Sonnet

Even people who say they don’t know of any poetic forms have usually heard of the sonnet or the limerick.

Here are the basics of the sonnet: fourteen lines, iambic pentameter, rhymes. From there the variations begin. Sometimes all fourteen lines are one stanza. When there is more than one stanza, there may be eight lines followed by six lines or there may be two six-line stanzas followed by a couplet (a two-line stanza).  Or . . . since this is an old form, there may be any number of variations that have developed over the years.

The original or the Petrachan sonnet, also known as the Italian sonnet, is two stanzas - an octave of eight lines and a sestet of six. The Italian poet Petrach wrote these about his unrequited love for a woman named Laura. The rhyme scheme is abbaabba for the first stanza and cdecde for the second. All the a’s rhyme, all the b’s rhyme and so on. The Shakespearean sonnet, also known as the English sonnet, is often four stanzas – three four-line stanzas known as quatrains followed by a couplet. The rhyme scheme is usually abab, cdcd, efef, gg. In almost all sonnets the last bit, whether it is six lines or two lines, is where the meaning, or the message, of the sonnet turns. It is where the sonnet wraps up, and it’s known as the volta.

This blog post may seem like an oversimplification. Really, it I’m going to write about sonnets, it seems like my options are to write a little or a lot. There are volumes written already so I am going to move on to some examples, both ancient and relatively new. Please try writing a sonnet and don’t worry too much about the rules. They’ve been stretched before. See the final example below by Billy Collins and try your luck.

Sonnet 43   Elizabeth Barrett Browning

How do I love thee? Let me count the ways.
I love thee to the depth and breadth and height
My soul can reach, when feeling out of sight
For the ends of Being and ideal Grace.
I love thee to the level of every day's
Most quiet need, by sun and candlelight.
I love thee freely, as men strive for Right;
I love thee purely, as they turn from Praise.
I love with a passion put to use
In my old griefs, and with my childhood's faith.
I love thee with a love I seemed to lose
With my lost saints, -- I love thee with the breath,
Smiles, tears, of all my life! -- and, if God choose,
I shall but love thee better after death.

 

Sonnet 18   William Shakspeare

Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?
Thou art more lovely and more temperate:
Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May,
And summer’s lease hath all too short a date:
Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines,
And often is his gold complexion dimm’d;
And every fair from fair sometime declines,
By chance or nature’s changing course untrimm’d;
But thy eternal summer shall not fade
Nor lose possession of that fair thou owest;
Nor shall Death brag thou wander’st in his shade,
When in eternal lines to time thou growest:
So long as men can breathe or eyes can see,
So long lives this and this gives life to thee.

Let’s go a little more contemporary. Here’s one by Elizabeth Bishop. (In my posts, there’s almost always one by Elizabeth Bishop. I’m a fan.)

Sonnet          Elizabeth Bishop

I am in need of music that would flow
Over my fretful, feeling finger-tips,
Over my bitter-tainted, trembling lips,
With melody, deep, clear, and liquid-slow.
Oh, for the healing swaying, old and low,
Of some song sung to rest the tired dead,
A song to fall like water on my head,
And over quivering limbs, dream flushed to glow!

There is a magic made by melody:
A spell of rest, and quiet breath, and cool
Heart, that sinks through fading colors deep
To the subaqueous stillness of the sea,
And floats forever in a moon-green pool,
Held in the arms of rhythm and of sleep.

 

Here’s one of my favorites as an instructional sonnet, if that’s a thing.

Sonnet      Billy Collins

All we need is fourteen lines, well, thirteen now, 

and after this next one just a dozen

to launch a little ship on love's storm-tossed seas,

then only ten more left like rows of beans.

How easily it goes unless you get Elizabethan

and insist the iambic bongos must be played

and rhymes positioned at the ends of lines,

one for every station of the cross.

But hang on here while we make the turn

into the final six where all will be resolved,

where longing and heartache will find an end,

where Laura will tell Petrarch to put down his pen,

take off those crazy medieval tights,

blow out the lights, and come at last to bed.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

It was on this day in 1327 that Italian poet Petrarch (books by this author) (1304) first set eyes on “Laura,” the ethereal woman he would use as his muse for more than 300 sonnets. He met Laura on a Good Friday at St. Clare Church in Avignon. Some historians think she was a woman named Laura de Noves, a married woman and mother, and most agree she never responded to Petrarch’s overtures. She died during the Black Death of 1348. The first 263 poems Petrarch wrote for her are known as the Rime in Vita Laura. After she died the remaining poems were known as Rime in Morte Laura. Petrarch’s works for Laura laid the groundwork for the sonnets of the Elizabethan era. Shakespeare would not be Shakespeare without Petrarch.

About his unconsummated love for Laura, Petrarch wrote:

“In my younger days, I struggled constantly with an overwhelming but pure love affair — my only one, and I would have struggled with it longer had not premature death, bitter but salutary for me, extinguished the cooling flames. I certainly wish I could say that I have always been entirely free from desires of the flesh, but I would be lying if I did.”