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67 Mixed Messages: Poems
Poetry. Suzi, the dark lady of these sonnets, is the breathtakingly beautiful, hopelessly elusive love object for their writer, who recognizes well the absurdity of his feelings. A collection spiked with puns and literary references, 67 MIXED MESSAGES could best be described as a work of passionate playfulness, pained sexuality, and deadly serious jokes. Every line scans, every acrostic makes sense, and every joke is funny. "With breathtaking ease, Ed Allen takes on the whole tradition of the sonnet, from Shakespeare to Frost, and emerges a clear winner.... After finishing 67 MIXED MESSAGES, I found myself echoing Allen's constant refrain, 'I love you, Suzi, too.'"--R. S. Gwynn.
120 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 2006
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July 30, 2007
A technically breathtaking tour-de-force of the sonnet form. All of the poems in the book are love sonnets. Traditional enough, perhaps, until you factor in the cumulative effect of 67 love sonnets in a row.
Allen’s sonnets usually scan in perfect iambic pentameter, his end-rhymes are dead-on and true (in the Shakespearean pattern) and very often slam the lines shut, but he keeps the classic 8-6 proportion of the Petrarchan form. Each volta (or turn) happens on line 9 with the phrase "I love you, Suzi." And if that isn’t impressive enough, each sonnet is an acrostic, with the initial letters of each line reading vertically down the page: I LOVE SUZI GRACE. Meticulous, creepy, fantastic? Yes. Yes. Yes.
I read this book straight through in one sitting. The relentless meter is hypnotic, and builds a momentum that makes it almost impossible to stop turning the pages. The reader becomes as obsessed as the narrator, counting iambs and matching rhymed words, reading "I LOVE SUZI GRACE" with increasing awe each time it shows up, and anticipating each "I love you, Suzi" as if he/she is complicit in this affair, saying I love you too.
The act of writing the sonnet becomes as much the object of obsession as Suzi is, if not more.
Allen’s sonnets usually scan in perfect iambic pentameter, his end-rhymes are dead-on and true (in the Shakespearean pattern) and very often slam the lines shut, but he keeps the classic 8-6 proportion of the Petrarchan form. Each volta (or turn) happens on line 9 with the phrase "I love you, Suzi." And if that isn’t impressive enough, each sonnet is an acrostic, with the initial letters of each line reading vertically down the page: I LOVE SUZI GRACE. Meticulous, creepy, fantastic? Yes. Yes. Yes.
I read this book straight through in one sitting. The relentless meter is hypnotic, and builds a momentum that makes it almost impossible to stop turning the pages. The reader becomes as obsessed as the narrator, counting iambs and matching rhymed words, reading "I LOVE SUZI GRACE" with increasing awe each time it shows up, and anticipating each "I love you, Suzi" as if he/she is complicit in this affair, saying I love you too.
The act of writing the sonnet becomes as much the object of obsession as Suzi is, if not more.
Displaying 1 of 1 review