Tuesday, June 10, 2014

I Think That I Shall Never See

By Michael Seese

OK, so that one has been used.

If you follow me on Twitter, you know that I've been writing a lot of micropoetry lately. (Of course even if you don't follow me, I have been writing it.) Since it's Twitter, naturally the poems must have fewer than 140 characters.

I've been doing so much that I began to wonder whether I still could write longer poems. 

Well, I'm taking the opportunity to stretch my poetic muscles once again. A few weeks ago, I learned about the Great River Shakespeare Festival Sonnet Contest. 

If you don't remember your high school English lessons (don't worry, I had to look it up) a sonnet must be 14 lines, with a specific rhyming scheme.

Wikipedia does a nice job of explaining the details. But three of the more popular varieties are:

Italian (Petrarchan): a-b-b-a, a-b-b-a, c-d-e-c-d-e   or
                                           a-b-b-a, a-b-b-a, c-d-c-c-d-c

English (Shakespearean): a-b-a-b, c-d-c-d, e-f-e-f, g-g

Spenserian sonnet: a-b-a-b, b-c-b-c, c-d-c-d, e-e


The contest is $5 for three sonnets. So you bet your booty I'm going to write three. I've already got one done. I'd love to share it here. But the contest is blind-judged, so I don't want to mess anything up. 

The deadline is July 1, with winners announced August 2.

Cross your fingers, my friends.

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