An Idea Worth Spreading
I've applied for a TED Fellowship, 2020-21.
A sonnet can change the world. The poet is Boswell to the world. No other writing takes in the world scene and describes it for all to read in such meaningful language. A good fiction writer will take you places. They create new worlds. They stir the imagination. A good writer is lyrical. A good non-fiction writer will make you think; will turn your worldview on its end, will improve your life. A good writer is passionate.
Yet it is the poet who chooses the words that open and close a door simultaneously, who asks a question and answers it and hears your answer all at once. It is the poet who is charged with speaking to power and hearing those under the thumb of cruel regimes and bringing those disparate views into a coalescent whole. It is the poet who hears not just the words’ meaning but the sounds of the words and the sounds of the words against each other and the sounds of silence and the sounds of words as a whole.
The world is rich in poetry; from haiku to limerick, from doggerel to free verse to the most tightly manicured work. Yet it is the sonnet, 140 syllables of perfectly chosen sound and image and meaning, that stands atop the globe of poetry. Each syllable must tell, exactly and precisely, what the world can see but cannot say. Done properly, a sonnet can change the world. The phrase Black Lives Matter has meaning that we all grasp. But this, THIS, howls like a Robert Johnson blues, cries like Mahalia Jackson
Black men lynched; I am dead amongst the trees.
“Tis my life snuffed; cops shot Breonna dead.
That’s my son I see, crushed by blue line knees.
When hate prevails, all souls on Earth are bled.
Nothing in the written word grabs your heart like poetry. It makes you feel, deeper than you thought you could feel. It shifts your view from “Me” to “Them.” Poetry hits you like a Mike Tyson hook to the liver. And that is what moves people to action.
Not facts. Not graphs. Not appeals to logic or kindness or higher thinking.
The Feels.
And nothing does that better than a sonnet.
Why?
A sonnet has rhythm. We remember rhythms, at a deeper level than conscious thought. We feel rhythm in the womb, our mother’s heartbeat pulsing around and through us. Rhythm is the fundamental sensation in life. We recall song lyrics and bits of poetry throughout our lives because of rhythm.
A sonnet has rhyme. We remember rhyme in concert with rhythm. You remember Baby Got Back 30 years later, I remember Grandmaster Flash’s The Message 40 years later because it rhymes. Rhyme is powerful.
A sonnet wastes nothing. Every bit of language in a sonnet is chosen with the nth degree of care. It has to sound right, feel right, look right, play well with the rest of the line, the entire of the poem, in order for a sonnet to work.
You get 14 lines, 10 syllables per line. You hew to the form.
abab cdcd efef GG
When you are complete, the sonnet nestles against your heart, rocks your soul, sings to you in love and sobs with you in tragedy. In the writing of the sonnet, much like time spent in meditation, you express the true in-most meaning of your humanity.
When we write sonnets, when we share sonnets, we move people in ways they will remember for all their time on Earth,
My idea worth spreading? All must learn to write and share their world in sonnet form. When we do, we will reach across aisles and oceans and street corners, from mosque to synagogue to homes of those whose faith is vested in humanity and not it an ancient text, to see our shared humanity, and begin to heal.
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