Doug,

Well spoken and understood.

I think you know me well enough by now to know that I have the deepest respect for the sonnet form --- pure and/or irregular. It will always be my desire to preserve it , perpetuate it and promote it with vigor and love. 

Having written more than 70 of them myself (sure evidence I love the form) I really AM a purist of sorts when it comes to strict forms.  But if you read my 5-lesson sonnet critique  carefully, you will see my "objections" are with those that will not only point out a mis-metered line but stand on a soap-box as if they were in Hyde Park at Speaker's Corner spouting out gospel!  I do NOT agree with the willy-nilly dismantling of the form so it loses all that made it what it was and is .. but if a poem "reads-right" (voice) with spondees, trochees, nine or eleven syllables, feminine endings and whatever, then make the "point" that the anomaly exists if you must (as critic) but do it without the authority and dictate that it is verboten. Because truth be told, THE MASTERS DEVIATED, EMBELLISHED, TOOK LIBERTIES and the form survived.

It is attitudinal and righteous indignation I am fighting here. If a "modern" poet wishes to use "archaic" language in a classic form, it is not "wrong" or "right" >>> it is choice. Were Will to be writing sonnets in the year 2007 they would probably appear in many different styles and on many different topics.

You and I are on the same page on this actually. I do not want to jettison the rules so that the sonnet is no longer even recognizable (like Jackson Pollock the form so it is _____). I just want a little balance when it comes to criticizing the right of a poet to creatively adopt new "flavors" within the form.  The "rightness" too often is an anal exercise on the part of the critter to show-off what s/he knows rather than commenting on the WORTH of the poem and its message.

That's all.

Thanks for the creative response --- enjoyed.

Norm

Giving Pause to Purging
(A Double Sonnet with a Single Thought)

Me thinks, perhaps, our shorts are in a knot
regarding things to which we purist may 
object; those proper principles long taught
and held as sacred. ‘Here’s the only way’,
we cry; ‘the form is very strict and pure.’

Indeed, this point’s well made, and yet we know
the Masters wrote with powerful allure 
while often deviating from the flow
of timeless teachings passed from old to new.

So as I write these words a new day dawns;
and too the question rises to eschew 
or not eschew the deviations spawned,
preserving for posterity the forms
of old through purging what are termed ‘new norms’.

These microevolutions offer change;
we purist should not say that they’re deranged. 

This being said, the changes cannot be
extensive, or the sonnet’s forms and laws 
will cease to matter and the world will see
the death of something beautiful. So pause

and think before you alter what has been
a staple of poetic literature;
it’s not that deviations are a sin
but there are benefits to staying pure.

The Masters suffered hiccups then and now,
and who am I to argue with their wit.
O’er aberrations I won’t have a cow,
but wholesale changes, my support won’t get.

© D. Allen Jenkins

Note: This is #2 of five sonnets ABOUT sonnets -- of course IMHO.

Please Don't Purge My Double-Couplet

Spondees sometime start the lines in poems
Hey!  "poems" could be one or maybe two
syllables --- it don't take Sherlock Holmes
to figure out just what you are to do
when reading lines that writers call IP.
Hell, common sense is what should be applied--
why so hung up on regularity?
Methinks the old and new, they can collide;
we shouldn't treat all lines with clyster-pipes,
purging, sucking out all things perceived
to be like blockage. Critics then take swipes
so they, themselves can somehow feel relieved.

I understand the purist has concern;
I care about this form and love to learn.
So here's a double-couplet for diversion;
hope they do not preach it's a perversion.

© Norman S. Pollack 

"Would they were clyster-pipes for your sake!" (Othello, II.i.176-77). "
"Clyster-pipes" are enema tubes, and Iago's opinion is that Cassio is so full of sh-- that he needs an enema