Anna Evans' "Not A Sonnet"

Recently I read Anna Evans' chapbook of poems, Swimming. A lot of her poems are available online, but my favorite, "Not A Sonnet," was not.

It's set up as a dialog between the poet and her lover - a dialog about whether their conversation properly constitutes a sonnet.

Here's the 2nd quatrain. I've color coded the speakers' parts. His are blue, hers purple.

Aren't all sonnets meant to be about
love? you said. This isn't, so it's not
a sonnet. -You're in it, I pointed out,
and we're in love. You said, Oh, I forgot.

In the 3rd quatrain she accuses him of being a philistine, suggesting, tongue in cheek, their love is doomed.

Then it twists home in the final couplet:

Well you're a geek, you said, but I would miss you.
And that is where I stopped the verse to kiss you.

I've seen sonnets before where the sonnet is about the process of writing a sonnet. Contemporary art loves self-contemplation. But this was a lot more interesting, particularly because of the dramatic tension between the two lovers.

A dialog in hot pursuit
Of sonnet form -
It's clever and cute
With hints of storm.