Aspiring to Ritual: One Hundred Sonnets, Kevin M. Clay's second collection of poetry this year, celebrates the vastness of the sonnet form, embracing its many variations while distilling universal truths. Rather than be locked within any text-book norms, Clay bends and stretches, performs metrical gymnastics with line-break mutinies, and pushes rhythmical limits. The genius, however, lies within a conformity that ultimately emerges within each of his fourteen-line units. In these one hundred sonnets, Clay contains and confines the messiness of love, death, time, and heartbreak with the reminder that " . . .nothing is made, if it is not made to be broken." And sometimes, that's for the best.
