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Sonnet Collage [1]

Poetry [2]
2.6.18

Ted Berrigan, a prominent figure in the second generation of the New York School of Poets, is best known for his book The Sonnets (Lorenz and Ellen Gude, 1964). Berrigan’s sonnets [3] were assembled using collage techniques. For instance, many of the lines are found text from outside sources, and many of the individual lines are recycled throughout the book; two of the sonnets even use the exact same fourteen lines, presented in different orders. This week, try writing your own Berrigan-style sonnet (free verse or rhyming, as you please). Create a bank of individual lines—these could be original lines that you write, found text, or some combination—and then assemble these lines into a sonnet. Allow the poem to be nonlinear, if that is what the process calls for, and travel down unexpected trains of thought.


Source URL:https://www.pw.org/content/sonnet_collage

Links
[1] https://www.pw.org/content/sonnet_collage [2] https://www.pw.org/genre/poetry [3] https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/55677/the-sonnets-i