[New-Poetry] Sonnet Contest, Prarie Home Companion

[Bob Grumman]

JforJames at aol.com wrote:
> In a message dated 4/3/2008 6:35:15 PM Eastern Daylight Time, 
> bobgrumman at nut-n-but.net writes:
>
>     I'm no good at sonnets, but I'll send them an unrhymed
>     fourteen-line haiku.
>
>     --Bob G.
>
> Bob,
> For a guy who likes taxonomy you're very resistant to pigeonholes.
> Finnegan
>
>
Yikes, Jim, surely you didn't fail to read me as scornful of the idea of 
unrhymed sonnets?  In fact, I have a comparison of the terms, "sonnet" 
and "haiku" in my head waiting for delivery to my blog one of these 
days.  I may seem inconsistent to some in believing a sonnet should be 
14 rhyming iambic pentameters while not believing a haiku should be 
three lines, the first and third with five syllables, the other with 
seven syllables.  My reason reduces to my belief that the sonnet is 
importantly a sound-mechanism, the haiku an image-mechanism.  What a 
poetic form most is should be inviolable, but the details allowed to 
mutate.  So I accept an aba cbc dcd efefd rhyme scheme for a sonnet 
because the placement of the rhymenants seems unimportant to me, so long 
as they are in it.  And how is the 9/5 division that different from 
octave/sestet?  A haiku should be short, but who cares exactly how many 
syllables it has.  Etc.

Looks like my blog entry is under way.

--Bob
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