16 contemporary poetry
the USA, UK, New Zealand, Ireland, Canada and Australia. When
one considers that ‘stanza’ can also mean room, Beverly Dahlen’s
admission that the sonnet is ‘a kind of padded cell in which I go
mad’ (p. 12 ) seems particularly apt. This anthology is not promot-
ing neo-formalism but rather the rupturing and interrogation of
the sonnet’s form. Various engagements with an ‘opening’ of the
sonnet include found work, excerpts from extended sequences,
the breaking down of lyric enunciation, concrete poetry, visual
punning, collage, homophonic translation, process writing and the
arrangement of what could be called ‘baggy’ quotidian sonnets.
One of the major poets renowned for the rewriting of the sonnet
was Ted Berrigan. Part collage, part process writing and lyrical
evocation, Berrigan’s Sonnets ( 1964 ) show how lines of apparent
non sequiturs can be constantly rearranged to alter a context of
interpretation. Berrigan’s emphasis on the line as a unit of com-
position creates some surprisingly charged adaptations. Take for
example an excerpt from Sonnet XV: ‘The black heart beside the
fi fteen pieces / Monroe died. So I went to a matinee B-Movie’ (p.
43 ), which becomes in Sonnet LIX ‘Today / I am truly horribly
upset because Marilyn / Monroe died, so I went to a matinee B
movie and Ate King Kong popcorn’ (p. 43 ). Berrigan is playfully
emphatic on the rights of the sonnet. In Sonnet XV he adds ‘Doctor
but they say “I LOVE YOU” / and the sonnet is not dead’ (p. 43 ).
Similarly, Juliana Spahr’s Power Sonnets ( 2000 ) arrange ‘found’
web material, such as ‘After Bill Clinton: Press Briefi ng and Press
Release, White House Website April 2000 ’, which examines the
relationship between education, web access and race. Maurice
Scully’s delightful ‘Sonnet’ from Sonata ( 2006 ) performs writing
in the space of ‘my little pop-up book of knowledge’ (p. 205 ).
Geraldine Monk’s Ghost & Other Sonnets ( 2008 ) are lyrically
dense, sonorous and often captivating; there is a sense of condensa-
tion in her fi nal rhyming couplets, which are sustained throughout
the volume.^31 Take, for example, the following: ‘All at sea once
more / Maroon will never be the new black’ (p. 47 ), ‘Barnacle
Geese reclassifi ed as fi sh or fruit / Eaten under the subterfuge
of natural language’ (p. 57 ) and ‘Aside from this we kiss the /
Doldrums upping entropy to bliss’ (p. 31 ). American poet Laynie
Browne revisits the potential of the sonnet to inscribe the mundan-