FEATURE
December 2006

Jeet Thayil


THE CORTLAND REVIEW

E
SSAY
Tony Barnstone
  "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


S
ONNETS
Tony Barnstone

Willis Barnstone
Lorna Knowles Blake
Kim Bridgford
Billy Collins
Leisha Douglas
Barry Ergang
Ross A. Gay
Soheila Ghaussy This marks an author's first online publication
Miranda Girard This marks an author's first online publication
Myrna Goodman This marks an author's first online publication
Susan Gubernat
Heidi Hart
Jay Leeming This marks an author's first online publication
Anne Marie Macari

Patricia O'Hara
John Poch
Michael Salcman
Patricia Smith
A.E. Stallings

Gerald Stern
Joyce Sutphen
Jeet Thayil
Meredith Trede This marks an author's first online publication

 

Jeet Thayil's most recent book of poems is English (Rattapallax, 2004), and he is the editor of Give the Sea Change and It Shall Change: Fifty-Seven Indian Poets (Fulcrum, 2005). He has received grants and awards from the New York Foundation for the Arts and the Rockefeller Foundation, among others. He lives in New Delhi.

The Sonneteer    Click to hear in real audio


I was famous, I won the Hawthornden prize.
Girls flashed me. One said, 'You're the poet, right?
What a godawful waste it would be, otherwise.'
I told her my talents would not last the night,
and it was a waste, you bet, any which way.
She said, 'Poetry boy, I don't give a damn.
I've got time to kill, make a sonnet for moi.'
'She hawks her beauty in the night,' I began,
and stopped, unable to motor my mouth.
One morning I stepped out for cigarettes
and hopped a subway to the south—
I thought I'd vanish myself and my debts.
For months she heard my step on the stair.
It wasn't me, brothers, I was taking the air.

 

 

Jeet Thayil: Poetry
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