This is a sandstone outcrop on a cliff know as Dayton's Bluff near downtown St. Paul, Minnesota. I saw in it a very distinguishable eye and somewhat of a face. That inspired me to write this poem which will become part of my Animated Stills collection. Animated stills are poems where inanimate objects take on human, animal, or spirit forms, traits, or articles. They are derived from photographs I have taken, that have moved me to write a poem associated with it.

This poem is a Spenserian Sonnet.
The Spenserian sonnet, was invented by Edmund Spenser as an outgrowth of the stanza pattern he used in his poem, The Faerie Queene (a b a b b c b c c),that has the pattern:

a b a b b c b c c d c d e e
Here, the "abab" pattern sets up distinct four-line groups, each of which develops a specific idea; however, the overlapping a, b, c, and d rhymes form the first 12 lines into a single unit with a separated final couplet. The three quatrains then develop three distinct, but closely related ideas, with a different idea (or commentary) in the couplet. Interestingly, Spenser often begins L9 of his Sonnets with "But" or "Yet," indicating a volta, exactly where it would occur in the Italian Sonnet; however, if one looks closely, one often finds that the "turn" here really isn't one at all, that the actual turn occurs where the rhyme pattern changes, with the couplet, thus giving a 12 and 2 line pattern very different from the Italian 8 and 6 line pattern. A Spenserian sonnet does not appear to require that the initial octave set up a problem that the closing sestet answers, as with a Petrarchan sonnet. Instead, the form is treated as three quatrains connected by the interlocking rhyme scheme and closed by a couplet. The linked rhymes of his quatrains suggest the linked rhymes of such Italian forms as terza rima.

This picture was taken by the author himself on March 28, 2015.

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