The new Wild Sonnet book – which includes #500! – is finished and in the process of being published. The release date is February 7, 2023, which will be upon us sooner that we know. If you would like to receive weekly selections from the new book before it's release – please join my list below.
I feel blessed to be on your list. Your poetry is wonderful.
– Morgan Grace
Rocker/Trucker/Hooligan
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I wake up every morning very early, usually about 4AM, to write one stanza for the next Wild Sonnet. When I first created the Wild Sonnet form in six years ago, I wanted to do something structurally that no other variation of the sonnet had done before – break the sequence of thoughts right down the middle. This arranged the poem in two stanzas of seven lines each – kind of a magic or sacred number. By writing one stanza (almost) every morning, in a year’s passing I have 100 Wild Sonnets – enough for the next book.
Why not just write sonnets the way the great poets of the past have, like Shakespeare or Petrarch or Wordsworth? Because I think each artist must find not only their particular voice, but also an aesthetic shape that makes their work identifiably theirs. In the world of things corporate and commercial, this is called branding. But for the artist it needs to go deeper. Creating the sound and structure of the Wild Sonnets allows me to own this form directly – while it permits me to use its symmetry to respond to everything the world and my own mind put in my path. I write the Wild Sonnets because they allow me to discover and share experiences that are hopefully universal, and maybe even immortal.
Nicholas Korn is a Cincinnati-based poet, playwright and occasional composer. He started writing The Wild Sonnet poem sequence in 2016, and has since published four volumes, each featuring one hundred poems. The fifth volume in the series will be released in February of 2023.
Mr. Korn’s stage comedy, Delirium’s Daughters, was produced Off-Broadway by Triumvirate Artists in 2015. The play is published (and can be licensed for production) by Dramatic Publishing Company. He also ran a classical theater company in Cincinnati from 1998-2004, staging over 23 plays at the city’s downtown arts center. He is also the composer of The Atomic Symphonies.
On the professional front, Mr. Korn serves as the Director of Marketing & Communications for the Art Academy of Cincinnati. Also, he is a graduate of Northwestern University, where he received his Bachelor's in English Literature – but seriously, that was a long time ago.
