This, our second sonnet, came through two days later, on June 30, 2011. I blogged about this sonnet in an earlier post. See that post here: https://aprillynnjames.com/blogs/april-plus-madison-s-blog/posts/7635851/the-second-madisonnet
If you don't wish to jump to that post, then don't. Just know that, with this sonnet, it was as if Madison is saying, “I know everything about you” or “Greetings from your long-lost friend!”, because it is a rewrite of--and definite improvement upon--a sonnet I had composed during my first BA. The original had been an assignment in the class, Creative Writing.
The previous semester, I’d been tyrannized by an English Studies professor who was determined to fail me. That experience almost turned me off of poetry entirely. But Creative Writing was taught by a gentle soul and excellent professor, Judith Fishman-Sommerfield, and my soul and love for poetry revived.
Whenever I think that I might write a sonnet,
the urge overcomes me to go sleep upon it.
The mere thought of writing in that wretched form
must be from the depths of insanity born.
Yet pen to paper is drawn against my will;
I hope it’s for good; I fear ‘tis for ill.
But what, pray tell me, is one wont to do
in such a position, except perhaps rue
the day that she ever did read Oscar Wilde,
or Keats, Lewis Carroll and Shakespeare besides?
There is no cure for it--not one that I’ve found.
Learn from my misfortune, dear listener. Sound
the alarm bells, yea, and steadfastly shun it
should forces compel you thus to write a sonnet!
Take a listen here: https://aprillynnjames.com/track/4732581/whenever-i-think-that-i-might-write-a-sonnet-2026
Someone once asked me if Madison’s name was a play on words. Well, I guess it could be: Mad, as in Hatter. But since the ways of Spirit are multifaceted, here’s my understanding of the name’s derivation. When the name came through my pen, the first thought it brought to my mind was James Madison, Founding Father and fourth president of the United States. My guardian angel’s last name is a reference to what the Hatter is called in Through the Looking-Glass (And What Alice Found There)—“Hatta”. Think of it as Anglo-American cooperation across planes of existence. :-)
Since then, I learned that “Madison” has become a girl’s name. Curiouser and curiouser! For the record, I always feel Madison Hatta as a brotherly energy.