CONTEST
Jackpine Sonnets Milton Acorn From Jackpine Sonnets, published by Steel Rail Educational Publishing in 1977. The jackpine sonnet is a poetic genre created by the Canadian poet Milton Acorn (1923–1986), a Governor General’s Award–winning poet from Prince Edward Island who wrote eighteen books of poetry, six of which were published posthumously.
Love in the Nineteen Fifties
U.F.O.
On that beach with light shifting breaths Of breezes touching us like gentle Curious, strong, all-surrounding presences Watching, and you watching . . . I stuck a gull’s Tailfeather askew ten white degrees Out of perpendicular to match The slant of the nearest sail on that diseased Warm doubt of a day. Grief hope and fury Were all there, speaking tentatively In a jury just met. Wants too early Stirring your blood, vision, nerves and mine Over that tilting token in the sand; Having made a sign, still wanted a sign While low lightblue waves just tapped the island.
Shall I compare you to a u.f.o? You’re just as mysterious. Shall I compare a u.f.o. to you? Those vehicles exist. I saw one sure As the fact you’re gone and I’ve tried Hate as a cure for love In covens of thorn with roses, where I hide From complicated beauty more like yours; Rating my half-cut death as fate When I’d promised fate more future than that.
in that time the wise rarely swore to anything since most words were lies
A
lthough Milton Acorn claimed to avoid the repeated use of any poetic form, he frequently returned to the sonnet, a fourteen-line poem that presents a dialectic argument in a set rhyme scheme. Acorn gave name to a new genre of poetry, one that approximated the sonnet but was not restricted by rules of verse, rhyme or line count. He named this new form after the jack pine, an opportunistic northern tree that fills available space without a set growth pattern and develops into surprising shapes. In 1969, Acorn’s collection I Tasted My Blood was nominated for the Governor General’s Award in Poetry and Drama, but he lost to George Bowering and Gwendolyn MacEwan (Acorn’s ex-wife). The following year, a group of
Page 56 • G E I ST 75 • Winter 2009
It shone like the sun: but only for an eye Which sought it out; otherwise just a strange Moveable star it was. Nor did it glare Or illuminate the scene around it. Until my look fitted onto that stare Winter had combined all other seasons. On other planets other things change And I’d loved you too long, at most for half a reason
poets gathered at Grossman’s Tavern in Toronto to present Acorn with a cash prize and a medal inscribed “Peoples’ Poet.” In 1987, the poet Ted Plantos established the Milton Acorn Memorial Peoples’ Poetry Award, which is still presented to poets every year: winners include Al Purdy, Evelyn Lau and Ken Babstock. Acorn eventually won the Governor General’s Award in 1975 for his poetry collection The Island Means Minago. The year 2010 marks the fortieth anniversary of Acorn’s Peoples’ Poet Award, and in celebration of his contribution to Canadian poetry, Geist is hosting the Geist Jackpine Sonnet Contest. See next page for details on the contest and a guide to writing a jackpine sonnet.