Month: August 2020

Jacke Wilson: What’s great about a sonnet is not an unusual word or a clever word or a shocking word or a long word or an impressive word—but the perfect word. It may be surprising. It may be all those things that may be unusual. It may be clever. And so on. We don’t want “Moon in June” here, but it’s the word that fits the meaning and the sound and it snaps together tight. That’s what’s pleasing. That’s what gives us a sonnet. What it needs. And sometimes Shakespeare had to invent words for his verse, which is risky, but not when you can pull it off. If you stick to inventions that people will immediately recognize and understand, like those songs that immediately sound like old standards. If you invent a word that people think, oh, that must already be a word. I know what that means. And it’s there for you to use.

via Lit Hub

i am re-watching this PBS Masters Series about sandburg
mainly to make sure i get the quote in a poem
mostly correct . . .
(posted here, two blog entries back)
and i suspect and then suddenly realize
that the background music in the episode
is all Zoe Keating (cello music)
of which i am a devotee.
the universe must be trying to tell me something . . .

then in this episode, they represent one of his poems like this!