NOTES ON THE WILD SONNETS | FROM NICHOLAS KORN
Each of these books is like an art gallery – and you move from poem to poem the same way your would move from painting to painting (or sculpture, for that matter) at an exhibit.
I don't create the Wild Sonnets as messages – I create them as heightened experiences that refer or connect to different meanings that life presents us in its random and various ways.
I want these poems to combine an urgency of expression with a mastery of expression. I see the art of poetry not as the delivery of thoughts and feelings, but the elevation of thoughts and feelings to be simultaneously emotive, imaginative – and even physical and visceral – by a rich and dynamic use of language.
For me, poetry is the opposite of cliche. And that means cliche phrasing and cliche ideas. It's about creating an experience for the reader or listener, that is both unique and shared.
I want each Wild Sonnet to bring readers to a higher level of thinking and a deeper level of feeling – at the same time.
This is my obligation to both the art and the audience.
Reviews for The Wild Sonnets: Volume VI (501-600)
Poetry That Soars
The Wild Sonnets are filled with exquisite wordplay, turns of phrase that weave, bob, lurch, sway, and surprise. The themes are rich with heart, yet universal. Need guidance from the universe? Simply thumb through the volume, pick a page, and delight at the message you will surely find therein. Volume Six has arrived. What a legacy. Well done Mr. Korn!
– Morgan Grace | Trucker, Rocker & Hooligan | Kansas City, MO
Poetry That Hits Every Level
This is deeply thought-provoking poetry, and I'm continually amazed at how well-crafted it all is. He so satisfyingly connects thought and emotion in such beautiful form. "I am a pendulum without an end. On which the counting of my tears depend."
– Laura Marie | Singer/Songwriter | San Antonio, TX
Fizzing and Crackling with Inspiration!
I’ve been looking forward to the next Wild Sonnets volume, and now it’s finally landed. This collection exceeds high expectations (based on previous volumes). This is fizzing and crackling with inspiration. “What elements collect to make a life…” These poems do live and breathe a lifetime of experience and reading them touches every emotion along the way. Great work! Recommended reading.
– Shem Sharples | Producer & Musician | Chester, UK
About The Wild Sonnets
The Wild Sonnet format follows the traditional length of fourteen lines, but divides the poem into two stanzas of seven lines, each closing with a rhyming couplet. The five preceding lines are a rambling iambic, sometimes pent up in a pentameter and sometimes not. Occasionally, there are internal rhymes to give the work an echo both to the tradition of the form and to the thoughts within poem.
The feeling of each Wild Sonnet is meant to sound something like a soliloquy – as if it were an utterance coming just after a striking thought or situation. There is a stream-of-conscious sense to the flow of each stanza, a fretwork of association that circles back upon itself. The transition from the first to second stanza is meant to be bit of a break, a moving forward from the initial idea in an unexpected direction.
The structure and sensibility of The Wild Sonnets are influenced by great poets of the past, most notably: William Shakespeare, Emily Dickinson, Dylan Thomas, e.e. cummings, Gerard Manley Hopkins and John Donne.