I’m excited to have another sonnet up at Earth & Altar, with one more coming next week.
I’m not a formalist by any means, but working through the mechanics of a sonnet is a great way to stay sharp. It forces you to think in new ways about compression, symbol-work, image-stacking, and what I’ll call the stakes (the “so what,” the thing the volta turns to, the reason, and, in classical sonnets, the argument).
All three of my Earth & Altar sonnets deal with language, limits, and liminal spaces. I wrote them because I saw what Malcolm Guite was doing and wanted to see what I’d do with a less decorative, less…normative?…approach.
I’m not primarily interested in these pieces as engines of devotion, then, even though I think they say a lot about my own spirituality. Neither am I looking to make normative religious statements, though I do think there’s an interrogative duty and that is perhaps why these poems end in questions.
Here’s “Natural Speech.”
There’s also a new free post about Richard Brautigan’s beautiful “I Was Trying to Describe You to Someone” on my Substack.
Chris Cocca 