Most casual poetry fans assume that, since the days of the Bard, the sonnet as a genre went the way of the dinosaurs and the 8-track player.
Bruce Gewirz respectfully disagrees.
"Shakespeare was one of the first to write sonnets in English but he certainly wasn’t the last," the Sterling scientist and lifelong amateur poet said.
Gewirz was one of the many finalists in last week’s Sonnet Reading Contest held at the Shirlington Library who read their sonnets aloud to a captivated audience.
The event was held by the library to convey "Contemporary Themes and longings expressed in the form of classical sonnets and [to] learn how the sonnet form transcends time," according to a flyer for the event.
A dozen sonnets, chosen by a group of judges from more than 30 entries, were read and their topics ran the gamut. One was about flying low in a crop-dusting plane; another was a reflection on a woman’s pregnancy; yet another was an ode to a law-abiding bicyclist.
Christine Stoddard, a senior at Yorktown High School, wrote a sonnet titled "Child Soldier, Come Home." Unable to attend the event, her sister Nina, a Yorktown junior, read in her place.
Stoddard’s sonnet mixed religious imagery with scenes of a war-torn land to evoke an apocalyptic yet mournful feeling. She will be attending Grinnell College in Grinnell, Iowa next year on a full-tuition scholarship.
In the end, Gewirz won first prize in the contest for his poem "Sonnet 24/01/02 DCL," a sonnet about the beauty of sonnets.
The Sonnet Reading Contest is one in a series of events at local Arlington libraries that celebrate the life and works of William Shakespeare.
While the sonnets may not have lived up to the standard of the greatest playwright that ever lived, Ann-Marie Dittmann, an events director at the Shirlington Library and the organizer of the contest, thought that they came pretty close.
"There were a lot of really good ones," she said.