More than 'a moment's monument'. Issue 1 (1st December 2016)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: Guite, Malcolm
• Is Part Of: Book 2.0. Volume 6:Issue 1/2(2016)
• Page Start: 81
• Page End: 93
• Publication Date: 2016-12-01
• Subjects: Book industries and trade -- Technological innovations -- Periodicals; Publishers and publishing -- Periodicals; Book design -- Periodicals; Electronic publishing -- Periodicals; Books -- Periodicals; Periodicals; 070.5
• DOI: 10.1386/btwo.6.1-2.81_1
• Languages: English
• ISSNs: 2042-8022

Abstract

This article surveys the place of the sonnet in contemporary poetry, from the publication of Geoffrey Hill's Tenebrae (1978) to the present day. After a reflection on the nature and critical history of the sonnet as a form, drawing on Don Paterson's introduction to his 101 Sonnets anthology for Faber (2012), the article looks at the re-possession and reworking of the form by Hill, Heaney (under the influence of Robert Lowell) and Paterson, especially in the latter's free 'versioning' of Rilke's Sonnets to Orpheus (Rilke, 2012). The article investigates the relevance of both terms in Rossetti's definition of the sonnet as a 'moment's monument' (1881) and concludes with a survey of sonnets in more recent work, including Adrian Rice's Moongate Sonnets (2013), Richard Berengarten's Notness (2013) and Adam Crothers' Several Deer (2016).