"A Manifesto on the Contemporary Sonnet: A Personal Aesthetics" Tony Barnstone considers the sonnet from its formal beginnings
to its evolution into the twenty-first century, including some
generative techniques for sonnets of your own
Heidi Hart received her M.F.A. from Sarah Lawrence College. Her work has appeared,
among others, in Quarterly West, Pleiades, Cimarron Review,
and Pilgrimage. She is also the author of Grace Notes: The Waking of a Woman's Voice (University of Utah Press, 2004).
Body Sonnet #13
Our beach finds fill the kitchen bowl:
split blue mussel, ark shell, oyster, whelk
stripped to its column. Tonight, the boys asleep
upstairs, we face each other at the table
and rattle shells in our hands. I can't see yours.
I hold the whelk and two bleached oyster chips.
I like their noise. I like knowing what's lived
inside. You say, We haven't talked for weeks.
You say I look too thin. I want to tell you
my child-ribs surprised me last night in the mirror.
I play my little shells, the meter
of the speech I want to make, the piano
for the singing in my head, the piano
with its bony, knowing hammers.
Heidi Hart received her M.F.A. from Sarah Lawrence College. Her work has appeared,
among others, in Quarterly West, Pleiades, Cimarron Review,
and Pilgrimage. She is also the author of 