Pulitzer Prize Poetry Winner

frank: sonnets

by Diane Seuss

Summary

Seuss tracks her life from rural Michigan through the New York punk scene, the AIDS crisis, motherhood, and addiction in a long sequence of unrhymed sonnets. The form serves as a small, elastic room able to hold rage, tenderness, gossip, and elegy at once. Her voice is brash, intimate, and self-aware, treating the sonnet as both inheritance and weapon.

Historical Context & Significance

Seuss used the 14-line sonnet as a room to hold memories of the AIDS crisis and addiction.