My First Sonnet, "On Not Knowing Lichens, 'Bots, and Sonnets"

Wright Now!

Do you ever get mad at yourself for not having done something, not having already started something, years ago?

I felt so jealous last night, finishing Martha Wells's Murderbot Diaries (one story in four novellas)--jealous of how elegantly she made complex material comprehensible, and how she makes her points without poking you with them.

Wells says [in her Dreamwidth blog] that she usually writes "well over 100,000 words in a year" [but not in 2020].
Not that writing a ton guarantees anything--you can write badly in copious amounts––but I sense that in her case, she has expanded her writing brain to handle a lot, deftly.

Murderbot comments on this--it expands its neural network, through using it in new ways.
Brains do that.

So, I thought--well, Fresca, start now:
FIGURE OUT HOW TO WRITE A SONNET about lichen.
 

I'd said I wanted to do that months ago, after going to the north shore of Lake Superior near Duluth, in September.

Lichen on rocks along Lake Superior >
from Blacklock Gallery

For purposes of extending the neural net, it doesn't matter if the poem's good or bad, or what it's about--
if you're talking about stretching your brain, the work is the same.

So... Okay.

____________________

(I'll put "The Rules of Writing a Sonnet" at the end.)

MY FIRST QUATRAIN

Okay, so let me try a line or two...

I was thinking that I'd chosen a bad theme--lichen--because I don't know anything much about lichen. But then I thought, well, I can write about that: "What I don't know of lichen is a lot."

So... let me just hash out a first quatrain, right here and now:

What I don't know of lichen is a lot,
Its life and mind I cannot comprehend,
And even less do I know of a 'bot,
Or sonnets, which I now do seek to mend.

OMG! I did it! What a hoot.

Shall I try a second?

For neural nets exist to spread out far,
And further yet when reaching beyond ken,
To harvest stars and put them in a jar,
(An effort quite familiar to fen*).

* "fen" is the plural of "fan"
This seems to be going somewhere! I HAD NO IDEA!

But can I know what it's to be a bat?**
A question so germane it is a meme,
Or plant or 'bot far different than that?
More to the point, I'll start with a new scheme:

A sonnet's comprehensible to me––
More than a plant that's nothing like a tree.
__________________________

**"What Is It Like to Be a Bat?" (1974), by American philosopher Thomas Nagel, is considered "the most widely cited and influential thought experiment about consciousness." (per Wikipedia)

 Um, wow. That wasn't so hard, after all.
And it was fun for my brain!
The sonnet's not stand-alone, though--what's "a 'bot" got to do with anything?
But I like how it flows out of what I was chatting about...

Maybe I can cheat and give directional info in a title:

"On Not Knowing Lichens, 'Bots, and Sonnets"

What I don't know of lichen is a lot,
Its life and mind I cannot comprehend,
And even less do I know of a 'bot,
Or sonnets, which I now do seek to mend.

For neural nets exist to spread out far,
And further yet when reaching beyond ken,
To harvest stars and put them in a jar,
(An effort quite familiar to fen*).

But can I know what it's to be a bat**?
A question so germane it is a meme,
Or plant or 'bot far different than that?
More to the point, I'll start with a new scheme:

A sonnet's comprehensible to me––
More than a plant that's nothing like a tree.

____________________________________

Huh. You know what? I quite like it!

Sonnets: The Rules

1. Write a line in iambic pentameter: "duh-DUH" x 5 =

duh-DUH-duh-DUH-duh-DUH-duh-DUH-duh-DUH.
(That's 5 "feet" = 10 syllables.)

Found this helpful example:
‘It’s easy when you think of it like this.’
"It's EAS-y-WHEN-you-THINK-of IT-like THIS."

2. Do this 14 times.
Group the lines in three sets of four lines (each set is a quatrain), and one set of two lines (a couplet).

3. Rhyme the lines--I'll use the Shakespearean rhyme pattern:

ABAB; CDCD; EFEF: GG

4. Each section has a job:

1st quatrain: Sets out the theme (Shall I compare thee to a summer's day? Thou are more lovely...)

2nd: Extends the metaphor (Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines...)

3rd: But there's a twist... (But thy eternal summer shall not fade...)

Final couplet: Wrap it up in a new image (So long as men can breathe or eyes can see....)