Sonnets in a row

Peter Earsman · #1 05-27-2002, 09:00 PM

Could you please tell me the correct term for two or more sonnets joined together to form a single poem? I keep thinking 'envoy' but that doesn't sound right.

Thanks
Peter E

Deborah Warren · #2 05-28-2002, 02:23 PM

Crown?

Richard Wakefield · #3 05-28-2002, 03:22 PM

I've heard "Crown" used for a series of fifteen sonnets in which each begins with (I believe) the last line of the previous one, and the last is composed of all those last lines.
As for other combinations of sonnets, I don't recall hearing such a thing called anything but a series. Frost has a triple unrhymed sonnet called "Two Look at Two" in his book New Hampshire, but with nothing to identify it as such.
RPW

RCL · #4 05-28-2002, 03:26 PM

Shakespeare's are called a "sequence."

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Ralph

Deborah Warren · #5 05-28-2002, 05:09 PM

But of course! Sequence.

Fifteen sonnets sounds like what I've heard (and seen, once or twice--in "Sparrow"?) for a real crown; Turco's book, however, says a crown is as Richard describes but SEVEN sonnets--a number I've never heard.

Anthony Lombardy · #6 05-28-2002, 06:39 PM

I think the term "crown," in this sense, was originally a Renaissance translation of Greek "stephanos," which meant crown or garland, but in the Hellenistic period came to mean "collection of poems." (A garland is, literally, an "anthology," a selection of flowers.)
I don't know where or whether a definite number of poems takes over, but I think the idea that the last line of the preceding poem or stanza is repeated as the first line of the following poem or stanza was part of the English "crown" from the beginning.

Peter Earsman · #7 05-28-2002, 07:21 PM

Thanks everyone. I'm still confused - but at a much higher level.
No, seriously, I intend to employ (probably) a double-sonnet in order to tell a story that I think deserves the special sonnet magic, but for which 14 lines is inadequate.
(If that's not a contradiction in terms.)

Cheers
Peter E