When I was 41 I began regular sonnet-writing. I was fresh off the boat, but the boat was a cruise ship to Alaska. I’d had an intense and happy relationship with the cruise’s piano player, falling so deeply in love that I felt inspired and motivated to pen what I imagined as lyrics for the music he composed.

The love faded quickly after I resumed life on land but the sonnets didn’t. I wrote one at least every other weekday. Most often I composed while walking to BART. I’d get six to eight lines going and finish on the train. Few were profound – I’m sure most of them were on my (attempts to) diet and the weather, but I strove to make each one fun to pronounce.

The first big thing I learned was that work produces inspiration. Up till then I thought it was the other way around. Starting a sonnet generated ideas for the piece. And the more I wrote the easier became the process. Like lately: sometimes I wonder where I’ll get more ideas for these lessons, but so far every time I write one it makes me recall at least two more.

Before I slowed I compiled at least a thousand 14-line poems and now, when I produce maybe four a year, I’m as likely to pull out an old one and polish it as I am to work on a new piece.

I think sonnet work is a clue to my good life. As far as I can tell, and especially for my age (60), I’m one of the happiest people I know. I attribute much of that to sonneting. It uses both sides of my brain, and that makes me feel fulfilled like I’m doing what I was born for.

So I’m adding a page to this blog. As I’ve recently learned, a page is for posting a static piece while this Home area is for regular updating.

There’s been a page called House from the beginning. It has an essay about what I learned in the first year of small-space living. It also has a few line feed problems, which is apparently what I get for moving a WordPerfect file to WordPress. But I’m not complaining; I continue to recommend WordPress to all my friends.

Now there’s a new page (with a few line feed problems), called Making. It’s about why and how to do this:

The bars of poetry don’t form a pen
to keep the world without and me within,
but they define the space to sing and when
to dance. They cast a shadow so my skin
is safe: I can expose without a burn,
dissect without a wound, examine me
while music-masqued, that you and I may learn
a little more of our humanity.

Poetic license doesn’t mean excuse
to blather self-absorbed or volley rage.
I think instead that its intrinsic use
is revelation in a golden cage.
No other mental pleasure’s as sublime
as dancing at the bars of measured rhyme.