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| Brockhaus and Efron Encyclopedic Dictionary (1890—1907) |
Reginald Dwayne Betts' book of poetry Felon begins with a Ghazal and ends with a cycle of 7 sonnets - a crown, where the last line of one sonnet is the first of the next. Pretty cool! Here are some example lines:
Of lockdown, hunger time & the blackened flower.
Swallowing a bullet or even just choosing to inhale.
Holding on, ensurin gthat nothing survives.
Lost in what's gone, reinventing myself with lies.
The crimes that unraveled me, my banner.
& live without regreat for your guilty pleas
The sinner's bouquet; house, shredded & torn.
It made me want to learn more about sonnets. (This info is what I taught to my AP Lit students last year... and have mostly forgotten about)
This is from Poetry Foundation:
The basic requirements of a traditional sonnet are the following
- 14 lines
- iambic pentameter
- rhyme scheme:
- Petrarchan: ABBA ABBA CDECDE or ABBA ABBA CDCDCD
- Shakespearean: ABAB CDCD EFEF GG
In the Petrarchan sonnet, the sections are broken up into an octave (first eight lines) and a sestet (final six lines). In the Shakespearean sonnet, there are three quatrains (four-line stanzas or sections) and then a couplet. In both types, a volta marks the transition to the final section.
One of the sonnet’s most popular aims is to write in praise of someone (or something) beloved. So let’s take a look at a couple of love poems to see the difference between a Shakespearean and Petrarchan sonnet up close.
Shakespeare ingeniously turned expectations of the love poem on their head in many of his sonnets, which praise unlikely qualities in his beloved. In “My Mistress’ Eyes are Nothing like the Sun,” for example, he mocks the tropes that would compare women to goddesses and enumerate their beauty in sweet metaphors (the sun, roses, music, and so on). Instead, the speaker’s mistress has “black wires upon her head” and breath that “reeks.” This poem provides a great model for a sonnet exercise: take something that you love, and describe it over the course of twelve iambic pentameter lines (only twelve for now!) in ways that wouldn’t normally be considered praise. Then notice what Shakespeare does in the final couplet: he begins with “And yet.” This is the volta: it tells us we’re about to make a sharp turn in the poem. It comes so late in the Shakespearean sonnet that we have built up much expectation for a certain kind of tone, and for judgment of the mistress. “And yet”—here he changes course, and tells us that despite all this, he is completely enraptured by this woman. You’ll notice that these final two lines are a rhymed couplet, too: the lines end with “rare” and “compare.” That rhyming pair adds to the feeling that these last lines are a separate idea and stand apart from what preceded them. (In this case, they actually correct the implications of all of what the speaker was trying to say before.) So this is the final part of the exercise: after your twelve lines of rich and surprising description, start line thirteen with “And yet” or “Despite” or another signal phrase to tell us you’re changing direction. Then end the poem with a couplet that corrects or explains the descriptions of the first part of the poem.
One of the sonnet’s most popular aims is to write in praise of someone (or something) beloved. So let’s take a look at a couple of love poems to see the difference between a Shakespearean and Petrarchan sonnet up close.
Shakespeare ingeniously turned expectations of the love poem on their head in many of his sonnets, which praise unlikely qualities in his beloved. In “My Mistress’ Eyes are Nothing like the Sun,” for example, he mocks the tropes that would compare women to goddesses and enumerate their beauty in sweet metaphors (the sun, roses, music, and so on). Instead, the speaker’s mistress has “black wires upon her head” and breath that “reeks.” This poem provides a great model for a sonnet exercise: take something that you love, and describe it over the course of twelve iambic pentameter lines (only twelve for now!) in ways that wouldn’t normally be considered praise. Then notice what Shakespeare does in the final couplet: he begins with “And yet.” This is the volta: it tells us we’re about to make a sharp turn in the poem. It comes so late in the Shakespearean sonnet that we have built up much expectation for a certain kind of tone, and for judgment of the mistress. “And yet”—here he changes course, and tells us that despite all this, he is completely enraptured by this woman. You’ll notice that these final two lines are a rhymed couplet, too: the lines end with “rare” and “compare.” That rhyming pair adds to the feeling that these last lines are a separate idea and stand apart from what preceded them. (In this case, they actually correct the implications of all of what the speaker was trying to say before.) So this is the final part of the exercise: after your twelve lines of rich and surprising description, start line thirteen with “And yet” or “Despite” or another signal phrase to tell us you’re changing direction. Then end the poem with a couplet that corrects or explains the descriptions of the first part of the poem.
Box upon Box: Sonnet Sequences and Crowns
If, on the other side of the spectrum, you crave more form, or if you simply don’t like being restricted to the brevity of fourteen lines, you can string together a group of sonnets into a sonnet sequence. These sonnets can combine to tell a longer story, as George Meredith does in “Modern Love” about his failed marriage. The 50 sonnets that make up this long poem are each 16 lines long. Sonnets can also be hitched to one another by repetition: each successive sonnet uses as its first line the last line of the preceding sonnet. The final sonnet ends with the same line that begins the first sonnet, thus completing the circle. This type of sequence is called a crown of sonnets. Paul Muldoon’s “The Old Country” uses the crown deftly to describe (and embody, through the voice) a memory of an old Ireland. The sonnet’s use of strong rhyme in particular is on display in each section of this sequence, but Muldoon adds another layer to the musical qualities here by employing anaphora as well. “Every wood had its twist of woodbine. / Every cliff its herd of fatalistic swine.” That mesmerizing repetition of “every” and the repeating sentence structure lend the crown a fablelike feel, and lull the listener (because you really want to hear this one aloud!) into the pleasures of the rhythm and rhyme. The rhythm of the anaphora also provides a regularity in the lines that helps disguise the liberties Muldoon is taking throughout the sequence with line length and types of feet.
Bruce Snider’s poem “Devotions” also uses the structure of the sonnet crown, though it doesn’t take the final step of circling back to the first line at the end of the sequence. Where “The Old Country” made use of the extra real estate in the sequence to expand its examples of this one place being described, “Devotions” instead tells an evolving story. Each sonnet in the crown shows what happens next and allows the speaker space to consider and reflect on each event. This is another opportunity in the sonnet sequence: you can take a story too large or long to tell within one sonnet, and divide it into parts, each of which can have its own space. Think of something that seems too big for the space of a single sonnet—perhaps a place filled with history and tradition, like Muldoon’s Ireland, or perhaps a story with several components. In a notebook, jot down all of the component parts of this image or story. See if you can arrange them into sections that seem about equally weighted. If you’re feeling ambitious, try writing the first sonnet. Can this take you anywhere? Are there lines or phrases in the first sonnet that might be useful or pleasing to repeat in subsequent sections? The sonnet still requires compression—each word should be necessary, and exact—but you have more space to bring several parts into play together. Explore the possibilities here, taking liberties with the form as desired
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