← The Slowdown: Poetry & Reflection Daily
Loading summary
Transcript1 lines
- [00:01]
A
Happy Poetry Month Friends of the Slowdown are invited to celebrate with a special offer from Poetry Magazine this April. An annual subscription to Poetry includes a limited edition notebook. The notebook features a devious quote from Dorothy Elaski on its cover. I'm almost always lying in a poem and the full poem is inside. Use the notebook for your own poems, lies and secrets. Subscribe today@poetrymagazine.org lying during National Poetry Month Pass a poem along. Your gift to the Slowdown turns your personal listening ritual into a public good, helping classrooms, kids, caregivers, commuters and late night listeners to experience a few grounded minutes of poetry and perspective free of charge. Your support today widens the circle so tomorrow's episode Find someone who needs it. Pass a poem along when you donate today@slowdownshow.org. I'm Maggie Smith and this is the Slowdown. I hope you don't mind if today I geek out on a particular poetic form, the sonnet from the Italian Sonnetto or little song, the sonnet is one of the most proud, recognized forms in English. There are two different kinds of traditional sonnet, Shakespearean and Petrarchan, and although their rhyme schemes are different, they have a lot in common. Both 14 lines long, usually written in iambic pentameter, the meter that sounds like badum badum, badum, badum badum. And they both contain a sonnet's signature turn, the volta. Volta is a musical term for a turn. It's a point of transition, either grammatically or conceptually. The volta is the but wait, think again, not so fast moment in the poem. It is a poetic plot twist, a complicating of the poem. We think of a sonnet as expressing an initial idea, but then there is a turn to something else. A sonnet presents a problem and then an answer, but often not the expected one. I think it's helpful to see a sonnet not just as a poetic form, but as a 14 line rhetorical strategy. It's a framework inside of which the poet must turn and turn quickly. The thing that draws me most to this form as a poet is that the sonnet is a diamond maker. There are horizontal and vertical pressures acting on the poem. Horizontal because of the syllable count, vertical because of the line count. The sonnet demands an incredible amount of compression and economy, and this intense pressure can crystallize language, thought and feeling, making the poem incredibly vivid, immediate and surprising. The sonnet has survived multiple centuries. By always adapting in a contemporary sonnet, poets are altering its shape and rethinking what the container can hold. Women in particular have transformed the formal tradition of the sonnet in America. Poets like Wanda Coleman, who invented the unrhymed American sonnet. Other women who helped transform the contemporary sonnet are Gwendolyn Brooks, Rita Dove, Patricia Smith, Monica Yoon, and Diane Suess. Today's poet is part of this tradition. If a sonnet is about turning to the unexpected, then the poet takes it further by looking in unexpected places. Sonnet overheard at phone booth by Elaine Kim Goodbye, but said without really meaning it. The way the light touches you like something scared or my armful of sunspots and the milk expiring on the countertop and many unopened tubes of paint and hair ties lost to the unmanicured wild. The sheer loneliness of of your body on the cosmic scale. There's so much I'm not telling you. Orange tickets, limpid rain, the last train home, the kindness of every shadow, the way something patient keeps count beneath the rib cage. Goodbye, meaning I will see you right after this call. Meaning I am leaving a message at the tone and a song that will loop and a bird or two to peck at all the crumbs I have left behind. Meaning I am still here listening, waiting for the train to arrive. The Slowdown is a production of American Public Media in partnership with the Poetry Foundation. To get a poem delivered to you daily, go to slowdownshow.org and sign up for our newsletter and find us on Instagram, LodownShow and Bluesky. Slowdownshow.org. Hey, it's Maggie. Every weekday, the Slowdown delivers the creativity and care of poetry to all free of charge, and your support makes it possible. Donating to the Slowdown is easy. Just go to slowdownshow.org donate to make your gift in less time than it takes to listen to an episode.