In a Hint of Rosemary, Hazel Hall is not afraid to push boundaries as she explores the traditional sonnet, its connections with classical Japanese poetic forms, and their shared musicality. She points out similarities between these forms, but also celebrates their differences. This collection includes sonnets with haiku or tanka attached, a sonnet using the same rhyme throughout, a sonnet created with fourteen lines of single-line haiku and a fourteen line ghazal in iambic pentameter. Hazel also experiments with rhyming styles, returning to basic concepts of melody and rhyme in her quest to discover ‘At what point is a sonnet not a sonnet?’ She observes that the sonnet form is barely recognisable in some of her hybrids. Do you agree? Readers are invited to draw their own conclusions. They are also invited to experiment for themselves.
Her previous IP title is Moonrise Over the Siding.
Sample
A River Crossed
1.
You told me of a tin your father kept, filled with images you recollect
of country life. His lineage retraced
in miscellaneous articles he placed
inside. The lid revealed a traveling scene depicting harsher times when life was lean encaptioned: Journey to Prosperity.
Your heart lay in that faded century
and leathery man who drove his herd across the Murrumbidgee while the torrents tossed his beasts across the lather of the floods. Sweat of horse and man, the stench of mud as cattle clambered up the umber banks bellowing, with leeches on their flanks.
2.
Gone thirty years ago. They could be days
He’s with you still. The dead run through our veins, and little things connected with him sought
while the loss was foremost in your thoughts.
The land went to his boys; the house consigned
to you. One day a brother came to find
that tin of tokens sitting on its shelf—
worth more to all of you than family wealth.
A violent storm broke out when he ransacked
your ties and trust. That one outrageous act
split the bond—a mighty river crossed,
neither sibling knowing what was lost
until you saw that all those angry rants
were only leeches on the cattle’s flanks.
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