The Need for a Sonnet

Is there a need for a sonnet? You say there is.

But now that our poems are loosed from that dam, we’re free

to exact from them unfettered ice, boiling liquid and fizz.

Why would we want to retract from this unbounded sea?

Why would we want to replant all those strict-sonnet fences,

sequester our burgeoning hearts in that close-metered room?

Wouldn’t this pander to too many fears and defenses –

chillingly, killingly feel less like life than a tomb?

Ah, to enjoy the full splay of remonstrance and love

in a poem without feeling we’ve got to sew it up tight –

explore disinhibitedly underneath and above –

refract, unconstrained by a track, our particular light!

“Form equals content,” you say, “and everything’s true.

A sonnet is something that some of us still need to do.”

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