dumbfoundry

Anne Stevenson sez:
Poets these days, like artists and composers, have won for themselves almost unlimited freedom. You can pass yourself off as a painter without being able to draw, as a composer without being conscious of key relationships, and as a poet without making yourself familiar with traditional verse forms. Originality and inspiration can take you anywhere.

Or can they? Have you ever heard of a pianist who never had to practise - or of an architect who didn't bother to find out why buildings stand up? What I am asking you to do this month is to exercise your brain and put aside, as a first priority, the pleasures of self-expression. I want you to do what I do when I find myself short of inspiration, and that is, write a sonnet - in one or another of its traditional forms, 14 lines, iambic pentameter, with end rhymes that follow a regular pattern

This entry was posted by Ivy on Saturday, March 12, 2005 at 9:27 PM. You can skip to the end and leave a response.