Caged But Free ... Lehman has picked line five of the crowd-sourced sonnet. You can write line six.

David Lehman has picked line five of the crowd-sourced sonnet-in-progress over at the American Scholar. You have until November 15 to write line six. Here's the sonnet to date:

Our dreams as disparate as our days uniform,                   
We crave a lovely scandal with someone well-known;     
Midnight champagne, penthouse lit by thunderstorm,    
In this version of darkness, we are never alone.                 

If marriage is a cage, we can force the lock, but he    

And here's what David has to say about line five and his requirement for line six: 

Line five of our sonnet-in-progress is also the first line of our second stanza, a lot rides on it. The best candidate, in my view, is Christine Rhein’s “If marriage is a cage, we can force the lock, but he …”  This line introduces the subject of marriage, the metaphor of the locked cage, and the conditional construction that leaves the reader wondering what “he” will do and how that will affect our situation of dreams, scandal, penthouse, and darkness lit up by lightning. . . 

For line six–the second line of stanza two of our sonnet in the making–the requirement is that the line must end with the word “learn.”

Continue reading here. . .

Remember: You must enter at the American Scholar site. 

-- sdh