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martinmooney
poetry
9y
The Sonnet a Day Challenge comes to an end with #14: Seamus Heaney's 'Clearances'
The Sonnet a Day Challenge comes to an end with #14: Seamus Heaney's 'Clearances'
Our fourteen days of sonnets comes to an end with Kavanagh’s great disciple and successor, Seamus Heaney. A lover and master of the form, Heaney produced a number of sonnet sequences at key points in his
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martinmooney
poetry
9y
Sonnet-a-Day Challenge #13: WB Yeats' 'Leda and the Swan'
Sonnet-a-Day Challenge #13: WB Yeats' 'Leda and the Swan'
Our exploration of the world of the sonnet began in twentieth century Ireland, and it’s to Ireland we return as we draw to a close. W. B. Yeats (1865 – 1939), probably the greatest Irish poet ever and
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martinmooney
poetry
9y
A Sonnet a Day #12: Gerald Manley Hopkins
A Sonnet a Day #12: Gerald Manley Hopkins
Reviewing the poems we’ve read so far, it’s clear enough that they all share features that we can identify and describe as sonnet-like: fourteen lines long, following a regular rhyme-scheme (though the
martinmooney
poetry
9y
Sonnet a Day Challenge # 11: William Wordsworth
Sonnet a Day Challenge # 11: William Wordsworth
It’s more than a hundred and fifty years since our last sonneteer wrote. The form was not beloved of the 18th Century’s poets, who strove for a neoclassical grandeur that demanded large-scale forms,
martinmooney
poetry
9y
Sonnet a Day Challenge # 10: John Donne's 'Batter my Heart...'
Sonnet a Day Challenge # 10: John Donne's 'Batter my Heart...'
And suddenly I panic: the tenth sonnet, and we’re running out of time, and the great poems clamour at the gates. What about us, say the rest of Shakespeare and Milton, and their Elizabethan and Jacobean
martinmooney
poetry
9y
Sonnet-a-Day Challenge # 9: When th'Assault was Intended to the Cittie
Sonnet-a-Day Challenge # 9: When th'Assault was Intended to the Cittie
I’ve always felt that poetry should be at home – no, embroiled – in the world. It’s not that a poem is a journalistic act, or a piece of propaganda, or anything other than a poem. But poems, like their
martinmooney
poetry
9y
A Sonnet a Day # 8: John Milton 'On His Blindness'
A Sonnet a Day # 8: John Milton 'On His Blindness'
The sonnet-a-day challenge continues with an encounter with John Milton - puritan, revolutionary, father of the political poem in English, and possibly my favourite among our poets so far. As Shakespeare
martinmooney
poetry
9y
A Sonnet a Day # 7: Shakespeare again!
A Sonnet a Day # 7: Shakespeare again!
We're halfway through, and we turn to Shakespeare again, Sonnet 129. We talked yesterday about how the Elizabethan poet was a player with (or of?) conventions, givens. That’s how the culture worked, a
martinmooney
poetry
9y
A Sonnet a Day # 6: Shakespeare himself
A Sonnet a Day # 6: Shakespeare himself
We saw with Spenser how poets often gather sonnets into groups, suites or sequences. There are probably a number of reasons – the short form drawn from song is an almost perfect fit for the single thought,
martinmooney
poetry
9y
A Sonnet a Day # 5: Edmund Spenser
A Sonnet a Day # 5: Edmund Spenser
Son of a weaver and cloth-merchant, Edmund Spenser was born in London in 1552 and died there in 1599. As a colonial administrator in Ireland during the Nine Years’ War he witnessed, and indeed defended
martinmooney
poetry
9y
A Sonnet a day # 4: Walter Raleigh. Yes, that Walter Raleigh...
A Sonnet a day # 4: Walter Raleigh. Yes, that Walter Raleigh...
The golden age... It’s not long after Wyatt (and others) have naturalised the sonnet in English that it becomes the mark of a cultured gentleman to be able to compose a well-turned fourteener. I think
martinmooney
poetry
9y
A Sonnet a Day # 3: Sir Thomas Wyatt and the birth of the English Sonnet
A Sonnet a Day # 3: Sir Thomas Wyatt and the birth of the English Sonnet
So! This is a day late! (Though if you followed the link in the last post, the Robert Lowell was a twofer!) We go right back to the beginning now, to the poet who more than anyone - and possibly literally
martinmooney
poetry
9y
A Sonnet a Day # 2: Robert Lowell's 'Dolphin'
A Sonnet a Day # 2: Robert Lowell's 'Dolphin'
For the second in the sonnet series, we’ll stick with the late twentieth century but cross the Atlantic, where Boston poet Robert Lowell (1917 - 1977) evolved a powerful blend of the autobiographical,
martinmooney
poetry
9y
A Sonnet a Day for 14 Days: Patrick Kavanagh
A Sonnet a Day for 14 Days: Patrick Kavanagh
In the flow of a conversation about poetry with a visual artist friend (the kind of conversation I don't have that often these days) she confessed that she didn't know what on earth I meant by a sonnet,

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