This is a rather ambitious blog posting series on my part: posting a different Madisonnet for each day of National Poetry Month 2026. A few of these you may have read before, since I did publish two chapbooks of Madisonnets through Philadelphia's Moonstone Press in 2015 and 2016. You may have even heard some of these either on SoundCloud or live, but most are newly recorded. Madison and I have quite a backlog, so rather than let them sit in notebooks, we figured we'd let them out to play. Along the way, I might add some commentary or backstory to individual sonnets. And who knows? This might all become material for my second book.
So, first one up first!
If you’ve been reading my blog or attending my concerts, you’ve heard the story of how Madison showed up in my life. But, in case you missed this bit of backstory, please see this YouTube video entitled, “How I Met My Guardian Angel”:
Here’s the sonnet in its entireTEA:
If I were not mad, what on earth would I be?
‘Tis an unlikely prospect, I’m sure you’ll agree.
Those voices that whisper when no one is near--
their meaning is all too entirely clear.
I laugh out of turn and sing in the rain;
To me, this is custom, to others, insane.
My past is a mystery shrouded in dreams,
concealed by blue starlight, moonlit by streams.
My present meanders up uncommon roads,
and as for my future, who knows what it holds?
My friends? They’re a mixture of whimsy and wise
who come round the bend to drink tea in disguise.
In a world where 1 + 1 = 3,
If I were not mad, well then, who would I be?
Hear it here: https://aprillynnjames.com/track/4732567/if-i-were-not-mad-2026
It was only after having lived with this sonnet for more than a decade that I realized that one of its most insightful lines is the penultimate one: “In a world where 1 + 1 = 3”. That exactly describes the situation I found myself in during the Decade of Awfulness—taking care of Mom, or trying to help her take care of herself, but not realizing just how tied up she was in my brother’s problems. I always wanted focus on just the two of us, hoping to support her the way she had supported Dad during his final years. But even though my brother lived far away in another state, it was never just Mom and me at home. There was always this elephant in the room in the form of her worries about the brother. Her doctors would treat her symptoms—depression, high blood pressure, whatever—but without dealing with the root causes of her distress, no healing was possible.
It took me years to understand that.