SPRING 2019 SONNET COMPETITION WINNER (New)
Benjamin Claggart Ambition (A sonnet in the olde style.) To dream is only to live in vain hope While promise brings us nothing that survives, Nor does pleasure seem to find her proper scope Within the confines of our daily lives. Hence I will to my own distractions sing, Like a Bluebird sailing gaily by the sun, Only of the fair blossoms of the spring, Of the nest, of simple joys as yet undone -- Before death rakes my dry bones to ash Before the chilled thought stirs my wretched soul To regret these idle days when Time passed So near ambition that forsook its goal. How senseless seem these fears that want my care; Better to have lived than to brook despair. Biographical information, favorite public domain poem. |
FALL 2018 SONNET COMPETITION WINNER Claude Clayton Smith Clawed —for Barbara Ehrenreich The self can pick a psychic scar until it bleeds afresh. Or gnaw again a wound so deep it festers through the skin. Who will say what agency, so callously unbound, permits the universe to intervene— right here!—in daily banal intercourse of grave or petty wants, as if to glean a modicum of spite at its own source? Or what is worse: no source at all, no way or means or attribute the natural world might ken beyond the warped haphazard sway of fickle free-lance particles unfurled. Don’t ask, as if you have a right to know. Just scratch your scabs and let the life-blood flow! Biographical information, favorite public domain poem. |
SPRING/SUMMER 2018 SONNET COMPETITION WINNER
Ian McCabe Love's Misery What man has struck the fancy of your smile Could keep his wits, underpin his logic, Trace the solemn truth though your eyes beguile The fool, as worth the catch as surely comic. I wish at times I were a charlatan, An impostor disguised to woe your heart And break it, cast it off all forsaken; For me I would have done this from the start. Pity I am not the man to keep you, Yours is a greater will than I possess. Then what hope have I though my love be true ‘gainst your lies, deceiving more, loving less? Yet somewhere fault my doleful arrogance To despair of love with such extravagance. Biographical information, favorite public domain poem. |
WINTER 2017-18 SONNET COMPETITION WINNER
Tina Quartey A Broken Heart I never knew a broken heart could break And scatter in a squllion broken atoms That every little atom thus could ache In brokenness beyond what mind can fathom I never knew abandoned could be left To loneliness beyond all lonely longing That giving of oneself could turn to theft That violated sense of deep belonging I never knew that pain’s a gift of gold Vulnerability the path to fullness That breaking even more can make you whole And crack those broken atoms into oneness So to that golden pain I fully give Myself (the only way to fully live) Biographical information, favorite public domain poem. |
SUMMER 2017 SONNET COMPETITION WINNER
James Brooks A falling star The stars were never really falling down, And what we saw in lines across the sky, And too, these words from left to right in sound, Require of myth what motion does of time, And if dependent, each upon them each, On time and other symbols to our past, Then neither line, nor word, in whole or breach, May stand, nor anything of love may last. But neither to the instance of a flower, Nor in between the wounding and the pain, Nor in the dim translucence of an hour That we have marked together as the same, Does time or myth require, nor you, nor I, Too much to move itself across the sky. Biographical information, favorite public domain poem. |
FALL 2016 SONNET COMPETITION WINNER:
Sara T. Baker On Finding a Hummingbird’s Skull I dreamt a crow called “Death, Death,” woke to cawing, cawing still as I labored in the earth, the wind a hot dry breath, the bees and ants my nearest neighbors. The sun burned through the shifting leaves, my sweat broke into rivulets. I saw the sparrows in the eaves, and brushed the spiders' dew-draped nets. I found a hummingbird’s bleached skull, whorls for eyes, a needle beak and held it, weightless, as I mulled the life it held, the peace I seek. And learn that death is lighter than I thought, and quieter and much less fraught. Biographical information, favorite public domain poem. |
SUMMER 2016 SONNET COMPETITION WINNER:
Brett Mertins Short Song for a Stomped Cricket Few who hear your rhymes can bear the rub of wing on wing—a blurry black bow mating a trembling string; a record’s needle skating groove after groove—in an odd slide at love. Your two long days at work behind our hub, our quaking office copier—duplicating chirp over tonered chirp, anticipating your fair return—returned the classic drub. Today, you’re crushed not far from your sad shrub-- bent staples stemming a balled brush of dust-- where yesterday you squatted, serenading. Who lured you out? Did Beatrice, our olive- skinned temp, wear white? Was it for you, you guessed, blonde Laura, in line to copy, was waiting? Biographical information, favorite public domain poem. |
SPRING 2016 SONNET COMPETITION WINNER:
Claude Clayton Smith Until Until the day that all the stars collapse upon themselves in clouds of light and dust (or raise their fissile mushroom heads, perhaps), as quantum physics proves what physics must-- Until on Earth the oceans split and flood the poles as if old Moses bade them to, and cities lies awash in salty blood-- I’ll bide my time and concentrate on you. Apocalyptic visions slip and slouch through history to leave us in their wake, but not a damnéd one, in truth, can vouch for Truth. Imagination fails. Forsake the future, then, for this—the day we share with atoms that bombard the very air! Biographical information, favorite public domain poem. |