"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
Meredith Trede's chapbook, Out of the Book, is one of four published by Toadlily Press in Desire Path, the inaugural volume of Toadlily's Quartet Series. She has also had poems published in such journals as The Paris Review, The Nebraska Review, West Branch, Gargoyle, and Runes. She lives in Sleepy Hollow, NY, where she and her husband are partners in a management consulting business.
Stumbling Home The Night After Pearl Harbor
That's me, last in the beer garden, first sap on line
at the recruiting station. The wife kept yapping
I shouldn't go before I have to, but me
and my buddies figured it's the right thing.
What a hero! I could lick those Jap bastards.
I come from real German soldiers, good
Germans. Hell, the goddamned Army took
my great-grandfather and he was damn near
eighty. Dumped me right out on my ass.
4F. Cock-eyed. Chickenshit,
that's what everybody'll think. Nobody's fist
is as big as mine. Can't get the damn key
in the damn dark. Let me alone. You
ought to be happy. The Army don't want me.
Meredith Trede's chapbook, Out of the Book, is one of four published by Toadlily Press in