Stuffing it In

Today I feel the urge to do a sonnet:
I’ll see to it before the morning’s out.
Just one word rhymes with sonnet, but no doubt
a slant can be insinuated — Done it!
So far so good. Enjambment helps: let’s run it
between the lines. I’m half-inclined to flout
the rule insisting on a turn, about
line nine. Screw Petrarch’s horse! Who’d ride in on it?
But like the nag I’m knackered, so let’s try
to reach a lazy climax; soon be there:
just ease it in, far better not to force it.
Sonnets are like those garments ladies buy —
I’m thinking of restraining underwear.
Sometimes the bulges overcome the corset.

Lope de Vega was onto this long before the rest of us.

SUDDEN SONNET
Lope de Vega

Viola tells me I must write a sonnet!
I've never known such deep anxiety!
They say that it takes fourteen lines. I'm on it!
Just by mocking, I've completed three.

I thought that I could never even start it,
but here I am, commencing quatrain two!
Pretty soon I'll move on to the tercet
and then these dicey quatrains will be through.

Now tercet number one is what I'm facing.
I must be doing something right, I'd say,
since with this line the tercet's done. I'm racing

to wrap up tercet two in a similar way.
Now here comes line thirteen for steady pacing.
And line fourteen concludes this bit of play.

Sonnet Workshop

There's nothing worse than writing verse
that sparks the workshop leader's wrath.
I don't intend to be perverse!
The guy's a bleeding sociopath.

I have to beat my trochees back
and force the iambs to the fore,
and still I stumble off the track.
Tetrameter's a dinosaur.

My exercises don't result
in passing marks. 'They're incomplete.'
The rhyming isn't difficult.
I don't like sonnets with five feet.

I ought to go and drive a truck.
At writing sonnets I just suck.

THE SUNG

Being a sonnet, I've often heard it said
my day is done and there's no place for me,
that rhyme and meter in our world are dead,
and don't I know that verse can now run free?
Why would I turn to gaudy sing-song clanks
of iambs jangling like the links of chains
when I can simply ditch these shackles thanks
to modern ways? The poetry remains.

And yes, it does. I won't deny the claim.
But must I die so others can be born?
The rules are different, but the game's the same.
Wait long enough, we both will be outworn.
But when I turn to mulch, I'll dwell among
the mulch not of the spoken but the sung.

Nonce Sonnet? He's on It!

My muse and I design a sonnet,
Italian style; its resonance,
we plan, will generate nonce sense
from carefully cobbled rhymes on it.

Sonnet nicely echoes bonnet:
we like a blue one on Frost’s fence
above a freckled flower, its ambience
vague—so readers ask, What’s on it?

But then my muse, a curse on it,
growls, whines, barks and coughs
up sonics. Our mental state is so not
sane! We juggle lines to laughs

on tightropes over a so-so net,
and falling howl our nonsense sonnet.

Beta Model

Welcome to Adobo SonnetShop,
Advanced Petrarchan Writer, Version II.
(Our beta model will now walk you through
how simple this new program is to op-

erate.) Let’s start! Select some key words you’ll
be using - and a theme - and then the Me-
terMentor software guides you through a three-
step sonnet writing program. (This new tool,
which handles rhyme and meter rule-by-rule,
is also azure as an ancient school.)
The Contest Level section too, is cool,
Achilles, turquoise, darkling, duckling fool.

Note: Your use of SonnetShop must stop.
Please call Adobo to obtain a new,
updated program on a no-charge swap,
and Exit now before your screen turns blue.

Here's one I wrote ages ago, instead of a "Love Sonnet," it's called "Sonnet Love."

Freestyle (quasi-Petrarchan*)

Our hallowed form is cheapened when a throng
Chomps at the bit to cry they did a sonnet
Like some twee frill in vogue, a retro bonnet.
The form, despite examples that are strong,
May suffer ill-repute before too long
If treated like—a hat, lines formed to don it,
Or bandwagon with scribblers jumping on it—
The Sonnet sinks some by the bulk worn wrong.
We wish we fashioned with the finest art
A proper Sonnet to the lovely May;
Not that I rush to tip the apple cart,
Though . . . Study Will is all I have to say!

Carping upon poor ones in this freestyle
Yet added to the whopping sorry pile.

*More like a Petrarchan crossed with a Shakespearean sonnet for the sestet, actually, I suppose.

Once upon a time. . . .
 

Scorn not the Sonnet
By William Wordsworth

Scorn not the Sonnet; Critic, you have frowned,
Mindless of its just honours; with this key
Shakespeare unlocked his heart; the melody
Of this small lute gave ease to Petrarch's wound;
A thousand times this pipe did Tasso sound;
With it Camöens soothed an exile's grief;
The Sonnet glittered a gay myrtle leaf
Amid the cypress with which Dante crowned
His visionary brow: a glow-worm lamp,
It cheered mild Spenser, called from Faery-land
To struggle through dark ways; and, when a damp
Fell round the path of Milton, in his hand
The Thing became a trumpet; whence he blew
Soul-animating strains—alas, too few!

Nuns Fret Not at Their Convent’s Narrow Room
By William Wordsworth

Nuns fret not at their convent’s narrow room;
And hermits are contented with their cells;
And students with their pensive citadels;
Maids at the wheel, the weaver at his loom,
Sit blithe and happy; bees that soar for bloom,
High as the highest Peak of Furness-fells,
Will murmur by the hour in foxglove bells:
In truth the prison, into which we doom
Ourselves, no prison is: and hence for me,
In sundry moods, ’twas pastime to be bound
Within the Sonnet’s scanty plot of ground;
Pleased if some Souls (for such there needs must be)
Who have felt the weight of too much liberty,
Should find brief solace there, as I have found.

Teach a Man to Write

Give a man a book, they say,
and he will read it through the day;
but teach him meter and some rhyme,
and see how he, in little time,
fights sleep to write, and with first light
makes coffee, then will re-recite
the sonnet that he gibble-gabbled
at all night: what once was babbled

now will form a half-defined
and vague, but metrically aligned
melange of words he’ll stir, then stuff
with metaphors, until enough
is there to fester, seethe and cook.
(Oh Christ! Just give the guy a book!)