Daily Sonnets

Laynie Browne.

These are really lovely, fun to read out loud, deceptively simple and so playful with the sonnet form. Eschewing "conventional" (Shakespearean, Petrarchan, et al) rules: rhyme scheme, iambic pentameter, but keeping others: 14 lines (or an acknowledgement if broken, i.e., "half sonnet" etc.), musicality, and the turn. It's hard to say what fixed forms are, exactly-- they really are so elastic, that it's hard to define their essences-- sometimes it's easiest through negation. "A sonnet's not a sestina," maybe, "a sonnet isn't long." But I think Laynie Browne has really captured the essence of the sonnet in this book-- because I think sonnets are like weight training. I think you have to perform them regularly to be any good, to make them any better, to understand the form and be skilled at performing it-- this is partially why I think the iambic pentameter rule is an optional one; it's just a skill you become adept at with practice. I don't think it's presence is an integral part; musicality is. Specific meter=not. Anyway, these sonnets pick up ideas and examine them, letting in other voices and questions (from, most recognizably, her children), the news, memories. Here's one, 103:

Why Wolves Aren't Famous

It's not an idea (I forgot)

What should the title be?

I'm tired of pure form

Pass me that framework

The knight of the ox is very famous

He destroyed the dragon's cape

All I know about capes is water

Ghost and mud bring it back to life

Now eat your pancakes and stop

dreaming about syrup crystals

The flowers have pink, yellow, purple all I know

You might find a password

in one of them so look carefully

Did you write this in a whispery tone?

This poem is conversational ("what should the title be?") and meditative (I'm tired of pure form"), playful ("all I know about capes is water") and serious ("pass me that framework").

It feels like trying to write a paper or poem or something 'serious' and 'grown-up' while feeding a child breakfast. ("The flowers have pink, yellow, purple all I know/ You might find a password")-- storytelling, invention and fantasy, tools any good babysitter possesses-- but the speaker seems to believe it, too, a bit: "water... Ghost and mud bring it back to life" which does give the poem a more serious underside: these fantasies are not divorced from reality but seem to possess some secrets which color our reality-- the password's in the flowers, the water's brought to life; of course this is not left un-played-with: "Did you write this in a whispery tone?" but the effect isn't undermined, just tickled.

Her writing is quick, witty, loaded and transparent. I love this project and these poems.