Poem of the Week: 9.12.24
"Sonnet, September 2024"
SONNET, SEPTEMBER 2024
by Ricky Novaes de Oliveira
I feel like I’ve already written this poem, and yet I wanted to write it again.
A poem can be like a compost bin: scraps of conversations, unfinished organic thoughts, association and cross-contamination, spread it once it reeks. This week’s poem is a bit like that.
I started by trying to write a prose poem—sentences instead of lines, lucid ideas that devolve without too much adherence to conventional structure. But it was missing something. So I took my paragraph block of writing and divided it into lines, breaking the sentence whenever I thought there was a “nugget” of thought or language concise enough to stand on its own. From there, I swapped words out, changed syntactical orders, injected disparate lines written months ago here and there. By lucky chance (or instilled practice), it happened to be 14 lines, which is nowadays (almost) enough to be considered a sonnet.
For me, writing into the sonnet form is a dialogue with tradition, a link in a long chain of poetic thought. Kind of like spreading compost onto the earth: a continual return, life and death and life again.
Try it for yourself—sit down, pick a topic or a phrase that’s been on your mind, and write for 5 minutes without stopping. Let one sentence lead to the next, trying not to stress about shape or length or fancy vocabulary. When your 5 minutes are up, force your writing into a 14-line shape; make it fit; piece it together. In the end, you’ll be part of the same chain, too.
Hypothetically, Ricky
