Tribute to the Sonnet

Conversations with
Alice Fulton & Molly Peacock

 

Releasing in December, 2009, issue #32 celebrates the “little song,” poetry’s most enduring traditional form. Shakespeare and Petrachan sonnets, a backwards sonnet, free verse sonnets, blank verse sonnets, clean sonnets, dirty sonnets, invented sonnets, sonnets that praise sonnets, sonnets that mock sonnets, a sonnet that uses only one rhyme-word fourteen times…all capped off with a full heoric crown of fifteen sonnets by Patricia Smith. The variations are limitless—there’s nothing more liberating than a little restriction. T. S. Davis introduces the special section with a personal essay on his journey into form.

Also in the issue, Alan Fox interviews Alice Fulton and Molly Peacock. Along with 60 pages of open poetry, we share the 11 winning poems from the 2009 Rattle Poetry Prize, culled from over 6,000 candidates.

 

	The Sonnet
	T. S. Davis	The Recrudescence of the Muse
	Tony Barnstone	Bad Usage
	Michelle Bitting	Silence Took My Tongue…
	Chris Bullard	Back Story
	Wendy Taylor Carlisle	The Circus of Inconsolable Loss
	Peter Coghill	Gabriella
	T. S. Davis	Whooping Rendezvous
	Paul Dickey	A Knack for Losing Things
	Caitlin Doyle	Backward Sonnet for a Forward Thinker
	Jehanne Dubrow	The Cold War, A Romance
	Alan Fox	Dover
	Carol Frith	Black Tights, a Halter Top
	Ernest Hilbert	Cover to Cover
	Luke Johnson	The Heart, Like a Bocce Ball
	Mollycat Jones	Unholy Sonnet Number One
	Stephen Kessler	Any Hack Can Crank Out…
	Jeff Knight	Knives of the Poets
	Gregory Loselle	from The Whole of Him Collected
	Austin MacRae	Library Lovers
	Patti McCarty	Make Mine Darjeeling
	Mary Meriam	The Romance of Middle Age
	Jessica Moll	Costume
	Ron Offen	Aubade for One Dismayed
	Jessica Piazza	Panophilia
	Catherine Esposito Prescott	To a Hurricane
	Patricia Smith	Motown Crown
	Elizabeth Klise von Zerneck	Freedom
	Thom Ward	Rumpus, Cohesion, Mess
	Donald Mace Williams	The Venturi Effect
	John Yohe	The Ghost of Frank O’Hara
	Poetry
	Cristin O’Keefe	Aptowicz At the Office Holiday Party
	Michael Bazzett	The Disintegrated Man
	Francesca Bell	With a Little Education
	Tammy F. Brewer	One of Those Topics I Shouldn’t…
	Erik Campbell	This Small Thing
	Claire W. Donzelli	Two Haiku
	Christine Dresch	Nuts
	Laura Eve Engel	Did You Come Yet?
	Joseph Fasano	North Country
	Matthew Gavin Frank	After Senza Titolo, 1964
	Glenn J. Freeman	The Transparencies
	Ed Galing	Dancing
	Peter Harris	Living Large
	Lilah Hegnauer	Exceptions with the Sloughing Off
	Michael Hettich	The Wild Animal
	Bob Hicok	How the Mirror Looks…
	Colette Inez	The Tuner
	John Philip Johnson	Midas on the Beach
	Michael Kriesel	Threesome
	Rachel Inez Lane	Catch Me, Alfred, I’m Falling
	Ken Letko	The Power of Light
	M	Salt
	Marie-Elizabeth Mali	Campaign Season
	Kerrin McCadden	Intersection
	Laren McClung	Confluence of Rivers and Mouths
	Sally Molini	Meal Ticket
	Kent Newkirk	Fixing Cars
	Molly Peacock	A Tale of a T
		The Softie
	J. F. Quackenbush	To a Child
	Rebekah Remington	Happiness Severity Index
	David Romtvedt	On Broadway
	Ralph James Savarese	Nor Yet a Dream of War
	Lauren Schmidt	Grandma Zolie Gives Unheeded…
	Mather Schneider	Between Us and It
	Prartho Sereno	Electrodomestico
	Lee Sharkey	Berlioz
	Paul Siegell	06.25.00 – PHiSH…
	Charlie Smith	The Casing
	John L. Stanizzi	S-Plan
	Arthur Vogelsang	Environmental
	David Wagoner	Before the Poetry Reading
	Mike White	Nascar
	Jeff Worley	Lucky Talk
	Rattle Poetry Prize Winner
	Lynne Knight	To the Young Man Who…
	Honorable Mentions
	Michelle Bitting	Mammary
	Mary-Lou Brockett-Devine	Crabs
	Carolyn Creedon	How to Be a Cowgirl in a Studio…
	Diana Goetsch	Writer in Residence, Central State
	David Hernandez	Remember It Wrong
	John Paul O’Connor	Beans
	Howard Price	Crow-Magnon
	Patricia Smith	Birthday
	Alison Townsend	The Only Surviving Recording…
	Emily Kagan Trenchard	This Is the Part of the Story…
	Conversations
	Alice Fulton
	Molly Peacock