Sonnet Contest Winner
Winning sonnet from 2008.
The Agony of a Sonnet
- The woeful winnowing of iv'ry leaves,
- The pages scrrawled upon, then tossed asunder
- Alack! What tort'rousness of pure poetic blunder
- O poinsoned quill! The words that doth elude
- This humble bard, averse to the pedantic;
- How trying to find verses that exude
- Old Shakespeare's knack for sonnetry's semantic.
- The suffocating soul with language teems -
- The verses vying to be brought to life;
- And yet, no other art's pursuit beseems
- This liberating literary strife
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- The mind that swells with meter to be writ
- Is oft consumed - and yet, so freed by it.
Mistress Ali Ruth
Thomas Jefferson High School
Alexandria, VA
