Hello friends,
Three poems this week, all sonnets using different additional constraints. Enjoy! (And if you do, please consider supporting my work by purchasing my latest book The Robots of Babylon, or by pre-ordering my forthcoming omnibus Knit Ink.)
In this first poem, a Shakespearean sonnet in iambic pentameter, all the lines are perfect anagrams of each other:
ANAGRAM-SONNET FOR FRANKENSTEIN
One scans Prometheus: I’ve taken fire;
a permanence of suns. I seek to thrive.
From oaths uneven, taken pieces sire
a creature, in the mess of open knives....
One notice sparks a fever in the muse:
Naïve, the monster faces Europe’s kin.
A onetime-riven son the packs refuse,
the menace spikes an overture of sin.
Met, hopes see Victor in a sunken fear:
“I’m stricken, per one’s avenues of hate!
I speak no Eve.... It forces, hunts me near —
pines over ice, no sun, the Maker’s fate....”
The furnace I took passes, never mine:
Time over, pauses echo, “Frankenstein.”
This second poem, also a Shakespearean sonnet in iambic pentameter, is a palindrome by letter:
PALINDROME-SONNET FOR EINSTEIN
Dual item, wonder relative — cap speeds.
A draw, erode. Sum times but level space.
Mid astral lag — oft net — all art’s a deed.
Dirge wed, I tan in name; I relapse pace.
Cap semitones, I rip, raw. It’s afoot:
Time dilates at a dot I radar dim.
Mirage bred Rosen, I metallic soot.
To oscillate: Mine’s order. Beg a rim.
Mid radar, I, to data, set a lid.
Emit too fast, I warp, I rise — no time.
Space capes pale Riemann in a tide we grid.
Deed astral, latent fog. All art’s a dime.
Caps level. Tubs emit. Muse, do reward,
as deepspace (vital, erred-now-met) I laud.This final sonnet is an ‘aelinscape’: The whole poem is a Shakespearean sonnet in anapaestic trimeter. However, reading only the red reveals a Shakespearean sonnet in anapaestic monometer. And reading only the blue reveals a Shakespearean sonnet of monosyllabic lines:
