Joyce is Not Here

Where has the sonnet gone? Why don't poets write sonnets today? Fourteen lines, iambic pentameter, ABAB CDCD EFEF GG rhyme scheme, where did it go? Well, poets do write them, but they don't usually publish whole books of them. What would it look like if someone did? What would those poems look like? In Joyce is Not Here: 101 Modern Shakespearean Sonnets Andrew Barker scrupulously applies Shakespeare's favourite poetic form to the modern world to see what the sonnet can capture. Barker mostly eschews the authorial voice in favour of gloriously cynical characters who view their worlds in times of realization and change with a toughness and stoicism that helps them accept their situations. But there is tenderness here too, accessible reminiscences about the influences of music, television, theatre and film, poems where Blair, Trump, Kevin Spacy, Don Draper, Stanley Kowalski and Willie Loman make appearances. Andrew Barker has made Shakespearean sonnets for the modern world. Where has the sonnet gone? The sonnet is here!