Episode #125 The Birth of an Enduring Form - Sonnet Week Ep. 1

Connor and Jack close out National Poetry Month 2021 with a series of episodes exploring the history and enduring popularity of one of poetry's iconic forms: the sonnet. To start off they travel back almost 800 years to the birth of the sonnet, discuss "Sonetto 26" by Giacomo da Lentini, and then zoom back to the present and dive into Terrance Hayes American Sonnet for my Past and Future Assassin."

Sonetto 26

By: Giacomo da Lentini (Translation by Leo Zoutewelle)

I’ve seen it rain on sunny days

And seen the darkness flash with light

And even lightning turn to haze,

Yes, frozen snow turn warm and bright

And sweet things taste of bitterness

And what is bitter taste most sweet

And enemies their love confess

And good, close friends no longer meet.

Yet stranger things I’ve seen of love

Who healed my wounds by wounding me.

The fire in me he quenched before;

The life he gave was the end thereof,

The fire that slew eluded me.

Once saved from love, love now burns more.

American Sonnet for my Past and Future Assassin

By: Terrance Hayes

I lock you in an American sonnet that is part prison,

Part panic closet, a little room in a house set aflame.

I lock you in a form that is part music box, part meat

Grinder to separate the song of the bird from the bone.

I lock your persona in a dream-inducing sleeper hold

While your better selves watch from the bleachers.

I make you both gym & crow here. As the crow

You undergo a beautiful catharsis trapped one night

In the shadows of the gym. As the gym, the feel of crow-

Shit dropping to your floors is not unlike the stars

Falling from the pep rally posters on your walls.

I make you a box of darkness with a bird in its heart.

Voltas of acoustics, instinct & metaphor. It is not enough

To love you. It is not enough to want you destroyed.

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