I’m well aware that Friday, May 21st isn’t any sort of new year. 
It is, in fact, the end of the week and nearly the end of both the month and the academic calendar.
(Hallelujah.)
But it’s new for me in that I officially miss blogging and am ready to get back at it.

Today it’s easy — I have a crown sonnet to share!
A few years back, I worked on my first crown with a group of Austin poets called The Brass Tacks.
I said yes before I knew how scary they were.
Since then, as many of you know, I’ve dealt with my Crown Sonnet PTSD by inflicting it upon our very own Poetry Princesses. (Bwah ha ha…)

Now, that first crown has been published in the online journal Poemeleon, and here it is! I wrote the final sonnet for our piece, which means my first line was the last line of the sixth sonnet and my last line was the first line of the whole thing. You’ll see how it works if you give it a read — it’s quite a puzzle. 

To tempt you, here’s some of the first sonnet by the very fine poet and my good friend D’Arcy Randall:

from Rising Water: A Crown of Sonnets

Sometimes you feel it lapping round your knees — 
the life — that life — the one in dreams that lifts
you out to sea. It’s like a bass line riff
perceptible beneath the melodies,
but nothing you can attend. As if set free
again, it tosses back its hair, stiff
with salt, and aims its surfboard toward the cliff,
across the chops of waves. Who could foresee
it could swerve in time? And not allow the swell
to lift it high, then dash to smithereens?

(Read the rest of D’Arcy’s, and 6 more in this crown, here!)

Happy Friday, friends, and namaste.