PostPoems Be Artistic. Be Creative. Be Inspired!

On one of the websites I used to post on, before I had heart of pospoems; and in one the magazines I published in, before I had online access to any site, poets often issued challenges to each other---just for fun, nothing to be gained except the satisfaction of the attempt---to write, say, on a certain subject, or in a certain form.  I was once challenged here, by a friend for whom I had the highest esteem, to use the phrase "monkeys stink" in a rhymed poem.  Several of my poems contain this this line, and my friend was pleased with the result.

   I would like to see a challenge to write a sonnet, a real sonnet, in proper form, using the forms/rhyme schemes of Dante, Petarch, Shakespeare, Milton, Pope, or Estlin Cummings.  The lines cannot be all end-stopped; at least one enjambment over at least two lines must occur.  Sentences must follow contemporary grammatical order, and cannot be wrenched out of order to suit the rhyme scheme.  The word "did" may not be used to modify a verb's tense to fit a rhyme scheme.

    In the last term of my senior year (1980), I took a "poetry workshop" course in which I learned, very quickly, that most of the people in the class (now these were all at the age of twenty-two or younger) disparaged or denigrated poetic forms to conceal their own ignorance of them, or inability to write them.  I admit that, as an inexperienced poet, I did so as well.  It was easier to dismiss their significance---as obstructing the true and honest effusions that poured forth from my heart of hearts---as to admit my then absolute ignorance of them, and my inability to work in them.  And then, on the Saturday afternoon following Thanksgiving, 1994, my first sonnet formed in my mind, and on my blank page---a sonnet about the Gadarenes' reponse to Jesus as described in the Gospel of Saint Mark.  

  I would love to see more contemporary sonnets on postpoems.