Love's Sonnets

This final ‘love letter’ fuses the power of love with the power of religion: Christian and Ancient Greek. It alludes to the work of the master of sonnets (William Shakespeare): “mortal coil”, “milk of human kindness”. More significantly, it compares the experience of being “caged” to that of being in love. Overall, the poem functions… Continue reading Love Letters 14: Caged

Similes are great, but this sonnet is all metaphors. Ten of them. The addressee is continually transformed into loud and “garish” things, some objects, some people. They “stand out”, sometimes as an inappropriately dressed guest, sometimes as a ‘Sore Thumb’. Saying the addressee is ‘like’ other things or acts ‘as’ them is inadequate. This person… Continue reading Love Letters 13: Sore Thumb

Writing is an indulgent pastime: I spend precious time sculpting my thoughts, unashamedly share them with others, then hope for approval. Because I write to express personal truths, my writing isn’t always easy to read. So, thank you to those who support me. This sonnet is both self-indulgent and self-critical: it looks back at a… Continue reading Love Letters 12: Me not You

This sonnet is packed with rhetorical questions and juxtapositions; these techniques are the perfect tools for sharing the conflict and confusion of the narrative.  Each line in the first quatrain contains a juxtaposed pair: “bonds … chains”, “break … escape”, “loss … gains”, “vellum … crepe”. However, on close inspection, there is also ambiguity. Although… Continue reading Love Letters 11: My Butterfly

This sonnet is written to an “Old friend” who “chose a [different] path” to the speaker. Each quatrain is sculpted around a different metaphor: the first is a damaged heart developing a crusty “shell”; the second a turncoat switching loyalty; the third two journeys heading in different directions. All three quatrains accusatory – with the… Continue reading Love Letters 10: Burnt

There’s a structure within the structure of this sonnet. The quatrains are all self-contained: the first two lines of each establishes a premise, then is separated from the remaining two lines with a semicolon; the third line begins with ‘So’ followed by a verb to respond to that premise; and each quatrain is closed with… Continue reading Love Letters 9: Our Chance

In this sonnet I have used caesura to represent the “misaligned” nature of myself and the addressee. Caesura is a pause or break in a line of poetry. The word comes from the from past participle stem of the Latin ‘caedere’ – ‘to cut’. ‘Misaligned’ is an extended metaphor of two bridges being built across an “estuary”.… Continue reading Love Letters 8: Misaligned

The Shakespearian sonnet provides substantial structure: 14 lines comprised of three quatrains with a capping couplet, iambic pentameter, adabcdcdefefgg rhyme scheme, capping couplet regularly offering a riposte or summation that invites the reader to find a deeper meaning. This sonnet has an even tighter structure; the first two lines of each quatrain present an animal… Continue reading Love Letters 7: Stubborn Beast