“Sanity is a sonnet with a strict meter and rhyme scheme-and my mind is free verse.”

“In the poetry of arrival, the garage door is free verse; the front door can be anything from a rhyming couplet to a sonnet.”

“In your language you have a form of poetry called the sonnet…There are fourteen lines, I believe, all in iambic pentameter. That’s a very strict rhythm or meter…And each line has to end with a rigid pattern. And if the poet does not do it exactly this way, it is not a sonnet…But within this strict form the poet has complete freedom to say whatever he wants…You’re given the form, but you have to write the sonnet yourself. What you say is completely up to you.”

“Can the light dying behind my eyes berecorded in rhyme schemes?I meet this page in the morning beating back deathtrying to re-member.”

“You mean you're comparing our lives to a sonnet? A strict form, but freedom within it? Yes. Mrs. Whatsit said. You're given the form, but you have to write the sonnet yourself. What you say is completely up to you.”

“Free verse is like free love; it is a contradiction in terms.”