Let’s talk about the challenge of enjambed rhymes!

CONGRATS, MEG!

Great to hear you read.

What is most incredible is not the use of form but the beauty of the poetry. Brava!

Here in Fiji, the ocean is rising. Can formal poems cover topics like climate change? Has it been done successfully?

Congratulations, Meg! What an incredible accomplishment and a STUNNING reading. I am floored.

It’s so good to see you Cornelius.

Beautiful Meg! I am so impressed.

What a joy to celebrate Meg and THE ICE STORM! Congratulations! It’s great to see Cornelius again! Love to all.

Beautiful!

Wonderful book. Wonderful reading. Wonderful discussion.

I wonder if you started with the final sonnet?

Love it! Thank you, Meg!

Could you give us one or more examples of where the form gave you a surprise that affected the course of the poem? Wonderful poems and reading!!

Meg, a brilliant sequence! Just as you find surprise in each sonnet, I’m sure you found it in the evolution of the crown. Did you go back to tweak the sonnets once you saw the “final” work to build foreshadowing, etc.?

Like Ellen asked, I am curious where you started -- at the first sonnet or the last...

and CONGRATS!

Hey there, Meg! So glad to be part of this - thanks for a great reading! Question: after working so hard on The Ice Storm, did you find that you just lapsed into the sonnet form in future poems incidentally? When I wrote a crown,(inspired by The Ice Storm!) several years ago, I think I caught what I call "the Sonnet Curse," where a lot of what I try to write becomes a sonnet without me wanting it to... am I the only one?

Stand alone lines are so important!

Question: If I write in form and then the forms become half-forms in which I change it up in all poems in a collection, do you feel the change-up becomes ineffective or does it become its own form?

Thank you so so much Meg and Cornelius! It’s so marvelous to hear these poems. Thank you also to Cristopher for publishing such a beautiful book. Hello to my idol Linda Pastan and hello to Andrea Carter Brown and Christine Rhein and Howard Levy and so many others here! I never wrote sonnet 15 first. Yikes!

What went into to your decision into how the order the dissolution of the marriage and the order of the poems?

What happens when, rather than being surprised at what the form requires you to do, the first choice sounds better and has much more to say than the rhymed choice?

That’s the secret for writing pantoums also!

Nothing wrong with having a map on the journey!

Meg - Kudos! seeing you read the book was wonderful. by

Thank you Meg for reading. I appreciate your answers to Cornelius' questions too. My question is about what it felt like to not have a turn in the sonnet. In free verse the turn can sometimes be a surprise and take the poem to a deeper level, so how did the surprises come in the sonnet form and did they change the course of the poem.

I so agree with Meg that you need to write the scheme down the edge of the page. But I’m amazed that you wrote the sequence backwards.

Molly, that amazes me too. I might try it!

I would think poetic forms with repetition would really help hammer home the inevitable onslaught of climate change effectively

And let’s invent a new form! Then try to write a series in that particular form…

Yes, Laure-Anne!

Just to say a word about how the sonnet responds to social and political needs. Turmoil provokes the sonnet, from the breakup of the former Yugoslavia (where suddenly the sonnet rose to prominence in Slovenia) to the breakup of a marriage.

I may get attacked for asking this, but what is your opinion on non-rhyming sonnets(breaking the form)

There are forms that few “see” — like the decasyllabic lined poems...

^^Nevermind! She just answered!

There is something so comforting to read a final line in one sonnet and reading it again at the beginning of the next sonnet. It’s a resonance I find enchanting. Thank you, Meg. You are always teaching me!

sestinas also work really well as a marvelous form to work through complicated subject matter.

To switch gears to content, can you talk a bit about how you arrived at the metaphor of the ice storm with its duality of menace and fragility?

The book trailer is magnificent. Cheers to Gabriel for his artistry too.

It is indeed a beautiful book. I will revisit it often.

I also saw the ashes of 9/11 being like the snow falling in NH!

Here here!

Congratulations!

I had to stop to put the girls to bed, but I left my phone making a video of the screen so I'm going to watch it now. I lov eyou, Meg-guh

Thank you, Meg

Thank you, Meg, Cornelius, and Christopher!!!

Such an enormous pleasure to hear your read this magnificent work! Onward, dear friend.

Thank you so much! I look forward to adding this to my bookshelf!

Thank you Christopher and Cornelius! So wonderful

this virtual reading was great -- well run!

thank you congrats!

Thanks to Meg, Cornelius, and Christopher! Congrats on the new book!

Beautiful work, Meg!

This was fantastic!

Great to see you, Cornelius!

I always linger on these as people gradually disappear

Can we get a list of those who were on this c hat if they agree to it: ?

Enjy

Enjoyed this a lot..and. you. A lot..thanks

I see I'm not the only one ;P

Take care!

That was phenomenal

Thanks Meg !