[Solan]

Hi Dick, I think I am that somewhat less competent poet, which is why I wonder which rhyme schemes are OK in the ears of the more experienced sonneteers. David Anthony's sonnet seems to be a variation on the Shakespearean sonnet, rather than on the Italian: ABAB has been replaced by ABBA.

I gleam from your answer a disapproval of ABBA CDDC octaves in (attempted) Italian sonnets; so if one has come to the point where ABBAABBA just seems impossible, the poet is better off abandoning the sonnet structure - or maybe try DA's enveloped rhyme variation of the Shakespearean sonnet instead of making a mess of the Italian form.

Did I understand you correctly?


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Svein Olav

[Dick Davis]

No I don't disapprove of abbacddc in the octave of a sonnet, or of any other rhyme scheme per se (it didn't really bother me that much that one line of Deborah's sonnet didn't rhyme, though it would have been nicer if it had I guess). A sonnet is a traditional form, so that when we read it we're aware of the expectations of the form, and if they're fufilled that seems right and appropriate, and rightness and appropriateness are a crucial part of the pleasures of formal verse. But if the poem can be made into a convicing aesthetic artefact by other means that seems to me fine. The problem lies in what we think of as convincing. I guess everyone draws the line a little differently. If it's not basically in iambic pentamter with 14 lines I don't feel comfortable calling it a sonnet (assuming it's in English): Robert Lowell's "sonnets" are not sonnets in my book. But the various rhyme schemes that poets in English have come up with to compensate for the problems of writing a "real" Italian sonnet in English usually seem ok to me. Different languages impose different strategies, and it's just a simple fact that it's harder to rhyme fluently in English than it is in Italian (because English has more vowel sounds than Italian). That said though, a "real" Italian sonnet in English, if it doesn't seem strained, can give me, and I'd think others, a pleasure all of its own. It does for me "fold" / encapsulate a particular kind of experience of the world in a way few other forms can.
Dick.

[Len Krisak]

This is a terrific discussion!

As to the relative paucity of rhymes in
English compared to say, Italian--true,
no doubt. (But be careful--Pinsky
uses that as an excuse to do his entire
Inferno in slant rhyme [or off rhyme].)
That terza rima can be done is proved by
Michael Palma's latest translation of
the Inferno.

So don't give up on those
Petrarchan schemes, guys. Remember Byron!
It can be done, and English does have the
resources to do it. It's just harder than
doing it in a language where almost anything
ending in a vowel is easily rhymed.

[Tim Murphy]

I agree with Dick about the rare beauty of a flawless Italian sonnet in English, but I'm all for experimenting with anything that works. Look at Frost's terza rima sonnet, "Acquainted With The Night," or the countless other ingenious twists he gave to our inexhaustible 14 liner. Mike Juster once sent me a sonnet consisting of two septets. I told him I had no doubt such a form was possible, but that his effort didn't work. He later proceeded to repeat the experiment and won his second Nemerov Prize! By the way, not to exhibit too much smugness, but let me point out that five of the nine Nemerovs thus far awarded were won by participants in this discussion. And the competition calls its site Sonnet Central!

[Dick Davis]

I agree with Len that though it's harder to rhyme fluently in English than in Italian we shoudn't forget that it's still perfectly possible. There are a couple of other translations of Dante in terza rima - Laurence Binyon's and Peter Dale's (and unless I'm misremembering I think Dorothy Sayers' is to, though I don't have a copy so can't check at the moment). Binyon especially, in among the often woozy diction, has some really lovely moments, and Peter Dale can be no slouch. Whilst we're on rhyme I'd like to air two prejudices - one is in favor of feminine rhymes/ multi-syllable rhymes (the great pactitioners in English are Byron and Kipling, and Tony Harrison can be pretty virtuosic with them too sometimes), and the other is to deplore the sloppy use of slant rhyme / half rhyme - by sloppy I mean not using it as a technique in itself (as say Owen does, consistently through a poem) but as a stop-gap because one can't come up with a full rhyme. This jars for me horribly, usually, and I'd prefer an unrhymed poem to the hodge-podge of full and partial rhyme that we often get now.

[Carol Taylor]

Hi, Dick. This is a wonderful discussion and deals with issues we all have made choices over. I'm sort of in Tim's camp here, actively liking the innovation of varied rhyme and metrical schemes in sonnets when they work, simply because they seem less like sonnet exercises and more like poetry. If I were going for a sonnet competition, the form constraints would override most other concerns. But there are so many perfectly crafted Petrarchan sonnets that after a while I find myself taking more pleasure from assessing how skillfully the poet handled the form without sacrificing content than from the content itself. The form almost seems to take over the poem and become its own reason for writing. While I agree with your analogy about games having rules, I like the idea of inventing new games too.

Carol

[Rhina P. Espaillat]

Dick, thank you for 1)objecting to "accidental" slant rhyme used only because nothing better occurs to the poet, which gives slant rhyming itself a bad name that it doesn't deserve when used well; 2)favoring feminine rhymes, which can be musically wonderful and sometimes feel exactly right for what's being said. I like them very much, maybe because they remind me of my first language, Spanish, in which they are very common. They account for the "lilt" that English-speaking listeners at bilingual readings often comment on.

[David Anthony]

Thanks, everyone, for the generous comment on this.
I wrote it as an exercise originally, to demonstrate the versatility of the sonnet form in general, and in particular its suitability as a vehicle for telling jokes. I christened it the Blomquistian (after Eric Blomquist, the founder of Sonnet Central), and it provoked a frenzy for a while over there of corny jokes.
Svein, like you I have a preference aesthetically for closed rhymes. However, I'd argue that this is an English sonnet, in no way a hybrid form, and in fact I picked it up from William Lisle Bowles, who was in many ways the father of the modern sonnet, in my opinion.
Regards,
David