[Aaron Novick]

I wasn't sure quite what forum to put this in, so feel free to move it if there's a better home for it.

But the eternal question of what, exactly, makes a sonnet has shown its face again, in Kurt's thread on Met, and I figured that others besides myself might want a playground to discuss the matter further. So, here's your playground. What is a sonnet?

It's a question that interests me because, as you all know, I write a lot of sonnets that don't follow the form's rules in the strictest sense: heterometrical, unrhymed or off-rhymed, or various other divergences. There are Rick's fifteen-line sonnets. William Bronk wrote an entire book of 14-line (loose) blank verse poems, which I would call sonnets. Frederick Goddard Tuckerman wrote a number of sonnets with non-standard rhyme-schemes. And here's a "sonnet" by Michael Spence:

Broken Sonnet: Divorce

I never knew the birds
The way she did –
To me, a cormorant appeared
To be an egret who shed
All his colors for black.
I forget if herons
Will mate for life. Do the males flock,
Or do they fly alone?
I need to find the name
Of one who leaves the land behind,
Making flight his home.
The wind
Will choose which feathers line a nest
And which glide into mist.

Ok, so what makes a sonnet? I think the key is the history of the form. There is a base set of expectations for a sonnet: fourteen lines, iambic pentameter, some kind of rhyme scheme, a sestet/octet construction with a volta in line 9 (possibly interacting with a three quatrain + couplet structure), maybe others. What determines how far you can depart from these base expectations and still be writing a sonnet?

I say that a poem can reasonably claim the title "sonnet" if, in some meaningful way, it plays off these expectations—whether by following them or disrupting them. If you're leveraging the reader's expectations for what a sonnet promises to some poetic end, then you've written a sonnet. Or at least something that could be called a sonnet.

Ok, have at it.

[Jayne Osborn]

Hi Aaron,

I've moved this to GT as it's the right forum for this discussion.

(I'm too scared to post what I really want to say on the subject... so perhaps I'll keep quiet!! )

Jayne

[Jayne Osborn]

Oh, I can't help myself... I have to chip in, Aaron, and say it - though I know there are definitely two sides to this particular fence, and people sit on both of them!

In my opinion this is not a sonnet: It has no metre and no rhyme; it is merely a poem of 14 lines in length; there the similarity ends.

I never knew the birds
The way she did –
To me, a cormorant appeared
To be an egret who shed
All his colors for black.
I forget if herons
Will mate for life. Do the males flock,
Or do they fly alone?
I need to find the name
Of one who leaves the land behind,
Making flight his home.
The wind
Will choose which feathers line a nest
And which glide into mist.

If this is regarded as a sonnet, then you could argue that any 5-line poem is a limerick, couldn't you?

I think I'd better leave it there... (I'm not being contentious, I hasten to add. I fully accept others' opposing views.)

Jayne

[Aaron Novick]

It's basically heterometrical iambic (a few lines depart), it uses off-rhymes in a Shakespearian pattern, and it has a volta in line 9.

[Jayne Osborn]

I'm sorry, but I remain unconvinced. It's just too much of a s-t-r-e-t-c-h for me, Aaron!!

Jayne

[Aaron Novick]

Set aside the question of whether it qualifies for the epithet "sonnet" (or even the one Spence gave it: "broken sonnet"), since that question is ultimately boring.

Is your reading of the poem not enriched by drawing on your expectations for what a sonnet promises—both for how the poem meets them and how it departs from them? That's the interesting question. And the answer, for me, at least, is clearly "yes".

[Orwn Acra]

A way to form the question might be: what does a poem gain by being called a sonnet? We have sonnet preconceptions; a poem can meet those expectations or subvert them. I think Spence's poem is a sonnet. Aaron has pointed out its traditional placement of the volta and the rhyme pattern. A broken sonnet for a broken relationship. All categorization is to some extent arbitrary, but no more so than the language we use to uphold those categorizations.

[Martin Elster]

Originally Posted by Jayne Osborn

If this is regarded as a sonnet, then you could argue that any 5-line poem is a limerick, couldn't you?

I think that's a great analogy. As I said earlier, Spence's poem has some of the characteristics of a sonnet (14 lines that rhyme and a turn), but it's not iambic pentameter, so maybe it's merely a quasi-sonnet or sonnet-like. If it didn't have "sonnet" in the title, I wonder if I would have thought of sonnets at all, instead of it being a 14-line heterometric poem.

PS - On the other hand, Alan Hovhaness has written many pieces that he calls a "Symphony," although they are not in the traditional 4 movements, and the first movement is not in sonata-allegro form. He also has composed a piano sonata titled Sonata: “Mt. Chocorua,” which is not in the traditional sonata form at all. But it's a fantastic and amazing piece and I have listened to it many times and it's one of my favorite solo piano pieces by a modern composer.

[Ann Drysdale]

To call a poem a "sonnet" implies that it is a little song. To call it, for example, a Petrarchan of Shakespearean sonnet puts it in uniform. Then we can carry out an ad hoc inspection and sneer at the angle of its epaulettes or find fault with the way the sunlight bounces off its buttons. Otherwise it is simply a little song, small and entire of itself, a work of Aaron or Orwn or Annie. It is theirs and is what they say it is. If they choose a received form and wear it openly, they can be court-martialed if it breaks the rules, but otherwise, it must surely be judged as a poem and its title accepted as part of it.

Once upon a time in another life, I won second prize in the National Poetry Competition with a fourteen-line poem that ended with a couplet but whose unambitious rhyme scheme did not fit a classical pattern. I didn't call it a sonnet but the judges did. I trousered the money and said nothing but was later asked by the Poetry Society to write a piece for their members' journal on "The Sonnet".

I wrote a piece with that title, of twelve roughly equal paragraphs. The first eight detailed the classical requirements, the remainder dealt with the variations and the integrity of the title. Then it came to the following conclusion:

"Further examples? Seek and ye shall find. The sonnet is, au fond, a state of mind."

[Julie Steiner]

M.A. Griffiths posted the following poem on 2003-03-19 to the site Burgundy, in response to the Mad March Hairbrain Not-Sonnet Challenge: “Write a sonnet that is not in pent or tet, not iambic, that is not 14 lines, and yet somehow satisfies a form.” Griffiths’ entry was voted the second-prize winner. (No, I did not save the winner.)

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

The Blue Geranium

Enchanted by the picture on the label,
I bought the pack. Ah, those blue-eyed blue
flowers, profligate as grass seeds.
When I looked more closely, I could see
pale roots in the dry compost,
fragile as dead babies’ fingers,
pressing against the plastic bag.
You have been neglected, my geranium;
you were prepared, then overlooked. 



I slip you gently into a white bowl
to soak in warm water. You are valued
now, loved. Grow, you bugger, grow.
Star my summer with deep blue
and I will feed you, water you, protect
you from slugs and snails, I can do that.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

For me, the idea of sonnet-ness haunts the poem just enough to lend a dollop of gravitas to what I would probably otherwise regard as merely pleasant candyfloss.

I agree with those who say that how the poem benefits from what it does with (or against) the sonnet form is the important thing, rather than a pass-fail grade on whether it meets the technical requirements for sonnethood.

[Cross-posted with Annie.]