about piece work and the sonnet redoublé

I wrote the sonnet redoublé Piece Work in February 1997 while a guest of the Fundación Cultural Knecht-Drenth in Callosa d'En Sarrià on Spain's Costa Blanca. Its atmosphere of rest and artistic expectation, the area's natural beauty, and supportive e-mails from poets in the CompuServe Writers Forum all encouraged me.

I am grateful to the friends and poets whose critiques helped me improve Piece Work and whose enthusiasm kept me trying to get it right, including the British poet Peter Howard who introduced me to the form with his sonnet redoublé Ring 'o Roses and who suggested I send Piece Work out.

In June 1997 I sent it to Envoi, which is probably the best poetry magazine currently available in England according to The Writers College. The manuscript soon came back with criticisms from Roger Elkin, Envoi's editor, together with his note "some minor points - do please send again" which stimulated me as I revised the poem. I sent him the final revision in June 1998 and was very glad that he accepted it, printing it in Envoi 126 in June, 2000.

Piece Work (literally work paid for according to the number of units turned out) is a poem I wanted to write. Long enough to tell a story, its form (a sonnet redoublé is a cycle of fifteen sonnets of which the first fourteen form a ring, or corona, each starting with the last line of its predecessor, and where the fifteenth is comprised of the first lines of the other fourteen) seems right for Piece Work's story that revolves and repeats, on different levels: a story that runs over itself over and over again. The you / we / me role-shifting is intentional and I hope effective ambiguity that encourages speculating about whether one colleague is talking to another, or one man alone is generating/hearing two voices that try to reconcile demands to fight with a need for peace.

A. R., June 22, 2000, The Netherlands.