Six Beat Sonnet Treats · Intricate, Elegant Gifts for You

I’ve been making 400 presents for you during the last five months—12/23/19 to 5/24/20—and they’re definitely luxury items. The craft level is always high. Vowel harmonies and consonant harmonies are assured because, in addition to the melodious appeal of the intricate end-rhyme patterns, each poem is “thorough-rhymed,” equipped with ear-pleasuring internal rhymes throughout. Unprecedented and amazing about the rhythm format I chose for this collection is the fact that all the sonnets (meaning “fourteen-liners”) are in lines with six beats each. The rhythm structure is iambic—it goes “la LA, la LA . . . .” Every “la LA” is an “iamb.” We always have the paradigm “and ONE, and TWO, and THREE, and FOUR, and FIVE, and SIX.” William Shakespeare, and his followers for the last four centuries, have mainly sung in five-beat lines. I love those, too—as I proved in Shakespair (2016). But why aren’t sixes more often employed? Sonnets in this form are startlingly rare in our language, but they’re fascinating, and flexible—and they’re gorgeous. Try them.