I make no pretensions to the kind of discipline that produces regular poetry, and yet in the past year I have found myself not only writing but noding my descent into poetic forms on a semi-regular basis.
Tonight's effort is not merely a sonnet, but is a direct response to the essay by Thomas Crossland quoted by the estimable riverrun in the commentary on his Sonnet of the Week Virus Be Gone. It quotes from or refers to a number of sonnets, or writers of sonnets, some less obscure than others, and should you find yourself unimpressed by the thesis or delivery of my poem you could do worse than to track down and read some or all of the Actual Real Poets referred to therein.
I call this, "Lines Composed Upon My Sofa, April 17, 2020"
Of Michael Drayton's sonnet sixty-one
Do I with Thomas Crossland quite agree:
All other sonnets seem so overdone,
No rivals challenge Shakespeare's mastery.
Scant sympathy he spares for Brooke or Ow'n,
Composing under shellfire as they hide;
In Reed's extended syllables is show'n
Mock modesty and (a or b?) false pride.
Unless your decasyllables are fit,
Nay! I have done - you get no more of me!
An English sonnet must be strictly writ,
No rhymeless Audens, no fine Petrarchs we.
And thus the volta: ABBA! ABBA! cry:
Dull would he be of soul who could pass by.