Fun with Forms 2: Name that Funky Sonnet

Sonnets very simply put consist of fourteen pentameter lines. For the mathematically-impaired (I’ll use a calculator thank you), that’s 70 iambic feet, with as many substitutions as aesthetically desired, none if so needed. Interestingly enough, a pair of Dylanesque Sestets arranged in an alternating 4-5-4-5-4-4 pattern with a 4-5-4-5 quatrain at the end will add up to the same amount of iambic feet as that sonnet. (You can do the math.)

This extended sonnet form has been unnamed until now. But I’m in a feisty mood tonight after having a peppery dinner of blackened chicken at the Border with my daughter. And a Double-tall Mocha at the nearby Starbucks still has me buzzing. That said, I’m ready to do some free association.

Beginning with the Dylanesque Sestet and the idea of an extended sonnet: I’m directly reminded of the song Desolation Row, one of Bob Dylan’s longer if not longest songs, an extended surrealistic dirge containing the following lyrics (please notice the rhyme scheme: ah synchronicity):

And Ezra Pound and T. S. Eliot
Fighting in the captain's tower
While calypso singers laugh at them
And fishermen hold flowers

That association is further appropriate considering that the form in question is cut short with a final quatrain rather than closed with the expected sestet. Furthermore, the idea of an extended sonnet is rather desolate in its intellectual integrity as well. It seems altogether appropriate then that this form be known as a Desolation Sonnet.

Not only does this form allow one to hit lines in blank verse, ballad verse, and heroic couplets, as well as play in the field of free verse while wearing a regulation uniform, but it also allows one to throw around tetrameters and pentameters from the mound. In that way, it’s the proper form with which to open spring training.

If you are curious, I posted a poem written in this form on 23-Feb: Growing Daylight. I will keep it on this blog until 01-March. It will then self-destruct and no longer be available to any literary historians that may examine this sight in the future. For all intents and purposes, on this blog at least, it will end in quiet desolation.