Sonnet - Anthony Tamasi

Getting the Child to Bed - Allen Grossman

Getting the child to bed is awful work,

Committing that rage to sleep that will not sleep.

The lie rots in my throat saying, “O.K.

There is balm in Gilead. Go to bed.

Honey of generation has betrayed us both.”

And truly it is no wild surmise of darkness

Nor Pisgah purview of Canaan drowned in blood

But only my child saying its say in bed.

If madness ever covers me, the caul contract

That now but loosely insinuates a shroud

I shall go howling into the conscious grave

(God keep children from the power of the dog)

Follow that note into the uttering horn

Awake in the womb from which I was born.

Grossman, Allen. "Getting the Child to Bed." Poetry Foundation, 2002. Web. 9 Dec. 2015. <http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poem/249420>.

This is an Italian (or Petrarchan) sonnet, with an octave followed by a sestet. However, Grossman does not follow traditional Italian rhyme scheme. He follows a Shakespearian scheme with the heroic couplet at the end. The volta happens between lines 8 and 9, where Grossman switches from talking about getting the child to bed to talking about himself. This changes the meaning of the poem, to which I believe is that he is the child in the poem, and "going to bed" represents the process towards death. I chose this poem because I am Italian and this is an Italian style sonnet.