Sonnet 101
 

I'm usually in the 'not keen on poems about poetry' camp. But I decided to make an exception if they're a) really good or b) silly. So here's a 'b' I just knocked up.

Sonnet 101

You'd like to write a sonnet, but just can't?
Think all your 'vers' is 'libre' at its heart?
The rules can bend, you know, rhymes can be slant.
Enjambment's useful too. Then you can start
a sentence and just watch it go, careening
round the bend of several other lines.
An argument is key, so that the meaning
creeps up like a hungry snake that dines
on…truth or something…(similes, you learn,
will fill some space). And look, we're nearly done!
Now all you need's 'the volta'. A funny turn.
The bit that makes the reader say, 'What fun!
I see things slightly differently this time'
(Then slap the lid on with a final rhyme)

Anyone? Ha...

That is quite well done, Mark. Shades of Pope in Essay on Criticism. Use of the time/rhyme rhyme is especially apt.

Thanks Aaron, I shall have to read it. All I really know of Mr Pope, shamefully, is The Rape of the Lock which I had to study for my A levels many years ago. And that he gives very good epigram.

The specific similarity I had in mind is his consistent use of describing X while at the very same time doing X (e.g. as you enjamb your mention of enjambment). Here's my favorite example from Pope:

A needless Alexandrine ends the song
That like a wounded snake, drags its slow length along.

Ahh! And I have a snake in mine too! Maybe I have read it... I plead honestly unconscious plagiarism if I have! But I'm sure I haven't...hmm

Edit: Did he say 'talent borrows genius steals?' or was that someone else haha

Edit edit: Oscar!

It's not unlikely you've encountered those lines outside the context of the whole poem—they're quite famous.

Mark, this was fun; it works so well as educative verse. Coleridge has a few, too. Here's more Pope:

True ease in writing comes from art, not chance,
As those move easiest who have learned to dance.
'Tis not enough no harshness gives offense;
The sound must seem an echo to the sense.
Soft is the strain when Zephyr gently blows,
And the smooth stream in smoother numbers flows;
But when loud surges lash the sounding shore,
The hoarse rough verse should like the torrent roar.
When Ajax strives some rock's vast weight to throw,
The line too labours, and the words move slow:
Not so when swift Camilla scours the plain,
Flies o'er th' unbending corn, and skims along the main.

Here's the Coleridge "Metrical Feet"

TROCHEE trips from long to short;
From long to long in solemn sort
Slow Spondee stalks; strong foot! yet ill able
Ever to come up with dactyl trisyllable.
Iambics march from short to long;—
With a leap and a bound the swift Anapæsts throng;
One syllable long, with one short at each side,
Amphibrachys hastes with a stately stride;—
First and last being long, middle short, Amphimacer
Strikes his thundering hoofs like a proud high-bred racer.

I came. I saw. I swooned! Instant classic, Mark.

This is the closest I've come:

Sonnet Stanzas

Within my room, I work to finish lines
that might support the stanzas of a sonnet,
and try to dovetail them as an octet.
But there are crucial problems with my rhymes
before I even smooth the fourth—such signs
of instability, beyond mere nit,
require an innovative retrofit,
to square the verse with classical designs.

But then the lady whom I hope to woo—
not Will’s or Petrarch’s—spells my stanzas’ doom:
You’re pazzo if you think these dives’ll do!
I cannot fret, for she gives me the clue
that rhyming June and moon may cure her gloom
and canonize us in a sonnet room.

That's very good, Mark.

I've done quite a few attempts at such things. My latest was intended as a children's poem (say around 12-14 year olds):

SCARED OF SONNETS

Do not be scared of sonnets. This is one.
You see? You're on the second line and yet,
though you're not having what I would call "fun,"
you haven't gotten sick or died, I bet.
And look: you've reached line five and still your breath
goes in and out, your heart still thumps on cue.
You may be bored, but you're not bored to death.
It's just that there are things you'd rather do.

I get it, and I offer you this cheer:
A sonnet has just fourteen lines, and so,
relief from all your boredom now draws near.
We only have one couplet left to go.
The thirteenth line is here! Around the bend,
because you were not scared, you've reached the end!

And this one, it's relevant to know, appeared in Bumbershoot:

Honest Sonnet

Please don’t read this sonnet to the end.
In fact, if I were you I’d stop right now.
The sad truth is, I really don’t know how
to write a sonnet. Why should you pretend

there’s any merit to these words I penned?
Whatever praise you’d graciously allow
I feel I’m honor-bound to disavow.
(I’ve read ahead. There’s nothing to defend).

What’s that? Still here? Why can’t you take a hint?
Do you believe the last five lines will bring
a quality the first nine lines could not,

that just before it ends this poem will sing?
Come on, don’t be a fool. This poem is rot.
It’s scandalous what Bumbershoot will print!

Not a sonnet, but using the form to describe itself.

http://ramblingrose.com/folly/2006_10/sestina.html

Here's one I published years and years and years and years ago in the Cumberland Review - one of the many magazines I have outlived.


The Perfect Sonnet

I’ve been at this forever and I think
the perfect sonnet should consist of one
long sentence which will elegantly slink
around caesuras; have a little fun
with word-play as it sets its feet upon
good meter and an intertwining rhyme,
and then, just when it seems it will run on
and on without an insight worth a dime -

sublimely superficial, laced with wit
that sidesteps the realities of life -
shall open up a bit and half admit
concern about old age, finances, wife;
so that, instead of running out of gas,
it turns around and bites you in the ass.

And here's another from those thrilling days of yesteryear - so far back that I had not yet started crapping on people for writing poems about poetry. This one was in the Umbrella Journal, and is a sonnet about a villanelle - or possibly a villanelle about a sonnet. Or a villanelle about a villanelle. Or something.


Do Not Go Gentle into that Quenelle

I wish I could create a villanelle
With poet’s flourish, and a sous-chef’s care,
As sweet and subtle as a plump quenelle.

A proper, formal Miss, of classic phrase,
Her soft, hypnotic voice can weave a spell
That leaves this anxious suitor in a daze:
She is my siren of the villanelle.

I must find piquant lines that mingle well
(The recipe demands a perfect pair)
With which I could create that villanelle

As easily as I take shrimp and shell
Them, grind them, beat in egg whites full of air
And sweetly, subtly, raise a plump quenelle.

Those retold lines and oft-repeated rhymes,
Old-fashionedly romantic Gallic pace,
The ease with which she makes each point four times,
Accent her elegance, her form, her grace.

But overlabored tercets will not swell
My dish - If I could blend their essence with the flair
I wish, I would create a villanelle

That marries words and verbs in parallel
With nutmeg, cayenne, heavy cream; prepare
It sweet and subtle; as a plump quenelle,

And if she seems to stutter, just as well -
No twists or turns or sonnets’ clever ways
Disturb the quiet, mesmerizing swell
Of every echolalic, encored phrase,

French-kissed with fruits de mer and bechamel,
A mix to metaphorically declare:
I wish I could create a villanelle
As sweet and subtle as a plump quenelle.

As I begin to see that I adore
A nagging and reiterative bore.

Trochees Are The Perfect Fix

I love a line of trochees now and then
Snort them up - my ear will tell me when
I’m due again - set for that metric hit -
the off-beat rush I need to discomfit
and chop the chain of pure iambic verse
that spreads a sonorous Shakespearean curse
across my winter sonnet’s boring drone.

Trochees are the poet’s perfect fix – stone
fences that provide a periodic high
to lift a rhyme through dull New England sky
to a caesura; punctuate the hills
with jig-saw boulders, frozen silver spills
of rock, the drift of snow on wind-tossed
lake, two paths uncrossed, a touch of frost

A perfect sonnet, Michael, with a perfect Cantor ending.

Ah those days of yesteryear when no one interfered with our poems and no one published them.

There is a poet who put out a book in which he describes many poetic forms within poems, usually humorous. I own the book (hiding somewhere), which is very thin. Does anyone out there recall the author or title? I cannot.

I now have it, thanks to a note in Robert Pinsky's The Sounds of Poetry: John Hollander, Rhyme's Reason.

Hey,

These all great! It's nice to know I'm just at the tail end of a long amd nobly silly tradition. Roger, love it, very cunning not to use 'Bumbershoot' as your rhyme word. With a little metrical twisting it's infinitely adaptable to any journal! Michael, your Perfect Sonnet is just that.

Cheers all!

Here's one from a Spectator acrostic competition.

Wouldst write a sonnet in the style of Will?
I’faith, thou couldst have found no better master;
Learn well from one who’s expert with the quill,
Lest inexperience lead thee to disaster.
Study my verse, and ponder long upon it;
Heed rhyme and metre; add, upon a whim,
A little sauciness to spice thy sonnet,
Knowing thy readers love a hint of quim.
Senescent bards there be who favour Petrarch;
Perchance his forms may please some dullard soul
Enjoying but the spoils of a tetrarch.
A quarter-share? Nay, let the prize be whole!
Reserve some fancy for thy final line;
Ere long, the extra fiver shall be thine.

(No, it didn't get the extra fiver - chiz!)

Lovely, lovely. Thank you for this thread, everyone.

Cheers,
John

R.D. Laing's Life before Death just occurred to me:

To write a sonnet in this day and age
May seem to some an almost wanton waste
Of ink upon a page...

Cheers,
John

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!)

Still another from my endless supply of youthful excesses.

From the Tomb of the Unknown Executive

When I set forth in industry each day
my thoughts were parsed in sharp execu-tese:
nouns turned to verbs the proper corporate way
by bulleting on focused strategies.
I dreamed in PowerPointed pros and cons:
strengths, weaknesses, advantages and threats -
replaced emotions with comparisons -
this gain, that loss, those assets and these debts.

But now I scribble lines bemusedly
as sonnets with a touch of dithyramb;
select with pentametric pedant’s glee
each shadowed word; and carefully enjamb
the diverse turns of life and poetry
in one last twist: I think, therefore, iamb!

Here's one by Lord Alfred Douglas, worth it for the last 3 lines:

SONNET ON THE SONNET

To see the moment hold a madrigal,
To find some cloistered place, some hermitage
For free devices, some deliberate cage
Wherein to keep wild thoughts like birds in thrall,
To eat sweet honey and to taste black gall,
To fight with form, to wrestle and to rage,
Till at the last upon the conquered page
The shadows of created Beauty fall--

This is the sonnet, this is all delight
Of every flower that blows in every Spring,
And all desire of every desert place,
This is the joy that fills a cloudy night
When, bursting from her misty following,
A perfect moon wins to an empty space.

nonce or broken?
 

The Donald’s Love Sonnet

I want it
I see it
I grope it
I grab it

I pet it
I lay it
I cheat it
I buy it

I charm it
I rape it
I fear it
I wed it

I have it
I hate it

Thanks for kicking this old thread back up. I didn't even remember writing "The Sung," so it's nice to discover a poem of my own (not that it's all that good).

Bumping it up... or stirring it up... with another "broken sonnet" that isn't a sonnet? :p

Rhyme gets you noticed, but it’s just a flier
To pull the punters to the proper stuff.
It’s to free verse a poet should aspire;
Rhyming and chiming isn’t strong enough
To carry messages of any weight
And real involvement in the here and now
Demands the rawness of the naked state
Of language. One can just imagine how
Imaginative thought would feel the pinch
Of being squeezed into a villanelle
Whose rigid metre wouldn’t give an inch
When freedom’s feet demanded space to swell.
Who in their right mind would contrive a sonnet
If anything worthwhile depended on it?

Ann, I like it a lot. The volta is so smooth there's no swivel. It's like driving a curve for 160 on the Autostrada. Curve? What curve?