Valentine's Day
February 14, 2006
2006
Shakespeare 'out West'
Sonnet
The sonnet is an example of fixed form poetry, and Kathleen Borrelli accepts and overcomes those constrictions.
Sonnets have fourteen lines; lines have ten syllables, with the first syllable always unstressed, the second stressed, and so forth to the tenth and final syllable, which is stressed. Her "Mesa Verde Ancients" is true to those points.
Sonnets, Shakespearean versus Italian,
do differ for end-of-line rhyme. "Mesa Verde Ancients" takes the Shakespearean path, with the rhyme pattern:
abab, cdcd, efef, gg
Perfect rhyme is not based on spelling
but sound, and "walls" and "yawls" in her first quatrain is a clear example. In the second quatrain, "brick" and "thick" is a perfect rhyme, with spelling reinforcing the rhyme.
In the couplet -- gg, Kathleen Borrelli's end-of-line "fear" and multi-syllabled "disappeared" rely on eye-rhyme, with
"dis" in "disease" and "disappeared" contributing.
Vintage Colorado Poetry congratulates Kathleen Borrelli on her well-wrought "Mesa Verde Ancients."
The barefoot Moquis weave among the sage,
dwarfed pinon, yucca, pine and flat rock walls.
Red slick, this canyon gorge of daunting age
born inland miles from swiftly sailing yawls.
A village made of clay adobe brick
designs from ochre painted walls abound --
Black zigzag patterned grain jar plastered thick
rests in a sipapu in kiva round.
The Pueblo culture based on farming grains
protect the beans and squash; shooed squirrels run.
The crops on mesas high on desert plains
Religious men lead chants for rain and sun
Abandoned due to drought, disease and fear
A thriving culture once, has disappeared.
-- Kathleen Borrelli
Copyright (c) 2006, Kathleen Borrelli
Valentine / Charlotte Hemesath
Street Sign / Colorado Springs
Map / Colorado
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Third Place