Surrender

I am attempting form after a lifetime of formlessness. Yes, I have been lifting weights and walking four miles a day but I’m talking about sonnets, not my physique, though it’s possible that the exercise and girdled drinking have spilled discipline across the whole dance floor. I spent a few weeks this summer with haiku but that was maybe too cold turkey from the chaotic place I’m coming from. I’m trying again now with a form that actually feels like me, but with just a little more caring for the shape of what I pour myself into —the ‘unrhymed American sonnet’ or as I came to know it and know of it, the ‘Seussian sonnet’ after the Michigander poet Diane Seuss who I am currently washing the feet of, daily. I wrote my first three sonnets this week. One was prompted by hare hunting and being quietly compelled to not shoot the hare, then wondering, not in an abstract way but in a real way, if the earth has a carrying capacity for violence and if we might have breached it. The second came from seeing a wren in the snow who felt uncannily familial and the third came together from notes I had in my journal from summer about a sweet morning with birds and myself. It turns out I kind of like how it feels to have boundaries. Fourteen lines seemed so limiting before I stepped in, but it’s a lot like if you choose to eat locally or seasonally and not avail yourself of the boundless global market, the possibilities for dinner seem puny at first, but then a secret door opens within you and there, you find everything you need. Restriction, once I stopped squirming, felt like surrender —the good kind, to some higher power who wants what’s best for me and can see it more clearly than I can. I am snowed in with an empty fridge and no wine but when I’m done pacing around I find I’ve got potatoes and butter and garlic and the time to slice them thin and lay them around the skillet like a rose and I find a flask of brandy in my coat when I go out to shovel.

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“The sonnet, like poverty, teaches you what you can do / without.” —Diane Seuss

Hunting doesn’t feel synonymous with violence for me most of the time, but once in a great while it stands uncomfortably close. This blood is from the last squirrel I killed this season. I am happy to have him in the freezer, but killing him felt more poignantly like violence than I’m used to. There is so much killing in the world. Sometimes, in my own life it feels ok and balanced, but sometimes it feels like too much. I try to listen. Anyways, I include this photo because I think the feeling of this hunt informed my compulsion to not shoot the hare.

Here are the drafts of my first three attempts at Seussian sonnets. I’ll read the first one to you if you press play. I like hearing Diane read hers as much or more than I like them on the page. For my paid subscribers, if you scroll down to the bottom of the letter you’ll find my readings of the other two as well as a page of my shitty summer haiku’s and a few of Diane’s sonnets that I love. XO.

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I want to say an extra thanks to you subscribers who are able to support me by way of dollars. This has allowed me to consider treating myself to this upcoming craft talk put on by Ellen Bass and six other poets that I admire so much. I’ve never taken a poetry class before and have always wanted to. I’ve consumed thousands of hours of lectures and craft talks and readings for free online but your financial support is giving me the ability to see taking this class as a worthy investment to make Appetites better as well as the ability to pay other poets for their work, which feels really good and exciting. I thought I’d share not only my thanks, but the link to Ellen’s whole craft talk series in case anyone else would enjoy it.

Living Room Craft Talk Series

A timely gift from my clairvoyant uncle came in the mail today!

I am grateful to spend my time this way. Thanks to all of you for helping me.