How To Be A Sonnet Poem by Hans Ostrom

You have to utter what you have to say
Iambically, and then you must transmit
Whatever poet using you that day
Decides that she or he desires to get
Across compressedly and cleverly.
However well you carry out this task,
Please know, my dear, that you'll fail utterly.
For every sonnet-sampler now will ask,
'How can this upstart thing even presume
To carve its iambs anywhere as well
As Shakespeare's little monuments that loom
Or all the sonnets that still help to sell
Anthologies to students who view verse
As if it were a body in a hearse? '