This Sweet Order

The sonnets in This Sweet Order sit at the confluence of music, intellect, and philosophy. Some sonnet-writers are content to fill in the pentameter like a puzzle where form trumps meaning. For Catherine Chandler, word and idiom are primary; she bends the form into the service of the content. The poem announces itself as a sonnet only insofar as its structure (quatrain, octave, sestet, couplet) is integral to the idea. The subject might be a flower, a highway, a season, or a loss: expect wisdom; expect plenty of wit: expect surprises. If poems like 'Matryoshka' and 'Sonnet Love' are easy on the ear, above all they delight the mind. Chandler is a philosopher: 'Assembly', 'She', and 'Mother's Day' (for example) articulate thoughts with such immediacy that I almost feel as if I'm inside the poem. These are not poems that let you get away with just reading them. They bring you right into the conversation. ~ Deborah Warren