[ChrisW]

Originally posted by Alan Sullivan:
I am bothered by "sonnets" lacking any discursive structure. With all that glorious history in the background, it seems a shame to me that so many of our contemporaries are content with a fourteen-liner about, say, looking at a deer. If no comparison or conclusion is drawn, no wisdom or unwisdom gained, nothing said that a journalist would not say, why arrange words into the ghost of this form?

A.S.

I'm partial to sonnets that make an argument (like Shakespeare's), myself. But Wordsworth doesn't make much of an argument in his Westminster Bridge sonnet, for example. I can't detect very much of a volta at the sestet there. His purpose is primarily descriptive, though there is certainly an implicit thought that, at the moment, the city itself calls forth some of the same awe that he would feel before Nature.
Assuming that Wordsworth is part of the sonnet's glorious tradition, there appears to be some room for descriptive sonnets, at least. But maybe I haven't understood sufficiently what kind of sonnet Alan is objecting to.

[R. S. Gwynn]

The only turn I detect in Wordsworth's sonnet comes with "Never," which raises the poem to a slightly higher pitch of excitement. The real turn in the poem is its situational irony: Wordsworth is praising Nature while describing an urban setting.

[Alan Sullivan]

Chris, at any given time you could certainly find several examples of the phenomenon on the metrical boards. I am reluctant to specify, since I tread on so many toes as it is.

A.S.