Alex Lella's Blog

Travel Wishes and other things

There are so many places that I would like to travel, but right now, I really wish that I could go back to Ecuador, because I have half a hope that my old girlfriend, Joanna and I could work things out.

Still, I admit that's not really what I want to write about now, so on to other news


Remember this poem?:

Winter Sonnet  (E) A Shakespearean sonnet about Winter. It won third prize in a contest! #1910214 by Weirdone-Back in the games

Well, apparently it has somehow found its way into this week's poetry newsletter, which I don't even read. That's great. But I have begun to receive some reviews of that poem as a result.



Including this condescending thing:

Review of "Winter Sonnet"

I don't believe the author of that review has any connection to anyone in our circle, (although in the small crazy world that is WDC, who knows?) so I'm going to speak candidly about him. He's right about the iambic pentameter being imperfect, but that happens often when writing a Shakespearean sonnet. Even Bill didn't get it right 100 percent of the time. When he mentioned that the poem is not a Shakespearean sonnet, because it does not contain a volta, I admit my first reaction was to say, "picky", and I shrug it off. Then, I remembered what I knew about poetry and realized that it wasn't picky, it was wrong. Voltas go in Petrarchan sonnets, between the octet and the sextet, not Shakespearean sonnets.

Oh well. Thank you for listening.