Identify themes of the poem, "The Last Sonnet."

As far as I can tell in Kaleb Christenberry's poem, "The
Last Sonnet," the themes seem to reflect a student's difficulty in writing a sonnet,
which is his last, and how he wishes he could avoid it.

In
a general sense, perhaps the poem reflects any desire to be relieved of completing a
task that we wish we did not have to do. In this case, it is a sonnet. Literally
speaking, it could be going to the dentist or taking out the
trash.

However, I find that the poem is so "inferior" to
the beautiful work of authors like Shakespeare (who wrote so many lovely sonnets), as
well as Wordsworth, Wyatt and Milton (among others), that I can only conclude that this
poem is poking fun at the sonnets youngsters may be forced to write for classroom
assignments. If this is the case, Christenberry has done a fine job: the sonnet sounds
like something a sixth-grader would write (not to insult the student). Personally, I
find the poem to be choppy, non-musical, awkward, and
unappealing.

For example, "listen" to a few lines from
Shakespeare's Sonnet 29:

readability="13">

When, in disgrace with fortune and men's
eyes,

I all alone beweep my outcast
state

And trouble deaf heaven with my bootless
cries

And look upon myself and curse my
fate...

There is a musical
rhythm here; the words are chosen carefully, and the reader flows from one line to the
next, effortlessly. The rhyme found at the end of each line forms a pattern as well:
a-b-a-b. "Eyes" and "cries" rhyme, and "state" and
"fate."

Compare Shakespeare's work with Christenberry's.
The rhyme at the end of the first and third line is what I call "cheap rhyme." It is
rhyming so it the line endings have similar sounds, but there is no serious attempt to
provide a flow or a more "artful" word, or a rich
content:

There
are many challenges that I have seen...

to this challenge I
am not very keen...

My
overall sense, then, is that the author is poking fun at the deadly sonnets some
students write to fulfill an assignment, where meeting the rhyme scheme and number of
syllables per line is like a "Mad Lib," where any number of words can be paired that
make no sense. Perhaps Christenberry is drawing our attention to the artistry
true poets employ because they have a sense of poetry
within. For the student who struggles just to finish—rhyming words
like "assignment" and "alignment"—he may rest assured that his teacher is also
struggling with his poem. And that may well be the author's point. For some people,
writing poetry is a useless exercise, and a painful journey for the
reader.

If this is the case, the author has provided an
excellent example of poetry written under duress rather than one written with passion
and fire.