COMPOSING BOUND VERSE

      A sonnet, say, or any formal verse
      Is not a hindrance but a keen device
      Provoking your Unconscious to disburse
      A wealth of new ideas and entice
      Your mind and memory to invent or find
      Some way to say what only will occur
      When conscious and subconscious are aligned
      So memory and imagination stir.
      Just as electric energy's constrained
      To flow within a filament of wire—
      How light and heat are both obtained,
      A novel way to gain what we desire—
           So is it that a sonnet can be made
           Only when stringent measures are obeyed.

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