I hesitate to enter this discussion because everyone here knows I have at best a rudimentary grasp of meter. The reason I am pitching in is that the sonnet, for me, is most of all a grouping of an idea or image or sensation that, for some reason, fits into a thought's length. Yes, the "little song," because the length of a sonnet, give or take a couple of lines, is intuitive to how we think and dream. For me, that is fundamental. All the other arguments about meter and rhyme scheme and how the thought should turn are interesting and worthy but they are ultimately the way the sonnet is decorated. Perhaps the form and decoration are essential for carrying the sonnet, perhaps none of that is necessary. Berryman's Dream Songs are better sonnets than the poems he called sonnets. While I imagine few here would agree, many of free-form sonnets in Gerald Stern's American Sonnets accomplish what the sonnet inherently does. I know it when I see it is about the most insightful thing I can say.
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