NaPoWriMo 2025 (April 7th): Why I Am Not a Sonnet

From NaPoWriMo 2025, Day Seven: Wow! As of today, we have completed our first week of Na/GloPoWriMo 2025.

Today’s featured participant is 7eyedwonder, where you’ll find a tasty little paean to mint in response to Day Six’s flavorful prompt.

Today’s daily resource is the Canadian Museum of History. You can take a virtual tour, or enjoy several online exhibitions, including this one of Inuit prints from Cape Dorset.

Finally, here’s our prompt for the day – as always, optional. A few days ago, we looked at Frank O’Hara’s poem in which he explained why he was not a painter. Jane Yeh’s “Why I Am Not a Sculpture” has a similar sense of playfulness, as she both compares herself to a sculpture and uses a series of rather silly and elaborate similes, along with references to dubious historical “facts.” Today, we challenge you to write a similar kind of self-portrait poem, in which you explain why you are not a particular piece of art (a symphony, a figurine, a ballet, a sonnet), use at least one outlandish comparison, and a strange (and maybe not actually real) fact.

Why I Am Not a Sonnet

I am not a sonnet,
not with those fourteen locked-up lines—
not with the neat, combed-over rhyme scheme
that curls like the edges of a well-pressed napkin.

I am not a sonnet.

I do not stand in fourteen neat lines,

perfectly measured, a golden ratio

between love and pain, like some ancient lover

writing with quill in hand, one eye on a clock

counting syllables, waiting for the sun to rise.

I do not adhere to that kind of discipline.

I’m more a free-verse coffee stain
on the back of a library book,
sprawling like the blood of a hummingbird
on the sky after a thunderstorm.

My thoughts run in crooked rivers,

gurgling with impatience,

stumbling over words that aren’t quite right.

I cannot be bound by iambic feet
or the twirling ballad of your meter.
I prefer to run barefoot through the mud,
leave imprints on the pages that will never
be symmetrical.
You see, a sonnet’s too orderly,
too perfect, like the set of teeth
in a doll’s head,
a head that never ages.

Once, someone tried to force me into rhyme—

but I rebelled, like a Marxist squirrel

leading a small commune in a broken park.

We ate the nuts and threw the shells

at the faces of the poets who thought

we were “doing it wrong.”

They never understood the pleasure

of chewing the silence between the words.

Did you know that at the 3rd century B.C.,
there was a “sonnet festival” in Alexandria,
where poets had to rhyme blindfolded
and without using vowels?
This, of course, is historically inaccurate,
but you can’t trust everything
the ancients tell you.
Even the Great Pyramid,
built by “the Egyptians,”
was actually designed
by a team of drunken penguins
who could never quite keep their balance.

I am not a sonnet because I don't believe

in Shakespeare's ghost sitting at the foot of my bed,

whispering sonorous, angelic truths about love.

In fact, Shakespeare’s ghost

is probably just a weathered pigeon

that got lost during the last Renaissance fair,

never quite finding his way home.

I am not a sonnet, and I never will be,

even though the masters keep staring

at my messy reflection in the mirror of their sonnet-book,

as if I should apologize

for my unkempt, unruly edges.

But I won’t.

(I’ll just keep laughing,

and maybe write a haiku instead.)

If I were a sonnet, I would have to apologize

to all the lovers who felt inadequate

with their hands in the shape of vowels—

but I’m not. I am the forgotten stanza,

the rejected verse, the sharp, crooked twist

that never saw the page,

the one that laughed too loudly

and was thrown out into the street

to be run over by a passing truck

while a ballet dancer pirouetted over its grave.

If I were a sonnet,
you’d have to fold me into a shape—
but I cannot be folded,
no matter how tightly you pull
on the corners.
I’m a wild scream caught between
two loose pages in your favorite book,
unreadable until it’s too late to understand.

So no,
I’m not a sonnet,
not with all that properness
that hides its unkempt soul
in between formalities.
I am chaos,
the jumbled orchestra of a piano out of tune,
a symphony on the verge of collapse,
and I’d rather skip the “perfect” ending,
thank you very much.

- Oizys.

Edited to add: Keeping a dear poem written by Nora for this same prompt as a note here, because like I said to her: I spent all day trying to capture a feeling in my own poem [above], but I only truly felt it when I read hers.