Light verse

I think in couplets when I'm tired
But when I'm woozy it gets worse
My sense of meter becomes mired
In less substantial kinds of verse
Until I force it to behave
And still pound out my thoughts in eights
Lest I begin to rant or rave
While every other line deflates.
For in my reeling state I find
That eight and six feels very right
So even meter is a grind
Whenever I'm up late at night.
But in the morning let me wake
In pentameter for God's sake.

Lin-Manuel Miranda's Sonnet at the Tony Awards

The sonnet just got a boost in the news in the reporting of this year's Tony Awards, as Lin-Manuel Miranda, the brilliant author of Hamilton: An American Musical, recited one in accepting his Tony for composing the musical. This poem has been published with a couple of different line divisions, none of which (that I've yet seen) make it a sonnet--but I think there is a set of line divisions that would make it one.

CNN has Miranda's 'sonnet' without line divisions at all

"We chase the melodies that seem to find us until they're finished songs and start to play when senseless acts of tragedy remind us that nothing here is promised, not one day. This show is proof that history remembers. We live through times when hate and fear seem stronger. We rise and fall, and light from dying embers, remembrances that hope and love last longer and love is love is love is love is love is love is love is love cannot be killed or swept aside. As sacred as a symphony Eliza tells her story. Now fill the world with music, love and pride. And thank you so much for this." 

(From http://www.cnn.com/2016/06/13/entertainment/lin-manuel-miranda-sonnet-hamilton-orlando/)

This is probably appropriate for Miranda's well-known spoken-word, hip-hop origins, but it's not a sonnet. Sonnets have lines, meter, and rhyme. And of course they include the "thank you so much for this," which refers to the Tony award but probably isn't intended as part of the poem.

Vanity Fair has it as, basically, a ballad (four quatrains), although they don't emphasize the quatrain divisions.

My wife’s the reason anything gets done

She nudges me towards promise by degrees

She is a perfect symphony of one,

Our son is her most beautiful reprise

We chase the melodies that seem to find us

Until they’re finished songs and start to play

When senseless acts of tragedy remind us

That nothing here is promised, not one day

This show is proof that history remembers

We live through times when hate and fear seem stronger

We rise and fall and light from dying embers

Remembrances that hope and love lasts long

And love is love is love is love is love is love is love is love is love

Cannot be killed or swept aside,

I sing Vanessa’s symphony, Eliza tells her story

Now fill the world with music love and pride

(From http://www.vanityfair.com/culture/2016/06/lin-manuel-miranda-tony-speech)

This isn't a sonnet because a) sonnets have 14 lines, b) sonnets are consistently rhymed, and c) it's a ballad. Ballads aren't sonnets; different lyric forms exist for different reasons and uses, and it's not helpful to conflate them. There's nothing wrong with Miranda's poem as a ballad (except that he called it a sonnet). This was how I first encountered the poem set, and it has a strong appeal--partly because the lines end up the same length or roughly so throughout. But it's not a sonnet, which is a problem given that Miranda told us it's a sonnet.

The NY Times has it as follows:

My wife’s the reason anything gets done

She nudges me towards promise by degrees

She is a perfect symphony of one

Our son is her most beautiful reprise.

We chase the melodies that seem to find us

Until they’re finished songs and start to play

When senseless acts of tragedy remind us

That nothing here is promised, not one day.

This show is proof that history remembers

We lived through times when hate and fear seemed stronger;

We rise and fall and light from dying embers, remembrances that hope and love last longer

And love is love is love is love is love is love is love is love cannot be killed or swept aside.

I sing Vanessa’s symphony, Eliza tells her story

Now fill the world with music, love and pride.

(From http://www.nytimes.com/2016/06/13/theater/lin-manuel-mirandas-sonnet-from-the-tony-awards.html)

This is not a sonnet; they've made it 14 lines, but they wrecked the rhyme scheme and the line lengths end up really weird and inconsistent. Nice try, but it's not quite there.

EW reports the line divisions very oddly, dividing some lines with a virgule (/) and some with actual line breaks:

My wife’s the reason anything gets done/ She nudges me towards promise by degrees / She is a perfect symphony of one/ Our son is her most beautiful reprise.

We chase the melodies that seem to find us until they’re finished songs and start to play/ When senseless acts of tragedy remind us that nothing here is promised, not one day.

This show is proof that history remembers/ We live through times when hate and fear seem stronger/ We rise and fall and light from dying embers remembrance that hope and love last forever. 

Love is love is love is love is love is love is love is love cannot be killed or swept aside/ I sing Vanessa’s symphony. Eliza tells her story. [we] fill the world with music, love, and pride.

(From http://www.ew.com/article/2016/06/12/tony-awards-2016-lin-manuel-miranda-sonnet-orlando, italics removed) 

This is almost there, but like the NY Times version, it too ends up mucking up the rhyme scheme (and actually ending up as a thirteen-line poem) because of what looks like a missed line division in the third from last line.

So what do I think Miranda's sonnet should look like? This:

My wife’s the reason anything gets done

She nudges me towards promise by degrees

She is a perfect symphony of one

Our son is her most beautiful reprise.

We chase the melodies that seem to find us

Until they’re finished songs and start to play

When senseless acts of tragedy remind us

That nothing here is promised, not one day.

This show is proof that history remembers

We lived through times when hate and fear seemed stronger;

We rise and fall and light from dying embers, 
Remembrances that hope and love last longer

And love is love is love is love is love is love is love is love cannot be killed or swept aside.

I sing Vanessa’s symphony, Eliza tells her story. Now fill the world with music, love and pride.

 Now this is a sonnet! 14 lines, rhyme scheme, and meter. The meter changes in the last two lines of the sonnet, but this is not unprecedented: Sir Philip Sidney's great sixteenth-century sonnet sequence, Astrophil and Stella, frequently moves from iambic pentameter in the first twelve lines to hexameter in the final couplet. Miranda's move is more dramatic, into duodecameter (twenty-four syllables a line, twice as many as Sidney's twelve-syllable hexameter), but it fits his aggressively innovative and over-crammed poetic style. The strictest form of the definitions I've introduced in my Introduction to the Sonnet (beginning here) would exclude it for the meter change, but as I've noted before in different contexts, as long as the poem builds up an expectation of consistent meter, the rhetorical effect of a sudden change towards the end can be very effective while remaining within the tradition of the sonnet.

Why does this matter? I'm sure, to many people, it simply doesn't. Lin-Manuel Miranda called it a sonnet, so it's a sonnet. But I believe that there is a reason we don't just call all poems, or even all short lyric poems, sonnets. There is a value to having standards and constraints within--and against--which to work. Writing a sonnet is different than writing a ballad, than writing an ode, than writing anything other than a sonnet, because of its particular constraints, its particular history, and its particular rules. In Lin-Manuel Miranda's sonnet (once properly set as a sonnet) we can see the particular ways in which he plays with those rules: by keeping fairly strictly to the iambic pentameter mode in the first twelve lines, the powerful expansion of the meter in the final couplet (and especially the moving "Love is love..." half-line, which begins the metrical change, going far beyond the pentameter restriction all on its own) is substantially heightened. Compare the Vanity Fair setting of the poem as a near-ballad with the sonnet setting above, and you will see that the final two lines of the sonnet are remarkable for their vitality and power in a substantially different way than the final quatrain of the ballad. This power comes not just from the words of Miranda's poem, but also from its context. Alexander Hamilton, the subject of Hamilton, was particularly known for writing "Non-Stop" (in the title of the first-act finale) and so the overstuffed last two lines are not just moving in their content, but in their Hamiltonian nature. The strong caesuras in these lines (after the last "love" and after the penultimate period, respectively) are what clearly suggested to the Vanity Fair editors that these should be line breaks, but both come more than halfway through their respective lines, which is a signal to us that they are in fact caesuras--and that this is in fact a sonnet.

4:23

There is both something flattened and ideal
About a sunny lazy afternoon
The brief irruptions of life's movement feel
As mayflies living fast but dying soon
Leaving the statues of the rest of us
To marvel marbly at their sudden sweeps
Wondering why they choose to make a fuss
And opting otherwise. Our slow time keeps
It's insubstantial ticking soft and low
So we can half forget it ever does
And in forgetting nearly make it so
Since time unnoticed hardly even was.
So lazy days pass by immobily
As if we could not act but simply be.

Babylon

The city grew. Not on its own,
Nor by (what rot) directed thought
But by a sense it should have grown
And mild surprise that it had not,
Converted into even milder
Satisfaction that it had.
The city grown was somewhat wilder,
Though all in all hardly that bad,
And  everybody (nearly so)
Was certain it would soon be fixed
(By whom? Who knew). And so things go
By time and random movement mixed.
The city burned, of course, but then
What else befalls the works of men?

Savings Time

The night is come. The dark (of course) is here.

And yet I cannot bring myself to care.

How is it different than what came before?

Why should it matter that the light has gone?

The dark of night is not a cause for fear--

Everything that's in it now was there

During the daylight. So is there any more

Reason to be worried, to go on 

And on about the falling darkness? No.

It is a change, but it is not a fault.

And as I watch the flashing headlights go

Winking out as each comes to a halt

I think I might prefer the dark of night

When each of us provides a little light.

Sense Memory

The smell of moss that's just been touched by rain
Reminds me always of my parents' home;
The hidden house that runs against the grain,
Entered from the side, its fertile loam
Utterly grassless, with a few tall trees
Emerging from the lichen on the ground,
Its windows shuttered 'gainst the western breeze
That, broken, slowly blows from Puget Sound.
I think of setting forth beyond the gate
Seeing the broken pavement bent by roots,
The saddle-hill that drops off to the lake
And wondering if I'm already late
To catch the bus--or if its twisting routes
Have slowed it to the pace that I can make.

Up

It comforts me at night when I'm away
To know you're looking up at the same sky
And that the stars that faintly touch my eye
Are shining down on you as bright as day.
I like to feel that if I could convey
My thoughts to them, then they could turn and sigh
Them back into your ears, so that when I
Stare up and long for you, you'd know. But they
Are deaf. And so I sit and write
Keeping the starlight in my heart and pen
So it will shine to you across the screen
In every word pinned down in black and white
And when you look up to the stars again
You'll think of me, and what I'd have them mean.

Inside Out

As the cold again assaults the land
We huddle closer, desperate to get warm.
Yet I desire you as close at hand
As this in summer, when the fatal form
Of burning sunlight coats the world in bright.
The seasons change, and change, but this remains:
From heat to chill, from blooming green to white,
I want to be by you. Our love ingrains
And teaches us in being loved to love
So that each touch, each glance produces more
Whether the winter sky whistles above
Or summer thunderstorms begin to pour
Still we shall cling together close and say
Our love is warm, whatever is the day.

Green land

How much would it be better if they knew
Their lines? If such emotion can be drawn
From minds that unremember what has gone
Before, then how much might they come to do
If all could be remembered through and through?
It would be like the rising of the dawn
Upon an arctic land, a frozen lawn
Awaiting melting. Oh, if it were true!
For then the show, like Anchorage in spring
Should see itself and pleasure in the sight;
Letting the months of summer warmly cling
Knowing the winter and the endless night
Are coming, but enjoying for the time
The pleasantest environ of the clime.

Parallel

The games you play

Upon your phone

Won't go away;

We're not alone.

But even so

I do not care

As long as you 

And I are there.

I play as well

We watch TV

And I can tell

That you love me

Because we're us

And happy thus.