American Sonnets

by Gerald Stern

Fifty-nine "Stern sonnets" of twenty or so lines from the 1998 National Book Award winner. This stunning collection moves from autobiography to the visionary in surges of memory and language that draw the reader from one poem to the next. "I was taken over by the writing of these poems," Stern says.

Genres: Poetry

69 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 2002

About the author

Gerald Stern, the author of seventeen poetry collections, has won the National Book Award, the National Jewish Book Award, the Ruth Lilly Prize, and the Wallace Stevens Award, among others. He lives in Lambertville, New Jersey.

Reviews

[Erik Akre · Rating 4 out of 5]

Sonnets, but not what you would expect from sonnets... Part of the intrigue for me was figuring, How are these sonnets, and how are they not, and how are they American? Definitely a fresh take on the form, for those who are interested.

Stern's subjects are seemingly mundane personal experiences from the poet's perspective. If you had to sum up the theme of the book, it might be "memories." Scenes and experiences from the past expose themselves from a very real and personal perspective. A reader gets to know the poet and his idiosyncrasies; a reader might come to like him, his humbleness.

The lines flow one to another, comfortably, like rambling prose almost, with very little punctuation. Shifts in subject mid-poem are part of the flow, but unpredictable, seemingly random. These poems are trains of thought on warping rails. They ride oddly to their often poignant conclusions.

Way better on the second read, 14 years later. Take some time.

[James Murphy · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was a reread. I think I like Stern's informality here, his willingness to stroll around outside convention. These portraits he calls sonnets are intensely personal, not for what they reveal to the reader but because he shares, allowing the reader to be a part. It's as if, walking beside Stern as he speaks in the way of these sonnets, he claps me on the shoulder. Whitman-like, it's just occurred to me.

[Rich · Rating 4 out of 5]

It reminds this reader of Robert Lowell's "Notebook." In terms of formal construction, these are not sonnets, as they do not rhyme or even fit the 14 line constraint. However, they have, as non-metrical free verse, the "little box of song" quality, plus a few turns, that sonnets usually have.

[Sarah · Rating 4 out of 5]

I wish I could hang out with Gerald Stern. It feels almost cliche to me to say that his poetry is life at its most deliciously outsized--that his verve cannot be contained--but reading his poems only bears that cliche out.

[Jeff · Rating 4 out of 5]

In "Alone," as in several of these poems, Stern returns to the proving ground, not just of Aberdeen, and post-war military service, but the Paris of the early '50s GI Bill, where "twice in my life | I woke up surrounded, once on the floor of a train station, | once on the floor of a bank. I left at five | or six in the morning; I put my keys in a bottle;| I wore two pair of socks and hid my money." This brilliantly catches out the young poet in the struggle to exist in post-Vichy Paris. It was the heyday of The Pound Era, "I was ashamed of what he said about Jews. | Of usury those | two unshaven yidden," who, like other family members in Stern's large family, were gonif, "they knew nothing," as Stern says, and it's the intransigence in them Stern loves, and what gives the best poems here, like "Hydrangea," the scale of a poem, so that the poet falls for the "blue hydrangea" because it's so unusually lovely he affords to hate it, just as when "say, certain Jewish poets, whom I'm supposed to revere . . . reveal themselves to be snobs and bigots." RIP Gerry Stern, little courage-giver among us.

[Drew · Rating 4 out of 5]

I came across Gerald Stern's collection while I was running a workshop on sonnets for Poets House and one of the participants wanted to know more about the American sonnet which led me to this book entitled "American Sonnets" which contains unconventional sonnets in terms of lengths of lines or lines per stanza but one of which -- "Sinks" -- I brought to the class anyway because I thought it would be interesting for us to discuss re: how the sonnet tradition informs the poem if we can let go of judging the poem to see if it qualifies as a sonnet, and one student talked about that particular poem being a love poem and another student talked about its driving rhythm and everyone liked the poem whether it were a sonnet or not and I was glad, because I liked it too, and in fact, like many of the poems in this book, poems which give little flashes of Stern's past and often are run-on sentences, a comment I make without judgment too, because they give the poem a sense of momentum that can only be stopped by a period and is often assisted by the placement of a comma or a semi-colon or the words "and," "but" and "while."

[Kai Hunter · Rating 3 out of 5]

The poet is from Pennsylvania. I liked the sonnets the more I read, but not my cup of tea.

[Sunni · Rating 3 out of 5]

Some stunners but overall felt rambling and repetitive.

[Rob McMonigal · Rating 1 out of 5]

This man is apparently a local author of sorts, he taught at Pitt and from some of the poems it appears that he lived here a child as well. I heard about him from the Charles Simic book I read earlier this year.

Mr. Stern writes an odd type of sonnet that is longer and does not rhyme, called a "Stern Sonnet" by the book jacket. Each poem is about something from his memory, ranging from a musical band to food to places, and even a few people.

The problem is that, for me, I was just never able to get interested in his subjects, even when I knew the area he was describing. There was no problem with understanding his imagery--I wasn't lost or anything. For lack of a better term, I just felt rather bored. The descriptions were too literal, it was like I was having a casual conversation with an elderly man on the bus with too much time on his hands.

Take the first part of "Exordium and Terminus", a poem about a song I used to dig as a teenager:

In your rendition of The Year 25-25
the airplane rattles, the engine roars, the sardines
around me smile, like sardines and you kiss me
twice, once on the cheek and once on the ear.

It's more stream of consciousness than poetry, in my opinion. I expect more than "the engine roars" from a man of lyrical letters, and repeated imagery such as the sardines comment only works if you use repeated words as a device, which Stern does not do here.

"Sam and Morris" is even worse, to me:

I had two uncles who were proletarians
and one of them was a house painter and one of them
was a carpenter--they beat their wives
regularly and they had nineteen children
between them.

I'm sorry, but who cares? The poem ends by saying that the author hated Ezra Pound for his anti-semitic writing. Huh? Perhaps there's a connection, but I just wasn't convinced that Mr. Stern had made it by the end of the poem.

For me personally, poetry must have a compelling reason for me to read it. It must try to do things with language that prose does not. This does not mean it must be lush with fancy words, but it must make me want to hear out what the writer has to say. Reading a novel with lavish imagery can end up feeling overwritten. Reading a poem with no imagery at all feels like a waste. For me, that's where this book falls. (Library, 11/07)

I cannot recommend this one to anyone, though I will probably give the author one more shot before taking him off my reading list.

[Barb Bailey · Rating 3 out of 5]

Gerald Stern is not my favorite poet. His sonnets often seem like a rambling about nothing. To me they are fragmented. I almost returned the book to the library after I read the first 5 works. Then in the library parking lot...I asked myself, have I given this poet and book a fair evaluation.....and I decided to read one more sonnet called Firstlight.
That one I liked and understood so I gave the book another chance. Still even though I liked some of his sonnets, most seemed like drivel. A Sonnet about a pear, its skin,its core, etc just is not meaningful......to me its just prattle about a pear.

[henry · Rating 3 out of 5]

a good book, not sonnets, but sonnet influenced poems. got a great sense of rhythm this guy, but sometimes gets lost in that rhythm. some of the poems are great, some of them feel like tricks, cheap tricks at that. worth a read, but, unless i'm missing something, not worth a re-read.

[David · Rating 2 out of 5]

I guess I expected more because of the brazen title. Maybe I'll return to these poems in a few years and recognize a missed joy because I trust Gerald Stern. Maybe it was my reading mood, but something was missing.

[Duncan Sprattmoran · Rating 3 out of 5]

interesting vernacular rambles. Sometimes the insistence on form detracts from the possibilities. I enjoy Stern so his voices rises despite...

[Anna · Rating 2 out of 5]

Moments of intrigue and beauty, and I was interested in his manipulation of the sonnet (or "sonnet") form, but I was never really caught up in this collection.

[Eleanor]

Single-breath poems, or traced thought poems with some breath. Chrysanthemums.