Welcome to MFA Sunday School, a once-a-week, free, online writing workshop. MFA Sunday School posts are uploaded on Sunday mornings, though you can read them or participate any time — the comment section is always open for people to post a link to their work or ask a question. You can subscribe to blog posts via the RSS feed, or look for them under the category heading “MFA Sunday School.” If this is your first time in “class,” you may want to jump back to the first post in the series in order to understand how things work, or peruse all of the past lessons as well as a glossary of terms by reading the MFA Sunday School Glossary and Course Archives.

We’re returning to fiction next week, and getting into some heady stuff such as how to deal with rejection or getting over writer’s block.  But right now, I want to jump back into a fixed form poem because these exercises are not only poetry in and of themselves; for prose writers, they are the verbal equivalent to sodoku.  They are helping you problem-solve with words, and if you can do it here, fitting your thoughts into a restrictive poetic form, then you can figure out ways to get your character from point A to point B in your book.  I promise you; trying other forms of writing only strengthens your capabilities in your chosen writing field whether that is writing blog posts or churning out novels.

The third form we’re going to look at is the sonnet (remember, we’ve already done the sestina and villanelle, and if you’re joining us for the first time today, delve back into the archives because we’re on lesson ten).  Fixed form poetry is meant to free the mind by providing a structure much in the same way a house frees the person who lives inside to focus on things other than the elements outside.

I find sonnets very difficult to teach because the form is somewhat a mess. It began in Italy in the 13th century — a 14 line poem that was a little musicless song (sonetto means “little song”) with a set rhyme. And then people started playing with it — most notably the Earl of Surrey (though we’ve slapped Shakespeare’s name on the earl’s invention because he wrote a lot of them). But other poets started riffing off of Shakespeare, changing the meter or changing the rhyme. To simplify things, since we don’t have all day to walk through the various tweaks poets have brought to the form, we’re going to reduce it to two schools of thought: the Petrarchan sonnet and the Shakespearean sonnet (even though I really love the Spenserian sonnet… sniff).

Petrarchan sonnets are a conversation (actually, all sonnets are a conversation, but they are split in different ways). The first part of the poem is an octave (eight lines) which outlines the situation. Usually it’s a love problem, as in “dude, I love this person so much and they don’t even know I exist.” It could also be presenting an idea or question. An octave is just a fancy way of saying eight lines. If we’re working with 14 lines total, that leaves us with six lines for the sestet, which is the resolution (or answer if the writer poses a question in the octave). The ninth line of the poem, the start of the sestet (six line part) is called the “turn” or “volta.” It should be clear to the reader that you’re switching direction, making a proposal, saying what you wish would happen.

All sonnets (for the sake of reduction) follow iambic pentameter. If you’ve forgotten this meter, go back to the villanelle post and refresh your memory.

The rhyme scheme of the Petrarchan sonnet is somewhat fluid. The octave (first eight lines) are set in stone:

A
B
B
A

A
B
B
A

That’s how you get that song quality — the meter as well as that constant rhyme. All the “A” lines rhyme and all the “B” lines rhyme in their final word.

The sestet has some wiggle room. Some people use:

C
D
E
C
D
E

Some people play with it and make it C, D, C, C, D, C. There is also C, D, C, D, C, D. All are kosher.

An example of a Petrarchan sonnet is John Keats’ “On First Looking into Chapman’s Homer.” Classic Petrarchan in form: set meter and traditional rhyme scheme — A, B, B, A, A, B, B, A, C, D, C, D, C, D. There is a breakdown of the situation (he never could get into Homer until he found Chapman’s translation) with a turn line (“Then felt I like some watcher of the skies”) and a reaction (finding this translation made him feel like an explorer finding a new land).

Shakespearean sonnets are those poems you slogged through in high school while the boys in your class giggled when the teacher read “her breasts are dun.” Instead of an octave (eight lines) and a sestet (six lines), you have three quatrains (four lines) with a two line couplet. This form gives you more space to outline the situation because you get 12 lines to play with. The final couplet is the answer or the resolution.

All Shakespearean sonnets follow the same rhyme scheme (and all are written in iambic pentameter):

A
B
A
B

C
D
C
D

E
F
E
F

G
G

Think of Shakespearean sonnets as having a big lead-up, and then the final couplet hits the idea out of the park. That couplet needs to pack a punch because it’s the end thought for the reader. The final two lines are the “turn.”

Shakespeare wrote many free-standing sonnets as well as incorporating them into his plays. A good example is Sonnet 130, otherwise known as “My Mistress’ Eyes are Nothing Like the Sun.” For the first three quatrains (12 lines), Shakespeare puts down his woman, saying her eyes don’t sparkle like suns, her lips aren’t red enough, and her breasts don’t have that snow white creamy skin the Englishman craves. And then he hits it out of the park with that final couplet, stating that it doesn’t matter if she doesn’t measure up to traditional beauty standards because in Shakespeare’s eyes, she’s hot.

Pretty cool, right?

Homework: write a sonnet. And when you do, come back and leave a comment with a link to your sonnet posted on your blog. That way, future students can take a look at other examples of sonnets as well as visit their virtual classmates’ blogs.

I’m going to be honest; I don’t get the Forest Boy.  I don’t understand why he did what he did, I don’t understand how it could be publicized for 9 months and not be solved prior to this point, and I cannot fathom how no one called shenanigans before this point.

The story: An English-speaking boy emerges in Berlin saying that he is a 17-year-old boy who has been living in the woods for five years with his father.  His father died and he buried him in a shallow grave, and continued to live in the woods on his own for five days until he emerged with few memories.  He told the police his mother’s name was Doreen, and she died before they went to live in the woods.  Additionally, he knew his birth date.

On Wednesday, CNN reported that the Berlin police were finally releasing an image of the Forest Boy in hopes that someone could help identify him.  He had been living in Berlin since he was found back in September.  So… that’s the first thing.  Why wasn’t a photo released prior to this point?  Such a simple thing to do.  Truly, how many people are found each year with no memory of who they are that we can’t dedicate a little media time to throw their image out there and ask the public for help?

And then, today, we discover that the whole thing was a nine-month-long hoax.  The boy came clean (Why now?  Why not deny the story of the girl who identified him?  Why didn’t he change his appearance to disguise himself before he started the hoax?) and admits that he is now 20 years old.  From the Netherlands.  When he left home at 19, he was reported missing by his family, but because he was an adult, they only conducted a small investigation.  He has been living on government assistance for the last seven months in Berlin.  Which may have been his motive: to have a roof over his head and food.  But aren’t there more concrete ways one can go about conning the system that won’t be unraveled the moment a photo is released?

And somewhat more amazing, no one questioned the validity of his story.  He didn’t slip up at any point?  Say anything so bizarre that it would make the police question whether or not this boy had buried his father in a shallow grave in the woods?  Nine months is a long time.

I’m trying to figure out why I find this hoax so fascinating.  But I do.  Forest Boy occupied my mind all through yoga.

And on a side note, thank you so far for the movie recommendations.  I’m moving them into the body of the Roundup so people can find them, and I’m going to come back and asterisk the ones the twins end up seeing.  So many good ideas on that list; 90% of which I had totally forgotten about until this point.  Go Internet!  Please keep them coming.

The Wolvog’s team ultimately lost, but — come on — it was their first season, and they were number two in the division.  That’s amazing.  They went from Bad News Bears to a well-oiled machine.  In the final game, the Wolvog had two times up at bat; two amazing hits.  He had a forced out at home on the second hit, which was hard to take.  But he pulled his shit together and went out and did some amazing fielding in the next inning.  And that’s all that really mattered to me; did he try hard, did he shake off the disappointments, did he support his teammates.  And yeah, the icing on the cake was that he got better skillwise during the season too.

A few weeks ago during one of the championship games, the Wolvog stormed out of the diamond when he was tagged out on first, crying as he threw himself into the dugout.  And Josh took him through Tom Hank’s famous, “there’s no crying in baseball” speech from A League of Their Own. (And yes, in that moment, all the parents whipped out their cell phones and played it for the kids from YouTube.  Ah… technology.)  We borrowed the movie from the library, and they loved it.  Hardcore.  Thought it was one of the best movies they ever saw, and they’re trying to watch it for a second time before it has to go back.  Though when that scene came up, the Wolvog rolled his eyes and buried his face in my pillow as if he couldn’t be bothered to watch the advice.

I love that movie so much.  There are dozens of times when my throat starts closing up, either because I am so happy or so incredibly sad for the girls.  My favourite line in the movie is when Dottie Hinson’s husband is back from the war, and she takes it as an opportunity to leave the team which has become too emotional and difficult a space.  Jimmy Dugan, her manager, finds her slinking off and calls her on it.

Jimmy Dugan: Shit, Dottie, if you want to go back to Oregon and make a hundred babies, great, I’m in no position to tell anyone how to live. But sneaking out like this, quitting, you’ll regret it for the rest of your life. Baseball is what gets inside you. It’s what lights you up, you can’t deny that.
Dottie Hinson: It just got too hard.
Jimmy Dugan: It’s supposed to be hard. If it wasn’t hard, everyone would do it. The hard… is what makes it great.

Oh my G-d, has there ever been a better line?

The point of this story comes back around to the forced out.  The bases were loaded, and the Wolvog was on third.  The boy at bat bunted, and the ball dropped directly in front of home plate.  The catcher picked it up and stood on base as the Wolvog ran toward him.  And halfway down the base line, facing the boy standing on the plate, I could see the idea click in the Wolvog’s head and he started to pick up steam.  So he came barreling down to the base, and slid into home as violently as possible, kicking out his leg to bring the catcher down.  The catcher dropped the ball, and the look of glee that passed over the Wolvog’s face as he got up — in those two seconds before the out was called — were priceless.  He literally thought he had just reenacted the final scene between Kit and Dottie in A League of Their Own and got the run, not understanding the difference with a forced out.

Hence why the tears were so intense; because he had not only slid for nothing, but his movie moment hadn’t come true.  Still, best moment ever to watch.

*******

Speaking of good movies, we’ve shown them E.T. as well and have Back to the Future (skipping the shooting of Doc) in the queue.  We’ve done a bunch of cartoon ones like Snoopy.  All of Star Wars.  Ferris Bueller isn’t appropriate yet, right?  Nor is War Games?

What other movies from the past — think late seventies to early nineties — would you add to our queue?

Updated: moving the movie suggestions from the comment section into the post so others can easily find them as well.  Thank you so much for these because I had forgotten about most of them.  Keep them coming!

• Goonies
• Space Camp
• Flight of the Navigator
• Princess Bride
• Labyrinth
• Karate Kid
• Neverending Story
• Land Before Time
• Parent Trap
• Field of Dreams
• Big
• Mrs. Doubtfire
• Hook
• The Sandlot
• The Last Unicorn
• An American Tale
• The Man from Snowy River
• Black Stallion
• Incredible Journey
• Ghost Dad
• My Girl
• The Secret Garden
• Jumanji
• Fly Away Home
• Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory
• Bedknobs and Broomsticks
• Short Circuit
• Escape to Witch Mountain
• Babe
• Wall-E
• Stuart Little
• Charlotte’s Web
• The Cat from Outer Space
• The Rescuers
• The Secret of NIMH
• Flubber
• The Muppet Movie
• The Last Starfighter
• Little Big League
• Billy Elliot
• The Journey of Natty Gan
• Honey I Shrunk the Kids
• The Mighty Ducks
• D.A.R.Y.L.
• Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure (might be a bit too soon)
• Raiders of the Lost Ark
• Soul Surfer
• Les Miserables (Clare Danes and Liam Neeson version)
• The Blind Side
• The Railway Children
• Swallows and Amazons
• Adventures in Babysitting
• Pollyanna
• The Sound of Music
• Mary Poppins

*******

And now the blogs…

But first, second helpings of the posts that appeared in the open comment thread last week as well as the week before.  In order to read the description before clicking over, please return to the open thread:

• “DWYNTD Parenting (or Yes, I Just Learned about Natural Parenting)” (Stirrup Queens) — thank you, Lori!
• “And, Then, We Had to Give Our Son CPR” (Trying Not to Scream)
• “Go to the Head of the Class” (Silent Sorority)
• “Attachment” (Sprout)

Okay, now my choices this week.

Tales of a Cautious Optimist has a particularly good piece of advice for dealing with infertility that stems from a Sex and the City episode.  It’s about finding how you — in particular — reboot.  She writes, “The list goes on and on, but the point is when you board the infertility train, disappointments, setbacks, and feelings of failure are inevitable… and the only way to survive is to Breathe and Reboot.”  Go read the post in full.

A Half Baked Life asks a few really really interesting questions in her post about what bloggers owe each other in terms of the truth.  She examines a blogger’s trial-by-other-bloggers (though… in a way… we would be the jury) in regards to her bankruptcy hearing.  She explains: “And yet, we hold bloggers accountable to certain standards, don’t we?  To standards that we don’t even use, perhaps, for celebrities, whose images are more obviously cultivated for public consumption?  Just like we expect the Girl Scouts to act a certain way even when they’re not in uniform?”  It’s a really thought-provoking post.

A Thousand Oceans has a post about the missing parts — both of a painting and the holes in her heart.  It is a heartbreaking post about a portrait that goes unfinished after the birth and death of her twins.  This thought was particularly gorgeous: “I really didn’t want to spend any time looking at the self-portrait, which I had not seen nor really thought about since I was pregnant with the twins. I could not, however, ignore the obvious irony of my own missing parts in the painting.”  Sending love to A Thousand Oceans for the missing parts.

Lastly, Bébé Suisse has a post about what time means to her as they approach their unfulfilled due date not pregnant.  It’s about the hard choices we have to make, the retrospect that comes afterward, and the decisions that still loom as we spin the dozens of plates in our lives, hoping none will topple off their sticks.  She adds: “Life is not just about well-timed sex, as much as it can sometimes seem that way, and this is the moment for me to look beyond that part to the others that make up a well-rounded existence.”  I think many will relate to this post.

The roundup to the Roundup: The hard is what makes it great.  What movies should we show the twins?  And lots of great posts to read.  So what did you find this week?  Please use a permalink to the blog post (written between June 8th and June 15th) and not the blog’s main url. Not understanding why I’m asking you what you found this week?  Read the original open thread post here.

The Wolvog’s baseball team made it to the “world series” game of the championship, that final showdown between two teams.  The championship games have been fun but stressful.  It was so exciting to win the first one, but the stakes felt higher and higher with each subsequent game.  This past one had my stomach in knots with a 12 – 10 win.  And now we’re at that ultimate game, the final game, and I can’t help but beg the universe to make the pitches be easy, the bat swinging be hard and the running be fast.

Please wish his team good luck.  Not that they need luck.  I mean, they rock; they try so hard.  But you know… we’ll take some luck too.

The ChickieNob’s best friend lives over the bridge in Virginia (“over the bridge” is DC shorthand for “traffic nightmare”).  We get together with her family around twice a month, and in the summer, the mother and I take our three kids on holiday to the beach a few times.  But in between all of that, it’s hard because they live about an hour away.

Yesterday, I suggested a Skype playdate.  Her mother and I turned on Skype in our respective houses, and the two girls virtually sat down together to create some paper dolls on both ends of the computer screen.  They chitchatted while they worked, much in the same way they would if they were both at my kitchen table, and they held up their work for inspection every few seconds.  I was cleaning the house and her mother was getting some work done, so we called out to each other as well through the screen.  It feel like they were there.  Except they weren’t there.  They were over the bridge.

They proceeded to play with their paper dolls for over two hours.  No commute.

The Wolvog was a little jealous, but I pointed out that his friends all live within quick driving distance and can therefore come over to our house to play.  If he makes a friend who lives over the bridge, he can do the same thing.  Because while it’s the next best thing, it sort of is still in the category of “best thing.”  The girls can now have a playdate as often as they like, and if we plan ahead, we can arrange to have the same art project, same board games, and same toys in both places.  Brilliant.

*******

The twins will be eight this summer, and we still haven’t gotten around to the idea of an allowance.  We like the concept in theory, and we’ve talked a lot about it in the sense that we turn to each other and say, “crap, we should give the kids an allowance so they’ll learn how to manage money.”  And then we go back to watching House and don’t do anything about it.

There are a lot of different ways people approach giving an allowance.  Some people just give their children an allowance to serve as a means to learn about money.  They do nothing to earn the money; they just get a set amount at set intervals.  This is how my parents did it, and I think I have a good sense of money.  For instance, I’ve never lived outside my means and accrued credit card debt.  So this obviously works.  But for some reason, I wasn’t attracted to the idea of giving them money simply for being part of the family.  I mean, no one gives me money for being their freakin’ mother who makes them meals and carries a first aid kit in her purse at all times so she can slap Band-aids on scraped knees.  If anyone deserves to be paid, it is me, and if I am not earning money for being part of this family, then I’m not really interested in giving it to the twins simply for being cute.

Some people give their children an allowance for doing certain chores.  I didn’t love this approach because (1) I like to clean and don’t really want to give up my cleaning chores to someone else.  (2) I want them to clean up their room because they need to clean up their room, not because I’ve paid them.  (3) I could foresee one-of-my-children-who-shall-not-be-named making messes in order to get paid to clean them up.

Which left us watching House episodes and doing nothing about it.

Until I realized that there were plenty of tasks they were perfectly capable of completing for me; tasks I didn’t really have time to do or a strong enough inclination to do.  So I hired them to be my research assistants.  For instance, there are books I see in the school library that I remember loving as a kid but have no memory what they’re about.  I just hired my kids to read them and give me an executive summary of the book.  I’m totally curious about the life of Houdini but not enough to actually spend time going through websites and books.  I just assigned that task out to one of the kids.  Report back to me with 30 facts about Houdini including his most famous magic tricks and you can get paid.  I have random math calculations they can add and subtract for me (okay, I may have made up this assignment just to get them to do extra math practice).  Sometimes I have a shitload of one ingredient in the house, but if I go onto Food Network’s website and search for recipes, I will get sucked into the dark underbelly known as The Next Food Network Star blog.  But if I tell the ChickieNob, “go find three recipes that look appealing to you that use a lot of lemons,” she can narrow down the search to three quick choices, saving me twenty minutes of being sucked into the orbit of Alton Brown.

I have hired them to erase extraneous code for me, and to archive old gmail notes, and to write blog posts for when I don’t have time to post here, and to find five facts for me while I make dinner so I can sit down and jump immediately into writing a post.  There are always books I need read, things I need researched, and math busy work I need completed.  They get to practice all their school skills and get paid to do so.  And I get someone taking all those small tasks that I never get done, freeing up my time.  Plus they get all the benefits of an allowance and managing money since I told them that they need to buy their own toys now that they get a salary.  And it’s not costing me appreciably more than when I would go buy a new Lego set “just because.”

Do you see how this is genius?

I set up a work sign-up sheet in the kitchen so they could see what tasks need completion and sign up for what they want.  Some things will take days to complete and other assignments can be finished in a few minutes.  The more time spent on the project, the more money they’ll be paid.  And the work is never-ending, so if they don’t have time in their schedule, they can skip an assignment (and the pay) and pick up a different one down the road.  Plus, they get the hard life lesson that people will only pay you for the work they want done; not the work you want to do.

This is a long way of saying that if you see their byline on a post, it means that I was lazy or busy, and they were my willing research assistants who wanted to buy more American Girl doll things and Ninjagos.