On Sonnets by Bernadette Mayer

And Otherwise

The Critical Flame, which in its latest issue has my piece about Claude McKay (the original, extended version is here) also has a review up of Sonnets by Bernadette Mayer. I’m ashamed to say I had not heard of a book so influential, but Amazon describes it:

Sonnets, first published in 1989 as Tender Buttons Number 1 is widely considered to be one of the most generative and innovative works of contemporary American poetry, radically rethinking the traditional sonnet form.

A publication date of 1989 means it predates my Sonnets by about three or four years. I always find correspondences like that intriguing, and I hope to lay my hands on a copy—the 25th anniversary edition is out and it has been expanded. The review doesn’t give a lot of excerpts from which to formulate an opinion—but I have to admit I got a chuckle when I came across these sentences in the review:

[C]ompare Mayer’s title, Sonnets, to that of Ted Berrigan’s volume The Sonnets. Unlike her Poetry Project peer, Berrigan, who made grandiose claims about his own volume, Mayer didn’t set out to compose a book of exceptional or groundbreaking greatness. Notice that the patriarchal self-pronouncement of greatness in Berrigan’s “The” is absent from Mayer’s title, Sonnets.

It is even possible that my use of the title predates her use of it (though I’m not going to suggest that she snitched the idea from me). I was avoiding patriarchal self-pronouncement and didn’t even know it!

My book will not offer you “considerable verbosity [compressed] into sparkling gems, each around fourteen lines in length.” Despite the blurb by Richard Wilbur on the back cover, he had his reservations too (carefully concealed by ellipses), which, when occasion permits, I will try to dig out from the archives to report on. Nevertheless I can assure you that you won’t find poems “around fourteen lines” but that I managed to hit that number square on the nose every time.

For something of a balanced view of the book—warts and all—check out what Arthur Mortensen had to say in his online review. Despite an earlier composition date, the Non Fit Press edition did not come out until after my Requiem—excuse me, The Requiem. Yes, that book was more of an orchidaceous self-pronouncement...