I’m amazed by the flexibility of the sonnet form. When you first read Kelly Cherry’s delightful poem “On Value,” you wouldn’t notice that it’s a sonnet (except that I’ve just told you!). The enjambment of nearly every line swooshes you past the end-rhymes without your noticing them. You read Cherry’s meditation on the philosophical concept…

What would you think of a biography of a famous person written in the form of a poem? I don’t mean just a portrait of the person: Stephanie Strickland did this (masterfully) in her The Red Virgin: A Poem of Simone Weil. No, I mean a full, chronological biography—birth to death and reputation beyond—complete with…