet in this collection and will try to resist the temptation to change their order or to revise. Usually, one’s first decision is the best (well, usually). Inscribed and dedicated to my godmother, Emily Ryll, who loved all things classical. I am happy. Will celebrate tonight. 🥂
Dante was a Medieval Italian poet and philosopher whose poetic trilogy, 'The Divine Comedy,' made an indelible impression on both literature and theology.
Greetings, Everyone! I've had several questions about the publication date of SONNET, Volume II. The journal's editorial board has voted to change the journal from annual to biennial, meaning that the second volume will come out in 2020 and, afterward, the journal will be published every second year: 2020, 2022, 2024, and so on.
We've taken this action for a variety of reasons, but primarily due to time constraints in the publication schedule. We simply need more time to write and publish this excellent journal. The good news is that we are extending the submission deadline to June 30, 2020 in order to accept poetry, short stories, book & article reviews, research, and personal response pieces. We've had several requests for deadline extension and now are happy to announce that we can do so.
Volume II of SONNET is titled, "The Sonnets of Dante" and all Dante-themed work and reviews are welcome. So be of good cheer, poetry friends. The journal will come out in 2020 (a very unique year) for your reading pleasure. The work submitted thus far is of wonderful quality, and we extend a further invitation to join the journal family with your own submissions and poetry!
Best,
Barb & the Editorial Board of SONNET
Dear Friends of the Sonnet,
We are now accepting sonnet, article, and book review submissions for Volume II, 2020, The Sonnets of Dante. Original poetry submissions may be of all topics. Sonnets are preferred. Articles should be attuned to a Dante theme and we like variation and originality so be creative! Should you be interested in writing a book review, please contact Barbara Prescott, ed., for a list of books to be reviewed. We will also consider poetry books not on the list. Deadline for submissions is June 30, 2020.
Submissions and inquiries should be sent to: [email protected]
Thank you and we hope you join our journal family.
Dear Friends of the Sonnet,
We are now accepting sonnet, article, and book review submissions for Volume II, 2021, The Sonnets of Dante. Original poetry submissions may be of any type or on any topic. Sonnets are preferred. Articles should be attuned to a Dante theme. We like variation and originality, so be creative! Should you be interested in writing a book review, please contact Barbara Prescott, ed., for a list of books to be reviewed. We will also consider poetry books not on the list. Deadline for submissions is November 30, 2021.
Submissions and inquiries should be sent to: [email protected]
Thank you, and we hope you join our journal family.
SONNET is the Journal of the Stanford Poetry Alliance
SONNET HAS ARRIVED
Celebrate With Us! The first annual print edition of SONNET has arrived. Volume I, 2018, The Early Italian Sonnet, is now available. To all those amazing poets and writers who contributed to this first volume, we extend
our heartfelt thanks and congratulations. We thank particularly:
Ruth Asch, Raymond Clarke, Roman James Hoffman, Clinton Inman, Charlotte Kennedy, Joan Klaus, Kelly McGowan, Cate Millican, Catherine Shilka, Carole Sanderson Streeter, and Jennifer Visick.
Please contact me, Barbara Prescott, at [email protected] or through FB messages, with any questions regarding subscriptions, submissions, comments, or to make sure we have your current mailing address if you are a contributor to this 2018 edition of SONNET.
We extend our heartfelt appreciation to everyone who helped us toward the realization of this first print volume of SONNET. We made it happen in 2018!
ADRIENNE RICH (1929 - 2012). Implicit in Rich's image of the androgyne is the idea that we must write new myths, create new definitions of humanity which will not glorify this angry chasm but heal it.
Poet and essayist Adrienne Rich was one of America’s foremost public intellectuals. Widely read and hugely influential, Rich’s career spanned seven decades and has hewed closely to the story of post-war American poetry itself. Her earliest work, including A Change of World (1951) which won the prest...
Lady Mary Wroth, a Rennaissance sonnetist who was the first Englishwoman to write a complete sonnet sequence.
Lady Mary Wroth was the first Englishwoman to write a complete sonnet sequence as well as an original work of prose fiction. Although earlier women writers of the sixteenth century had mainly explored the genres of translation, dedication, and epitaph, Wroth openly transgressed the traditional bound...
Happy Birthday, Robert Browning.
Browning (1812-1889)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Browning
Robert Browning (7 May 1812 – 12 December 1889) was an English poet and playwright whose mastery of the dramatic monologue made him one of the foremost Victorian poets. His poems are known for their irony, characterization, dark humour, social commentary, historical settings, and challenging vocabul...
EDGAR ALLAN POE, 1809-1949. BOSTON, MA
On January 19, 1809, Edgar Allan Poe was born in Boston, Massachusetts. Poe’s father and mother, both professional actors, died before the poet was three years old, and John and Frances Allan raised him as a foster child in Richmond, Virginia. John Allan, a prosperous to***co exporter, sent Poe to the best boarding schools and later to the University of Virginia, where Poe excelled academically. After less than one year of school, however, he was forced to leave the university when Allan refused to pay Poe’s gambling debts.
Poe returned briefly to Richmond, but his relationship with Allan deteriorated. In 1827, he moved to Boston and enlisted in the United States Army. His first collection of poems, Tamerlane, and Other Poems, was published that year. In 1829, he published a second collection entitled Al Aaraaf, Tamerlane, and Minor Poems. Neither volume received significant critical or public attention. Following his Army service, Poe was admitted to the United States Military Academy, but he was again forced to leave for lack of financial support. He then moved into the home of his aunt Maria Clemm and her daughter Virginia in Baltimore, Maryland.
Poe began to sell short stories to magazines at around this time, and, in 1835, he became the editor of the Southern Literary Messenger in Richmond, where he moved with his aunt and cousin Virginia. In 1836, he married Virginia, who was fourteen years old at the time. Over the next ten years, Poe would edit a number of literary journals including the Burton’s Gentleman’s Magazine and Graham’s Magazine in Philadelphia and the Broadway Journal in New York City. It was during these years that he established himself as a poet, a short story writer, and an editor. He published some of his best-known stories and poems, including “The Fall of the House of Usher," “The Tell-Tale Heart," “The Murders in the Rue Morgue," and “The Raven.” After Virginia’s death from tuberculosis in 1847, Poe’s lifelong struggle with depression and alcoholism worsened. He returned briefly to Richmond in 1849 and then set out for an editing job in Philadelphia. For unknown reasons, he stopped in Baltimore. On October 3, 1849, he was found in a state of semi-consciousness. Poe died four days later of “acute congestion of the brain.” Evidence by medical practitioners who reopened the case has shown that Poe may have been suffering from rabies.
Poe’s work as an editor, a poet, and a critic had a profound impact on American and international literature. His stories mark him as one of the originators of both horror and detective fiction. Many anthologies credit him as the “architect” of the modern short story. He was also one of the first critics to focus primarily on the effect of style and structure in a literary work; as such, he has been seen as a forerunner to the “art for art’s sake” movement. French Symbolists such as Mallarmé and Rimbaud claimed him as a literary precursor. Baudelaire spent nearly fourteen years translating Poe into French. Today, Poe is remembered as one of the first American writers to become a major figure in world literature.
Poetry
Tamerlane and Other Poems (1827)
Al Aaraaf, Tamerlane, and Minor Poems (1829)
Poems (1831)
The Raven and Other Poems (1845)
Eureka: A Prose Poem (1848)
April is Poetry Month. Should you be in Chicago, be sure to visit the Poetry Foundation, 61 W. Superior Street. There will be a month-long celebration featuring poetry readings, activities for adults and children, as well as lectures and signings. Their huge library is filled with donated books from poets in the Chicago area. If you have written a book of poetry, think of donating it to the Foundation. They do not turn anyone down. Have to love their spirit of generosity. Always a joy to visit. ♥
Readings, performances, at other events at the Poetry Foundation.
William Butler Yeats (/ˈjeɪts/; 13 June 1865 – 28 January 1939) was an Irish poet and one of the foremost figures of 20th-century literature. A pillar of both the Irish and British literary establishments, he helped to found the Abbey Theatre, and in his later years served as an Irish Senator for two terms, and was a driving force behind the Irish Literary Revival. Yeats won the Nobel prize in 1923.
Nobelprize.org, The Official Web Site of the Nobel Prize
Iosif Aleksandrovich Brodsky (/ˈbrɒdski/; Russian: Ио́сиф Алекса́ндрович Бро́дский, IPA: [ɪˈosʲɪf ɐlʲɪˈksandrəvʲɪtɕ ˈbrotskʲɪj]; 24 May 1940 – 28 January 1996) was a Russian and American poet and essayist.
Born in Leningrad in 1940, Brodsky ran afoul of Soviet authorities and was expelled ("strongly advised" to emigrate) from the Soviet Union in 1972, settling in the United States with the help of W. H. Auden and other supporters. He taught thereafter at Mount Holyoke College, and at universities including Yale, Columbia, Cambridge and Michigan.
Brodsky was awarded the 1987 Nobel Prize in Literature "for an all-embracing authorship, imbued with clarity of thought and poetic intensity".He was appointed United States Poet Laureate in 1991.
Nobelprize.org, The Official Web Site of the Nobel Prize
The Life of Marianne Moore, 1887-1972. Courtesy, Poetry Foundation, Chicago, IL.
One of American literature’s foremost poets, Marianne Moore’s poetry is characterized by linguistic precision, keen and probing descriptions, and acute observations of people, places, animals, and art. Her poems often reflect her preoccupation with the relationships between the common and the uncomm...
Sonnetics (son-nét-ics) is the study and literary analysis of sonnets.
This is a word I first thought of several years ago when I started on the road toward the analysis and stylistics of the sonnet form and when I decided to publish a journal on this particular type of poetry. SONNET is an annual journal, the first issue of which is expected in Spring 2017. The journal features everything sonnet: poetry (traditional and modern), literary analysis, book reviews, sources for research, and introduces new sonnetists in each annual issue. We also introduce unique ways to consider, analyze, and write sonnets.
We are eager to have you join us in our continuing sonnet quest, and we hope you enjoy this new journal.
With warm welcome,
Barbara Prescott
Editor, SONNET
Sonnetics (son-nét-ics) is the study and literary analysis of sonnets.
SONNET is an annual journal, the first issue of which is expected in December 2018. So far we are on schedule. The journal features everything sonnet: poetry (traditional and modern), literary analysis, book reviews, sources for research, and introduces new sonnetists in each annual issue. We also introduce unique ways to consider, analyze, and write sonnets, hence the study of Sonnetics.
We cordially invite you join us in our continuing sonnet quest, and we hope you enjoy this new journal.
With warm welcome,
Barbara Prescott
Editor, SONNET
Happy Birthday, Dorothy L. Sayers and W.B. Yeats.
One of the few personality quirks Yeats and Sayers shared is a failing that plagues most writers: terrible romantic judgement.
"This would be a good thing for them to cut on my tombstone:
Wherever she went, including here, it was against her better judgment."
DOROTHY PARKER (1893-1967)
Sarcastic, raw, and deep describe many of Dorothy Parker's satirical poems, short stories, articles and journalism pieces. Dorothy was born in New Jersey on August 22, 1893 to J. Henry and Elizabeth Rothschild. She grew up on Manhattan's West Side and attended a Catholic grade school, then a finishing school. At 14 years, her education halted, and by 1913, at 20 years of age, she lost her mother, step-mother, uncle and father. Dorothy Parker found comfort in writing with a brutal honesty that still surrounds her memory.
“If you have any young friends who aspire to become writers, the second greatest favor you can do them is to present them with copies of "The Elements of Style." The first greatest, of course, is to shoot them now, while they’re happy.”---Dorothy Parker
Professional Career
In 1914 she sold her first poem to Vanity Fair, and then in 1916 at 22 she took a job as Editor for Vogue and continued to write for magazines and journals including The New Yorker. She was a member of the Algonquin Round Table group and became known for her "biting wit" and intense poetry. The group itself was an informal gathering of fairly well-known authors who resided in New York City. It was definitely an interesting group of amazing, yet dark, writers.
In 1917, she began working at Vanity Fair as an editor. In 1922, Dorothy published her first short story, "A Pretty Little Picture," and in 1925, she was on the Editorial Staff for the New Yorker. She continued contributing poems and critiques for many years to the publication. Parker’s first poetry collection, "Enough Rope", was published in 1926. It was a bestseller. The next two collections, "Sunset Gun" in 1928 and "Death and Taxes" in 1931 were also popular. In 1930 a collection of fiction was published, "Laments for the Living". In 1937, she wrote "A Star is Born", which won an Academy Award, and then in 1942 she wrote Hitchcock's, "Sabateur."
She was inducted into the American Academy of Arts and Letters in 1959 and was a visiting professor at California State College in Los Angeles in 1963.
Parker had a great sense of dark humor that combined her depressive temperament with a brilliant intelligence. She suffered tremendously from depression, addiction, and a su***de attempt.
Relationships Were Strained
Dorothy married a stock broker named Edwin Parker in 1917 and later they divorced in 1928 after a difficult marriage. She befriended many other writers of her time including Ernest Hemingway and F. Scott Fitzgerald. She was seen as a socialite of sorts and traveled often to Europe. In 1934 she married Alan Campbell and moved to California. They spent time together writing for MGM and Paramount. They divorced in 1947 and remarried in 1950. During their marriage(s) they were a well-known and well-paid team. Alan was reputed to have a moody disposition. In 1963, he died from a drug overdose.
Politics
Dorothy was a self-declared socialist and member of the Communist party. She was blacklisted because of her association with it, but she continued to write as a political force throughout this rough time for writers and actors. During the proceedings for the Un-American Activities, in 1955, she plead the Fifth. She was also a staunch civil rights activist and upon her own death from a heart attack on June 6, 1967, her estate was donated to Dr. Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. and later bequeathed to the NAACP.
Legacy
Dorothy courageously survived many losses in her life, lived on both American coasts, traveled extensively, and had a robust personal and professional life. Her prolific collection of work is remarkably innovative with its genius of wit. Although for Parker life was a constant transition, she had the consistency of talent and voice to pull her through even the darkest of times.
Sir Wilfrid Scawen Blunt and Lady Anne Blunt
THE LOVE SONNETS OF PROTEUS
Sir Wilfred Blunt was born August 17,1840 and was the second son of Francis Blunt, the scion of an old Sussex family. Unfortunately, Blunt's father died two years later. His mother leased the family estate, Crabbet Park, and wandered with her three young children in desultory fashion throughout England and Europe. At the age of eighteen Blunt passed the examination for the diplomatic service and for twelve years he served as an attaché to British embassies and legations in Athens, Constantinople, Lisbon, Madrid, Paris and Frankfurt. It was also during this time that the handsome Blunt pursued his favorite pastime, the seduction of beautiful, often married, aristocratic women.
Blunt ended up marrying a very different sort of woman. Lady Anne King Noel was twenty-nine years old when they first met in Florence, Italy. She was chaste, rich and attractive in an unassuming way. Blunt described her in later years:
She thought herself plainer than she was, and had none of the ways of a pretty woman, though in truth she had the prettiness that a bird has, a redbreast or a nightingale, agreeable to the eye if not aggressively attractive. She had beautiful white teeth and a complexion [that was] rather brown than fair.... In stature [she was] less than tall, well poised and active, with a trim light figure set on a pair of small high-instepped feet. It is thus I see her in recollection, an unobtrusive quiet figure.... dressed in pale russet with a single crimson rose for ornament, rather behind the fashion of the day, but dignified and bright.
Lady Anne came with a remarkable family history. She was the child of Lord Byron's daughter, Augusta Ada, and had been brought up largely by her grandmother, Lady Byron. She had spent most of her youth in Europe. By the time Blunt met her, Lady Anne already boasted several impressive achievements: fluency in French, German, Italian and Spanish; a considerable artistic talent (she had studied drawing under John Ruskin); and some musical skills (she owned two Stradivarius violins and practiced them five hours a day).
Blunt was attracted to her almost from the first. A marriage to the heir of the Byronic tradition appealed very strongly as a major first step in his own poetic progress. Nor was he indifferent to the obvious advantages of her annual income of some £3,000 when his own, as a second son, had dwindled to £700. Later Blunt discovered he had in her a perfect companion for his Arabian travels. She was a woman courageous, tough, resourceful, cool-headed in life- threatening crises, self-reliant, adaptable and shared his major interests in Orientalism and horses.
They were married on June 8, 1869 in London. In the summer of 1873 they began their first adventure to the Middle East. In the winter of 1875-76 the Blunts visited Egypt. After leaving Egypt, they hired Bedouins and camels and made a leisurely trip through the Sinai to Jerusalem. While crossing the desert, the small group ran out of water and almost died of thirst. However, the Blunts survived the experience and gained a rudimentary knowledge of Arabic, an insatiable desire to learn more about the Muslim culture and a determination to mount a major expedition into central Arabia.
There were years of pain as well as pleasure. Lady Anne suffered one miscarriage after another, the first occurring just two months after their wedding. A year later she delivered a son who died after 4 days. In 1872 she delivered twin girls. One died immediately. Lady Anne took the other in her arms. "Oh, it was so lovely to me, it had feet and hands like its father, and its voice went to my heart," she wrote. The baby died a few days later. And so it went through one terrible pregnancy after another. Both were keenly aware that their families were among only sixty-eight in England that had come over from Normandy with William the Conqueror in 1066. Blunt especially was desperate for a son to carry on the family line and each failure devastated him.
In the spring of 1872, Blunt's older brother unexpectedly died and he inherited the ancestral estate at Crabbet Park. Suddenly the couple found themselves with a country house, 4,000 acres, fifteen servants and an annual income of £21,000. Blunt immediately set about restoring the dilapidated Tudor manor house. On February 6, 1873, Lady Anne gave birth to a daughter. She lived and they named her Judith Anne Dorothea. She grew up as an only child.
In late November of 1877 the Blunts returned to the Middle East to begin their first expedition. It was not until January 9, 1878 that their small caravan departed from Aleppo. At the end of their adventures (I encourage reading Lady Anne's account of the trip in her book Bedouin Tribes of the Euphrates) the Blunts sailed home to England with six Arabian mares that were to form the heart of the famous Crabbet Arabian Stud farm. The idea had been the brainchild of their friend in Aleppo, James Skene, who also joined as a general partner. Blunt believed that the Arabian horse was the finest in the world but in order to develop its full potential it must be bred in England. Within a few years the Crabbet's stud reputation had spread throughout England.
In late 1878 the Blunts decided to return to the Middle East, this time to pe*****te northern Arabia and the Nejd, the highlands sacred to all Syrian Bedouins as their ancestral homeland. It was also considered the birthplace of the Arabian horse. Isolated by rugged mountains and fierce deserts, few regions in the world were more inaccessible. Only three European men had preceded them. Lady Anne would be the first European woman to visit the Arabian Peninsula. (I encourage reading Lady Anne's account of this trip in her book A Pilgrimage to Nejd).
In 1882 the Blunts purchased Sheykh Obeyd, a thirty-two acre house and walled garden on the outskirts of Cairo in the desert near the pyramids. The estate was originally owned by Ibrahim Pasha, uncle to Abbas Pasha. A family friend, Frederic Harrison, visited Sheykh Obeyd in 1895 and wrote a full description of the Blunt's life in Egypt:
Naomi Shihab Nye : The Poetry Foundation
Naomi Shihab Nye was born in St. Louis, Missouri in 1952. Her father was a Palestinian refugee and her mother an American of German and Swiss descent, and Nye spent her adolescence in both ...
Happy Birthday, Edna St. Vincent Millay.
Edna St. Vincent Millay was born this day
MARCH 2016 (Spring)
JOAN DREW RITCHINGS (1916-2002)
Artist, poet, sculptor, graphic designer, printmaker, librettist, and publisher, Joan Drew Ritchings was a twentieth century Renaissance woman. Pictured below are Joan and her two owls, Oliver and Shakespeare, in the 1960s.
The prints of Joan Drew Ritchings have been exhibited throughout the country and were a part of the Princeton University Library, Nelson Rockefeller, Philadelphia Art Museum, Nelson Rockefeller collections; have appeared on the cover page of the New York Times Sunday Book Reviews, have been sent abroad by the U.S. State Department’s Art in Embassies program, and have graced record albums, book jackets, and performing arts programs. Her fine prints number close to 5,000 and include serigraphs, lithographs, woodcuts, etchings, and lace prints.
The first edition of her most popular print, “Fifty Eight People and a Tree,” sold out at the Christmas Exhibit in the Members Gallery of the Museum of Modern Art. She has written and illustrated “Eva the Fair,” a 685-page love story set in the Middle Ages (entirely in verse) “Genesis of Three,” poems about her children: and the libretto for an opera by conductor and composer David Jackson, “Welcome Jesus!” which was performed with full orchestra and vocalists in 1988.
Her poems have been published in The Writer, The Formalist, Light Quarterly and other literary periodicals, as well as several anthologies and Writing Poems, a poetry textbook by Robert Wallace. She founded the Gray Moose Press, for which she designed, illustrated, and bound fourteen books, some of which are in the collections of Brown University Library, the Library of Congress, the Small Press Center, and the Grolier Club of New York City.
L.L. Musings
ZERO DARK EMILY
Read this fascinating reincarnation of poet Emily Dickinson as she is presented in an entirely different persona by Jerome Charyn.
"She was a captive unto herself, her own prisoner of war, who pulled lightning from the chaos in her head, danced on her toes, broke down syntax like bits of crockery, and then reassembled the broken bits in a way no one had ever done before."
Click on the link below, courtesy Stay Thirsty Magazine. http://www.staythirstymedia.com/201601-091/html/201601-charyn-emily.html
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