From the Archives - Sting’s Lyrical Blunders

Introduction

About fifteen years ago, my brother emailed me a blog post by Charles Petzold about a fairly major goof in Sting’s lyrics to “Don’t Stand So Close to Me.”  The essay had to do with Sting’s allusion to the book Lolita, and the age of Vladimir Nakobov’s evil pedophile character, Humbert Humbert. Sting refers to Humbert as “the old man,” but he simply isn’t old. Petzold’s post also recounts a more widespread criticism of the song, which is Sting’s inane rhyming of “Nabokov” with “cough.”

What follows is my original response to my brother (which I’ve fleshed out a bit for this presumably larger audience). But first, some background.

Highlights of Petzold’s post

Petzold’s blog post begins by quickly recounting the botched rhyme in Sting’s lyrics:

The music magazine Blender recently cited Sting as the worst lyricist ever (story here), in part for the atrocious lyric [It’s no use, he sees her/ He starts to shake and cough/ Just like the old man in/ That book by Nabokov]. At the time the song first came out, much was made of Sting’s ridiculous pronunciation of Vladimir Nabokov’s last name, which should properly be accented on the second syllable.

Then Petzold takes Sting to task for suggesting that Nabokov’s antihero is old:

The “old man” — the narrator of [Lolita] who adopts the pseudonym Humbert Humbert — is hardly old! In May 1947, when Humbert Humbert first meets Dolores Haze, he is 36 or 37 and she is 12. He dies at the age of 42, and she dies at the age of 17. This is not a matter of “inside knowledge” or reading between the lines. Nabokov is extremely precise in the chronology of the novel, and only the most superficial reading (or, more likely in this case, none at all) could [miss] all the signposts.

My commentary, informed by my long study of Nabokov’s work and the two years of Russian I took in high school, elaborates on both gaffs.

Sting’s Lyrical Blunders – October 11, 2007

Petzold makes good points. I have long been bothered by that mispronunciation (made all the worse for its being the very last word of the song). For years, when I’d sing this (e.g., in the shower), I would change the lyrics to “just like the old man in that book by Vladimir.” This fixes the meter, in that the great writer’s name isn’t accentuated on the wrong syllable, but of course my substitution fouls up the rhyme. Not that Sting’s rhyme was exactly right to begin with; “Nabokov” is correctly pronounced “Na-BOH-kov,” with the final letter being basically a “v” sound, perhaps slightly closer to an “f” than the classic English “v” but in any event a poor match with the simple “f” sound in “cough.”

So, to fix both the meter and the rhyme, and the age while I’m at it, here’s how I will sing the last two lines from now on:

It’s no use, he sees her
He’s feeling really queer
Just like the gross man in
That book by Vladimir

I suppose I’m not on completely safe ground with “Vladimir,” since a very strict Russian pronunciation would accentuate the second syllable, which would have a bit more of an “e” sound, so the word would more properly rhyme with “redeemer.” But I think enough Americans say “VLAD-i-mere” that this is a significant improvement.

Now, in case you’re wondering if it’s fair to say Humbert Humbert felt “queer,” I think it certainly is. At one point late in the novel, when Lolita is starting to distance herself from Humbert, he describes how “I sat down on the grass with a quite monstrous pain in my chest and vomited up a torrent of browns and greens that I had never remembered eating.” That would be a pretty queer feeling indeed (and in any case I don’t remember Humbert shaking and coughing at any point in the book).

What’s arguably even lamer than the rhyme itself is Sting’s effort to defend himself. His website, sting.com, provides this quote (taken from an interview):

Okay, I can defend that. Sometimes rhymes can be so bad they can shock you into listening to them. Most good, full rhymes are just Hallmark card stuff. Moon, June, erm, balloon. But I’ve used that terrible, terrible rhyme technique a few times. Technically, it’s called a feminine rhyme—where it’s so appalling it’s almost humorous.

Okay, let me get this straight: Sting deliberately mispronounced “Nabokov,” to make it rhyme with “cough,” just to shock the listener into listening? What was the listener doing before? Zoning out? Listening to something else? Yeah, right. “Don’t Stand So Close to Me” is actually a rather good song, and this is the very end of it; if there was any need to shock the reader into listening, that would more appropriately be done closer to the beginning.

Meanwhile, the bit about “feminine rhyme” further showcases Sting’s appalling willingness to shamelessly spout bullshit without regard to the possibility that he’ll be fact-checked. “Feminine rhyme” is not characterized by being appalling or shocking. As M.H. Abrams explains in his excellent Glossary of Literary Terms, a feminine rhyme “consists of a stressed syllable followed by an unstressed syllable” and, “since it involves the repetition of two syllables, is also known as a double rhyme.” Examples would be feather/heather and ending/bending. Does this type of rhyme get employed in pop music? Sure! Check out these lines from Eminem:

Yo! His palms are sweaty, knees weak, arms are heavy
There’s vomit on his sweater already: Mom’s spaghetti

Feminine rhyme is what Sting should have employed, since “Nabokov” is a word whose final syllable is unstressed. What Sting actually made was a masculine rhyme, which “consists of a single stressed syllable” such as in bore/poor and louche/douche. If he wished to employ a feminine rhyme in order to achieve metrical accuracy, Sting should have rhymed Nabokov with “fuck off.”

A final note on the botched rhyme and Sting’s lame defense of it: twice on one page of sting.com, Nabokov is spelled “Nabakov.” This further suggests that Sting simply didn’t know how to pronounce the name; obviously, flubbing the penultimate syllable wasn’t necessary in order to achieve the single (masculine) rhyme with “cough.”

Getting to Petzold’s main point, the inaccuracy of “old man” in the final verse of that song: this hadn’t previously dawned on me, and it’s a very good observation. I suppose I’ve allowed the casting in the two Lolita movies to distort my perception of Humbert’s age (and shame on me, because I’ve read that book at least three or four times). Of course, Sting was pretty young when he wrote that song, but was he young enough to think of 36 as old? Well, we can do some rudimentary math here based on the line “this girl is half his age.” If we assume this is high school, the girl is between 14 and 18. (On his website, Sting recalls how “I’d done teaching practice at secondary schools and been through the business of having 15-year-old girls fancying me—and me really fancying them!” Eww.) So the narrator of the song is presumably around 30. Perhaps a little kid would think 36 is old, but not a 30-year-old.

I suppose Sting could try to argue that he meant “old man” as in “father,” as Humbert was in fact Lolita’s legal stepfather for most of the book. But would he really expect all his listeners to have read the book to know that? Besides, it’d be “her old man,” not “that old man.” No dice.

As a final Hail Mary, Sting could always deny that he was talking about the book Lolita at all—after all, there are plenty of shaking and coughing old men in Nabokov’s books. This would be a weak defense, of course, given the subject matter of the song, but there’s still hope: Sting could claim that he was alluding to The Enchanter, a Nabokov novella that’s also about a pedophile (and was an early precursor to Lolita). I can’t recall the age of its awful protagonist, but at least he is described as “balding.” But from the perspective of that hypothetical defense, Sting nullified it when he recorded a new version of the song in 1986 and changed “that book by Nabokov” to “that famous book by Nabokov.” I doubt anybody would call The Enchanter a famous book. And in interviews Sting has mentioned his admiration of Lolita.

I think it’s appropriate that Sting topped the list of awful lyricists. I saw a documentary about him from 1985, and he just came off as a pompous ass. In one scene, Sting asks his drummer or somebody whether “chasm” is pronounced with a “k” sound or a “ch” sound. This makes me wonder if he really writes his own lyrics to begin with. I mean, who would use a word he doesn’t even know how to pronounce? Oh, wait ... Sting, obviously.

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What You Didn’t Know About Giraffes!

Introduction

Back in the ‘80s, a friend of mine tried to set me up with his girlfriend’s sister.  I thought the whole double-dating thing was kind of corny, plus it didn’t seem like this girl was the sharpest tool in the shed.  For example, she wrote a report for school on the topic of goats; it was basically a list of goat-related facts.  (I know, I know ... what grade-school kid hasn’t taken this approach?  But this was a high school junior!)  I enjoyed watching her friend try to help:  “Shouldn’t you have a thesis?” To which she replied, “It is a thesis!”

Well, I probably should have dated her, because I now realize that a well-defined thesis actually limits you intellectually.  Had she declared something specific—e.g., “goats are assholes”—then she’d have had to ignore all the great things about goats when conducting her research.

With that in mind, I’m not going to try to reach some neat conclusion as I pursue the topic of giraffes.  What I will say is this:  though there are many neat things to learn about giraffes, some of the most fascinating things are curiously—perhaps suspiciously—obscure.

Some amazing facts about giraffes

The giraffe is the tallest animal in the world.  Newborn giraffes are taller than most humans. 

A giraffe can stand up within half an hour of being born.  NASA has studied this to help understand how to strengthen astronauts’ leg veins.

A giraffe can gallop along at 35 mph.

A giraffe’s kick can actually decapitate a predator.

A giraffe’s tongue is 20 inches long, and prehensile.  The giraffe can and does pick its nose with this amazing tongue.

Giraffes have very high blood pressure:  at about 300/200, it’s twice that of humans.  A giraffe’s pulse rate, at around 170, is also twice ours.

A female giraffe can only mate for two weeks out of the year, and indicates her readiness by urinating in the male’s mouth.  This odd practice is called flehmen and is related to that weird smelling thing cats do.

Can giraffes be evil?

Of course it’s silly to assign moral responsibility to animals, but when an animal exhibits a behavior that’s sufficiently dastardly, it’s tempting to call that animal evil.  Consider the abominable practice of eating one’s young.

“But wait,” you protest, “giraffes are herbivores!”  Well, yes, mainly.  But they are also known to eat the bones of dead animals, and even carcasses.  Is it a stretch to assert that they also eat their own young?  Probably not.  Try this:  go to Google, and type in “do giraffes eat.”  Google’s auto-fill feature immediately suggests obvious search strings, like “do giraffes eat apples.”  Fourth on the list:  “do giraffes eat their young.” 

Now, the responses you’ll see are of course quite varied.  There are more than 1.5 million hits on this search, and I for one do not have time to chase them all down.  Bottom line:  there’s probably something to this, and I think it’s deplorable.

Giraffes are also known to lay their eggs in other animals’ nests, in a move called “brood parasitism.”  What’s more, the baby giraffe, once hatched, will push the other animal’s eggs out of the nest, to get all the food to itself!  Watch this video if you don’t believe me.

Okay, I just realized I screwed up.  I somehow confused cuckoo birds with giraffes.  I guess giraffes don’t technically engage in brood parasitism, which should have been obvious because of course giraffes don’t lay eggs.  I could go delete the previous paragraph, but any attempt to “revise the past” can get you into legal trouble.  It just makes you look guilty.  And with the Wayback Machine, of course I’d get caught.

More on evil in giraffes

I’m not the first person to explore the notion of evil in giraffes.  Eddie Izzard, who in addition to being a zoologist and historian does some stand-up comedy, pursued this question when pondering, onstage, why (in the Noah’s Ark tale) so many animals had to endure the great flood that God brought about to punish evil in the world.  Among other animals, Izzard investigates the giraffe: 

What in fact is an evil giraffe?  How do they ... [here he mimics a giraffe voice and pantomimes chewing:]  “I will eat all the leaves on this tree.  I will eat more leaves than I should.  And then other giraffes may die.  Ha ha ha!  I am an evil herbivore.”

You should talk about this with your children.  Share with them your best rendition of Izzard’s monologue.  Use it as a jumping-off point to discuss the nature of good and evil.

Did giraffes ruin poetry?

Of course I won’t be so absurd as to assert that giraffes have done anything deliberate—whether acting collectively or individually—to ruin poetry.  But it’s an unfortunate fact that their very name has caused poets no end of grief, with many critics convinced that poetry itself has suffered.

The problem stems, oddly enough, from the simple fact that almost nothing rhymes with “giraffe.”  Of course the modern reader thinks nothing of this, since rhyme has all but disappeared from modern verse—but that’s actually the point.  For most of poetry’s history, rhyme did matter.  It was actually this animal—or rather, its name—that started the trouble.

Believe it or not, no prominent poet had managed to rhyme on “giraffe” until T.S. Eliot, in 1920, wrote “Sweeny Among the Nightingales.”  It opens thus: 

Apeneck Sweeney spreads his knees
Letting his arms hang down to laugh,      
The zebra stripes along his jaw    
Swelling to maculate giraffe.

Critics immediately noted two things:  one, Eliot rhymed on just one syllable, which doesn’t really count and is fairly weak for a poet of his caliber; and two, “maculate giraffe” is kind of a stretch.  As a verb, “maculate” means “to mark with spots or stain” and is a transitive verb.  The poem takes place in a restaurant so obviously there’s no giraffe around.  (That would turn the whole poem into a weak joke, like the one where a panda strides into a bar and shoots the piano player.)  So “maculate” must be an adjective, meaning “spotted or stained.” 

Since when is it okay for a noun to modify an adjective (i.e., for “giraffe” to modify “maculate,” since what is being described is not a giraffe but the way that Sweeney’s sideburns are spotty)?  This line really makes no sense.  If you ask me, the mental effort of rhyming with “giraffe,” even on one measly syllable, simply threw Eliot off his game.

(The difficulty of rhyming with “giraffe,” by way, is related to where the stress falls in this word.  Most English words are trochaic—that is, the stress, or emphasis, falls on the first syllable; e.g., “zebra,” “swelling,” “letting.”  The word “giraffe” is iambic, meaning the stress is on the second syllable.  This is very common with French words, but a French poet runs into the problem of two different words for “giraffe”:  “la girafe” (feminine) and “le girafeau” (masculine).  How can the poet choose which form of this word to use, when the sex of a giraffe is so hard to determine?)

That Eliot’s “Sweeney Among the Nightingales” was well received really irritated another poet of the era, a certain E.E. Cummings.  Cummings attended Harvard shortly after Eliot, and it’s widely known he disliked living in the older poet’s shadow.  So he set out to write a poem of his own that would not only rhyme with “giraffe” on two syllables, but would actually make sense.

The only problem was, he couldn’t do it.  The only obvious two-syllable rhyme, “carafe,” was off the table, because it was too obvious.  A popular knickknack of the day was a carafe actually shaped like a giraffe, which made the association far too twee for a sophisticated poet.  (If you’re lucky you can still come across a vintage giraffe carafe at a thrift store.)

Countless crumpled-up drafts of Cummings’ giraffe poetry efforts were found by historians, but none still exist (they were destroyed in a fire, which some say was arson).  We know through accounts from Cummings’ friends that, for weeks at a time, he would convince himself that words like “agrafe,” “piaffe,” and even “Luftwaffe” counted as proper “giraffe” rhymes; each time, he eventually acknowledged he was only slipping into self-delusion.  This effort almost drove him insane, and finally he abandoned traditional poetry altogether, not only eschewing rhythm, rhyme, and spelling, but most other poetic conventions as well.  He would never write traditional poems again.

While E.E. Cummings continues to be a household name, many critics dismiss the actual quality of his work.  But whether or not he was any good, his influence cannot be denied.  To this day, most poetry lacks rhyme (along with meter, etc.).  It’s not fair to scapegoat Cummings for this ... the problem was with “giraffe” all along.  Sure, other words are hard to rhyme with too, but they aren’t attached to creatures as compelling as giraffes, which practically cry out to be celebrated in verse.

Are giraffes political?

Many primates are known to build complex political structures within their communities.  But do giraffes?  Not exactly, but once again, something about these strange animals seems to inspire humans.  If we ever manage to put together a credible third political party, don’t be surprised if its symbol is the giraffe.

The use of the giraffe in pictorial political metaphor is as old as the metaphor itself.  The giraffe first makes its appearance, oddly enough, in the first cartoon that represented the Republican party as an elephant.  I’m talking about Thomas Nast’s drawing, “The Third-Term Panic,” which ran in Harper’s Weekly in 1874:

I think political cartoons have gotten simpler over the last 140 years.  It’s worth pointing out here that the donkey doesn’t actually represent the Democratic party (as has been reported elsewhere):  its collar reads “N.Y. Herald.”  The Democratic Party is represented in this cartoon by the raccoon, which retreats from the chasm of chaos even as the elephant flees the lion.  Almost every other animal flees the lion as well.  Notable exceptions are the owl, whose meaning I can’t grasp; the ostrich, predictably burying its head; and the giraffe.

It’s impossible to overstate the importance of this cartoon in establishing the elephant as the symbol of the Republican party.  Likewise, other Nash cartoons cemented the relationship between the donkey and the Democrats (even though this one didn’t).  Nash didn’t follow up on the giraffe theme—but other cartoonists did.  Check this out:

The big problem with the giraffe’s ascendance in political cartoons is that the giraffe isn’t yet symbolic of anything specific (“independent” being something less than a political party with specific values).  Consider the following pair of pictures:

The caption of the first cartoon translates, “April goes as it entered, the end will be the beginning.”  The second, near as I can figure, is something about a wind farmer being pissed about a June hailstorm.  I don’t grasp the point of either cartoon, and I’m no expert on German politics, but since Merkel and Beck represent opposing political parties, the giraffe cannot be thought to symbolize either one of them.

If you’re about to ask “so what?” I will ask you to pause and reflect on something:  isn’t it possible that the failure of a viable third party to emerge is actually the giraffe’s fault?  Think about it.  The donkey first came to symbolize the Democrats because Andrew Jackson’s opponents called him a jackass, and he embraced the symbol because it represents stubbornness.  Nash characterized the Republican party as an elephant because this party was too big, he felt, to cower in fear, even when confronted by a lion.  Stubbornness and fearlessness are sound characteristics on which to base a party’s mascot.  But what are giraffes?

Giraffes, alas, are just kind of weird.  What party wants to be associated with weirdness?  But this timidity is the whole problem.  If you’re going to take on the big established parties, you’re going to have to embrace your uniqueness.  Figure out how to tune your metaphor to include a strong heart, a clever tongue, and a strong kick, and you’ll be on your way.  (Needless to say, it’s best if you leave out the bit about urinating into your mate’s mouth.)

For the record

As I hope you’ve gathered, all that stuff about Cummings and Eliot was pure malarkey (though I suppose it’s possible I unknowingly stumbled on some truth there).  Everything else in this essay, however, is completely true(-ish).

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Sonnet Class (almost) Crashes & Burns

Introduction

A couple years ago, I posted a guide, “How to Write a Sonnet,” to albertnet.  I didn’t expect anybody to read it, but it has actually become one of my most popular posts.  When I realized that more people are interested in this obscure activity than I’d thought, I decided to offer a sonnet writing class as a prize for the fundraising auction for my daughter’s school.  I figured if I could get half a dozen people to sign up (and pay the tuition to the PTA) it would be worth giving a class.

Enough people signed up, so I held the class last summer.  Not surprisingly, a few of the registered students flaked, so I had my two daughters attend, to increase the liveliness of our discussions.  I figured if these little kids participated, that might draw out the shyer students.  (I don’t reckon a lot of extroverts go in for sonnet writing.)  This post documents the struggles I had with the class; how I publicly shamed my daughter; and how she had the last laugh.  Much of this tale is told in sonnets, including sonnets from each of my daughters.

The class

I ended up with three adults and one child among the “non-scholarship” students (i.e., besides my daughters).  I transferred most of the contents of my sonnet essay to a flip-chart, which made the lecture really easy to give.  The kid who attended, who must have been forced into it by his mom or dad, didn’t say a word.  He was probably terrified (as I would have been at that age).  But the refreshments were a hit, and everything seemed to go pretty well until the workshop.  We were all supposed to get started writing sonnets.  Nothing lofty, of course; I’d suggested a “Jabberwocky” strategy of writing about any topic or no topic, with lines that didn’t need to make any sense at all.  The idea was to practice iambic pentameter and the ABABCDCDEFEFGG rhyme scheme (click here for details).  Unfortunately, everybody seemed to have writer’s block, at least at first.

As I recall it, the only person who was getting anywhere was my younger daughter, Lindsay.  She is of course well accustomed to asking me for help on her homework, so as she composed a line she would ask me if the meter and rhyme were right.  Before too long she had a pretty good sonnet going:

In case that’s a bit hard to make out, here’s what she wrote:

My fluffy cat is going to bed now

With dreams of tigers chasing mice and dogs.

She wakens with a slightly startled meow

But hopes to dream of tasty polliwogs.

And soon her eyes begin to slightly close.

Sometimes she dreams of Tom and Jerry’s fights.

This time Tom might just win; really, who knows?

I thought this was a great start.  The meter was pretty good, and the rhymes perfect, and the content I found charming.  But it didn’t seem to be inspiring anybody.  Oddest of all, my older daughter, Alexa, hadn’t written a thing.

Why did I find this odd?  Well, Alexa has written at least three sonnets (one is included at the end of my how-to post) and has shown remarkable facility.  She was supposed to by my “ringer,” the little kid who made it look easy.  I wondered if perhaps her very success was holding her back.  Had I screwed up and praised her for her earlier work, so now she was afraid of falling from grace?  I couldn’t think of any other explanation.  I asked why she wasn’t writing anything.  “I don’t feel like it,” she replied.

Desperate measures

I was beginning to get worried.  I’d budgeted an hour for this workshop.  I felt like if nobody actually wrote anything, I might have to consider whether I’d only imagined the good interaction we’d had during the first part of the class.  (In retrospect I realize that people must have been paying attention because they did well on the quiz.)  I knew it wouldn’t matter that much if the class was a success or not, but I was starting to feel embarrassed.

Hmmm, embarrassment.  This gave me an idea.  I figured there was a pretty good chance I could shame Alexa into writing something.  The question was, if I did this, would I go to Hell for it?  Was this a good trade-off—possibly rescuing myself from embarrassment, but at my daughter’s expense?  How sensitive are pre-teens, anyway?  But deep in my heart I knew that having had this idea, I’d follow through with it.  After all, I’m of the character-building school of parenting.

Of course, there’s a right way and a wrong way to embarrass your kids in front of others.  (Well, actually, I’m sure there are countless wrong ways to do it.)  The best way I could think of, under the circumstances, was to embarrass her through verse.  This was a sonnet class, after all.  I hadn’t planned to write anything myself during the workshop, but desperate times call for desperate measures.

My gauntlet-sonnet

Here’s the partial sonnet I wrote, and then read aloud to the class, in order to lay down the gauntlet for Alexa:

I fear my sonnet class has crashed and burned

Because Alexa has refused to write.

My pedagogic efforts she has spurned,

Her fertile thoughts decaying into blight.

Because she’s had success with this before,

She clearly wants to quit while she’s ahead.

Pretending that this sonnet stuff’s a bore

Assuages a peculiar kind of dread.

This got a good laugh, and poor Alexa got pretty red in the face.  Seeing this, I became nervous.  What would she do now?  If she stormed out of the room, the resulting awkwardness would be pretty much intolerable for everybody.  Suddenly my tactic seemed absurdly foolish and I was kicking myself for taking such a risk. 

But Alexa didn’t storm off.  She grabbed a piece of paper and a pencil and started to write.

Redemption!

With Alexa scribbling furiously away, the others perhaps felt inspired because bit by bit students began writing, and reading what they’d written, a few lines at a time.  (Since I didn’t have anybody turn anything in, I’m not able to quote my students’ work.)  Before long, Alexa announced that she was ready to read her sonnet.  Not just the first few lines, but the whole dang thing.  Here’s what she wrote:

I contemplate the bowl of foul greens

Which holds me back from access to dessert.

To dump them on the floor, yet not be seen...

No, not with parents constantly alert.

I simply cannot bring myself to eat

That sickly substance calling itself food.

Just managing to bite it—what a feat!

But to refuse, no, that would not be shrewd.

Dessert!  Dessert!  To me it is required.

The sweetness simply makes my life complete.

Of filthy veggies, oh, I am so tired;

Against dessert, they simply can’t compete.

    Boy, I am glad that we do have a cat

    She’s saved my life, well, many times at that.

One of the great things about parenting is how much joy I get from losing to my kids.  That old saying “He who laughs last, laughs best” certainly applies here, but it’s hard to imagine that Alexa’s triumph and satisfaction exceeded my own at that moment.  In fact, I was so moved, I decided to finish my sonnet and chronicle her triumph.  Fortunately, the workshop was getting livelier and I didn’t have a chance until a day or two later.

The rest of my sonnet

Alexa kind of wrote the second half of my sonnet, in the sense that she inspired the content (which for me is generally the hardest part).  Here’s the whole sonnet:

I fear my sonnet class has crashed and burned

Because Alexa has refused to write.

My pedagogic efforts she has spurned,

Her fertile thoughts decaying into blight.

Because she’s had success with this before,

She clearly wants to quit while she’s ahead.

Pretending that this sonnet stuff’s a bore

Assuages a peculiar kind of dread.

But wait—because I’ve read these lines aloud

(Thus shaming her in front of everyone)

She’s taken up a pen.  She’s far too proud

To be the victim of my wicked fun.

If we could see inside that precious head

We’d see a lightning storm of brilliant thought!

Pen flashing, from behind she darts ahead.

She’s first to read, her sonnet deftly wrought.

     Alexa, in restoring her good name

     Has gone and put the rest of us to shame.

I would like to point out that I did get Alexa’s permission before telling this tale and sharing these sonnets on this blog.  (Lindsay gave me permission too, but asked me to explain that she’s not done with her poem yet.)

If you’re a Bay Area person and would like to take a sonnet-writing class next year, e-mail me and let me know, because I plan to offer this class again at the 2014 school auction.  Who knows, maybe next time I can put Lindsay in the line of fire!

Epilogue - January 11, 2014

Remember the good start my younger daughter, Lindsay, had on her sonnet?  Well, a week or two before Christmas I suggested that she finish that sonnet as a gift to me.  This she did.  Her sister typed it up for her and helped her print it out.  Here it is now!  (Since her sister chose to leave in the misspellings, I have followed suit.)

My fluffy cat is going to bed now
With dreams of tigers chasing mice and dogs
She wakens with a slitely startled myow
But hopes to dream of tasty pollywogs

And soon her eyes begin to slitly clows 
Sometimes she dreams of Tom and Jerry’s fites
This time Tom might just win, really, who nows?
When Jerry leaves he’s covered with cat bites 

When wacend our cat tries to sleep again
In resting her expreshon is quite smug
She uses blankcets to make cumfy dens
I wake our cat and give her a big hug

   Not only is she lazy but shes fat,
   Our cat is cute thers no dening that.