Sonnet Variations
 

What are your favorite sonnet forms other than the Elizabethan and Petrarchan? Examples are welcome.

The Stefanile is a favourite of mine.
Here's one by Mike Juster:

Note From Echo

Narcissus, I no longer haunt the canyons
and the crypts. I thrive and multiply;
uncounted daughters are my new companions.

We are the voicemail's ponderous reply
to the computers making random calls.
We are the Muzak in the empty malls,
the laughtrack on the reruns late at night,
the distant siren's chilling lullaby,
the steady chirp of things that simplify
their scheduled lives. You know I could recite
more, but you never cared for my recitals.

I do not miss you, do not need you here—
I can repeat the words of your disciples
telling lovers what they need to hear.

AM Juster

Thank you!

I've recently written a few sonnets with Petrarchan rhyme schemes, but with varying line lengths. Some of the patterns I've used (# = beats per line; / = stanza break):

3-4-5-3 / 3-4-5-3 / 3-4-3 / 3-4-3

4-5-5-4-4-5-5-4 / 3-5-3-3-5-3 [still on the met board here]

4-5-5-4-4-5-5-4-2-2-5-4-4-3

I've also done a pure pent sonnet with this rhyme scheme:

A B B A A B B A A B B C C C

Since they're mine, I can't post them (except for the one still on the board here), though I'm happy to PM them. In general, I've really enjoyed trying out the heterometrical forms—I think all three are among my better poems. I think the rhythmic variation helps them to sound fresh, while still possessing many of the virtues of traditional sonnet forms.

The pent sonnet with the nonce scheme is from an earlier period where I was more old-fashioned. I think it's the best poem I ever wrote in that style (in part because I think the variant rhyme scheme served the poem well), but it's still more of a dead thing than a living. I'd like to write another with that pattern, someday.

Thank you very much.

Hi John.

Interesting question, and, David, I've never heard of a Stefanile, so I was fascinated to read Mike's. Thank you for that!

This is slightly off topic, but it annoys me when people call a particular poem a sonnet when it clearly isn't any such thing. It may be a 14-line poem, but there the similarity ends.

How many different forms of sonnet are there, do you know? No one's mentioned Shakespearian, Spenserian or Curtal yet, for example, to name but a few well-known ones.

I don't think I can honestly say that I have a "favourite sonnet form other than the Elizabethan and Petrarchan". I have lots of favourite sonnets, of various forms.

I'm interested to see examples of any more forms I've yet to have come across, though!

Jayne

John has my replies on Facebook. I also wrote one Stefanile, online at the current edition of Alabama Literary Review. ;)

Does "variation" imply a pattern several poets have taken up? 14 lines can be divided in a variety of interesting ways to support a poem's content. Years ago The Dark Horse published one of mine that rhymed:

abab
c
dede
c
fgfg

I like that pattern, but I don't think I've used it again.

I like the Spenserian - the rhymes seems to zing a bit more - and have used it primarily on humorous work.

I like the terza rima sonnet form, though you don't see it very often:

Pickett’s Charge
Gettysburg, 3 July, 1863


Perhaps we should have waited for the night:
those Yankee guns were fierce by day. Instead,
we could have nailed them in the fading light.

The South’s high-water mark lay straight ahead;
but food was short, our army badly shod,
the ammunition low and Stonewall dead.

Longstreet couldn’t speak, would barely nod —
obeying, not agreeing. And the men,
who followed Lee as if he were a god,

in certain hope of triumph once again,
were sacrificed in thousands on the height.
Why rush to die? The dream was fading then:

our hopeless cause would soon devour the light.
Perhaps we should have waited for the night.