Saturday, November 14, 2009

Poetic Combat: The Challenge

I drive about with a bumper sticker stating "I Hate Iambic Pentameter/Petrarch Sucks!"

Therefore, last Sunday, a friend presented with this Petrarchan sonnet:


At Expressed Distaste For Iambic Pentameter


Repository of belief - by tongue
in cheek or otherwise - displayed in bold
relief, the bumper sticker pride has tolled -
iambic pentameter - despised and wrong -

from civilized considerations. Thus
the telling is allowed for every eye
along the high way to observe. To try
this grinding tryst in words is to nonplus.

Protested humor - so reported - wells
into apparent courtesies to flood
imagination with a sonnet's plea:

to court iambic schemes that play with dwells
that properly anticipate the thud
of five fold accents teasing humor's lee

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