Category: Poetry

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Sunday Sonnet

Juliana Spahr “After Mark Hoppins”

Spahr, Juliana. “After Mark Hoppins”. The Reality Street Book of Sonnets. Edited by Jeff Hilson. Hastings, East Sussex, Reality Street Editions, 2008. poem found on page 306.

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August 28: Rita Dove

Dove, Rita. “Geometry”. The Norton Anthology of Modern and Contemporary Poetry: Volume 2 Contemporary Poetry. Edited by Jahan Ramazani, Richard Ellmann & Robert O’Clair. NY: W.W. Norton & Company, 2003. poem found on page 976.

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Sunday Sonnet

Singer, Burns. “from Sonnets for a Dying Man: XLIX”. The Making of a Sonnet: A Norton Anthology. Edited by Edward Hirsch & Eavan Boland. NY: W.W. Norton & Company, 2008. Poem found on page 252.

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Sunday Sonnet

Schwartz, Delmore. “The Beautiful American Word, Sure”. The Penguin Book of the Sonnet: 500 Years of a Classic Tradition in English. edited by Phillis Levin. NY: Penguin Books, 2001.

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The Quarrel by Diane DiPrima

The Quarrel

You know I said to Mark I’m furious at you.

No he said are you bugged. He was drawing Brad who was asleep on the bed.

Yes I said I’m pretty god damned bugged. I sat down by the fire and stuck my feet out to warm them up.

Jesus I thought you think it’s so easy. There you sit innocence personified. I didn’t say anything else to him.

You know I thought I’ve got work to do too sometimes. In fact I probably have just as fucking much work to do as you. A piece of wood fell out of the fire and I poked it back in with my toe.

I am sick I said to the woodpile of doing dishes. I am just as lazy as you. Maybe lazier. The top of my shoe was scorched from the fire and I rubbed it where the suede was gone.

Just because I happen to be a chick I thought.

Mark finished one drawing and looked at it. Then he put it down and started another one.

It’s damned arrogant of you I thought to assume that only you have things to do. Especially tonight.

And what a god damned concession it was for me to bother to tell you that I was bugged at all I said to the back of his neck. I didn’t say it out loud.

I got up and went into the kitchen to do the dishes. And shit I thought I probably won’t bother again. But I’ll get bugged and not bother to tell you and after a while everything will be awful and I’ll never say anything because it’s so fucking uncool to talk about it. And that I thought will be that and what a shame.

Hey hon Mark yelled at me from the living room. It says here that Picasso produces fourteen hours a day.

–Diane DiPrima (c) 1961
Taken from No More Masks: An Anthology of Poems by Women

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Sunday Sonnet

It’s the return of the Sunday Sonnet! & yes, even though it’s Easter Sunday, I swear on everything that’s holy that I did not choose this poem because of its spiritual subject matter; as usual, I just opened up one of my poetry books & there it was.

Today’s poem was written by Gerald Manley Hopkins, who is pretty much forgotten, unless you’re an English major & even if you’re studying English literature, you might miss him because he’s just not cool enough for the woke crowd determining what’s being studied on collage campuses nowadays.

Apparently, Hopkins wasn’t cool enough for his own time; he only became famous after his death, like so many romantic poets.

References

Hopkins, Gerland Manley. “Thou art indeed just, Lord, if I contend”. The Penguin Book of the Sonnet: 500 Years of a Classic Tradition in English, edited by Phillis Levin. NY: Penguin Books, 2001. poem found on page 151.