Why are sonnets so popular?
I think it’s the rhyme scheme—the waterfall of rhyming sounds, where not only do the specific rhymes change, but (while maintaining a coherent pattern) the scheme itself evolves…the “cascade” of rhymes is nearly irresistably lovely.
For example, in perhaps the simplest of the recognised sonnet-forms. the English or Shakespearean ABAB CDCD EFEF GG, the scheme changes from ballad quatrain ABAB to the concluding couplet—and that’s key to the charm. Even more evolved is the Italian which changes from Petrarchian stanza ABBA to an almost infinitely varied sestet arrangement. Most clever perhaps is the Spenserian ABAB BCBC CDCD EE which proceeds from ballad quatrain ABAB, to interlocked Italian quatrains BABBCBCCDC, to another ballad quatrain CDCD and concludes with a couplet!!!
If you wanted to write a rhyming poem about a lyric epiphany experienced while watching a deer you have several choices:
1.) You could rhyme inconsistently like…say Eliot. Probably not a choice for most formalists.
2.) You could rhyme in couplets or triplets. (Well…you could.)
3.) You could employ one of the quatrain stanzas—ABAB, ABBA or xAxA. Better than couplets, anyway.
4.) You could employ one of the fairly limited number of set-forms commonly used in English-language poetry. e.g.: a villanelle…but so awkward—with limited rhyme-sounds, numerous repetitions and really not much space.
5.) By now, you probably want to write a sonnet!
6.) There is an alternative. Looking at Tim Steele’s web-page I found seven poems—one Blank Verse, one in couplets, one in ABAB stanza, and four in various more complex rhyme schemes: ABBACCA, ABBACBC, ABABCBBC, ABABCDBD
Of course, each of Steele’s poems employs it’s chosen 7 or 8-line rhyme-scheme for several stanza…but a brief poem about watching deer could fit comfortably in 7 or 8 lines, two repetitions of such a stanza scheme could serve as an elegant poem of 14 or 16 lines without begging to be compared to Keats and Milton, and it wouldn’t be difficult to compose a slightly longer scheme with much the same logical charm. (The first twelve lines of the Spenserian look attractive to me ABABBCBCCDCD— minus the couplet your poem won’t scream SONNET!)
This looks like the better way to describe the deer…and you still get that waterfall of rhyme!
Mr Gwynn, what are your thoughts about complex rhyme-schemes that could serve as alternatives to sonnets. I must confess, I've never composed a brief poem this way...I always wrote a sonnet, instead!
[This message has been edited by MacArthur (edited July 26, 2001).]
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