The Sonnet (Poetry)

THE SONNETand the imaginative world of poetry

By: Mr. Ranulfo T. BacusEnglish Teacher

ENGLISH GRADE 9

The word comes from the Italian word sonetto, meaning a little sound or song,

Originated in 12thC Italy based on old folk song stanza

The first recognizable sonnets are associated with ‘Courtly Love’

WHAT IS A SONNET?

Petrarch 1304-74 Sir Thomas Wyatt 1502-42 Henry Howard 1517-47 William Shakespeare Sir Philip Sidney Elizabeth Barrett Browning

Some famous sonnet poets:

Religious sonnets: John Donne, George Herbert, Gerard Manley Hopkins

Political sonnet – Shelley ‘England in 1819’

Society – Wordsworth ‘Upon Westminster Bridge’

War- Owen ‘Anthem for Doomed Youth’

Other sonnet themes:

THE SONNET PATTERNS

a poem of 14 lines in iambic pentameter, usually set out as one stanza, and following a complex rhyme scheme.

Iambic pentameter – a line of verse with five metrical feet, each consisting of one short (or unstressed) syllable followed by one long (or stressed) syllable, for example: Two households, both alike in dignity.

THE SONNET PATTERN:

THE ITALIAN OR PETRARCHAN SONNET• Octave A First Quatrain

BBAA Second QuatrainBBA

TURN (‘Volta’)----------------------------------------• Sestet C C C Variations for sestet

D D DE C EC D CD C EE D D

EXAMPLE OF ITALIAN OR PETRARCHAN SONNET ‘On First Looking into Chapman’s Homer’ (Keats)

Much have I travelled in the realms of gold, - aAnd many goodly states and kingdoms seen; - bRound many western islands have I been - bWhich bards in fealty to Apollo hold. - aOft of one wide expanse had I been told - aThat deep-browed Homer ruled as his demesne; - bYet did I never breathe its pure serene - bTill I heard Chapman speak out loud and bold: - a

EXAMPLE OF ITALIAN OR PETRARCHAN SONNET ‘On First Looking into Chapman’s Homer’ (Keats)

Then felt I like some watcher of the skies - cWhen a new planet swims into his ken; - dOr like stout Cortez when with eagle eyes - cHe stared at the Pacific, and all his men - dLooked at each other with a wild surmise – - cSilent, upon a peak in Darien. - d

THE SHAKESPEAREAN SONNET• A First Quatrain• B• A• B• C Second Quatrain• D• C• D(TURN-------------------?)• E Third Quatrain• F• E• F• G Concluding Couplet • G

EXAMPLE OF SHAKESPEREAN SONNETSONNET 66 by William Shakespeare

Tired with all these, for restful death I cry, - - aAs to behold desert a beggar born, - bAnd needy nothing trimm’d in jollity, - aAnd purest faith unhappily forsworn, - bAnd gilded honour shamefully misplac’d, - cAnd maiden virtue rudely strumpeted, - dAnd right perfection wrongfully disgrac’d, - cAnd strength by limping sway disabled, - d

EXAMPLE OF SHAKESPEREAN SONNETSONNET 66 by William Shakespeare

And art made tongue-tied by authority,- e

And folly (doctor-like) controlling skill, -f

And simple truth miscall’d simplicity, -e

And captive good attending captain ill: -f

Tired with all these, from these would I be gone, -g

Save that to die I leave my love alone. -g

SPENSERIAN SONNET: ABAB, BCBC, CDCD, EE

One day I wrote her name upon the strand, But came the waves and washed it away: Again I wrote it with a second hand, But came the tide, and made my pains his prey. Vain man, said she, that dost in vain assay A mortal thing so to immortalize! For I myself shall like to this decay, And eek my name be wiped out likewise. Not so (quoth I), let baser things devise To die in dust, but you shall live by fame: My verse your virtues rare shall eternize, And in the heavens write your glorious name; Where, whenas death shall all the world subdue, Our love shall live, and later life renew. (Spenser, Amoretti 2)

Sarah Law Poetic Forms & Genres

MEREDITHIAN SONNET: 16 LINESABBA, CDDC, EFFE, GHHG

George Meredith, from Modern Love (1862)

By this he knew she wept with waking eyes: That, at his hand's light quiver by her head, The strange low sobs that shook their common bed Were called into her with a sharp surprise, And strangely mute, like little gasping snakes, Dreadfully venomous to him. She lay Stone-still, and the long darkness flowed away With muffled pulses. Then, as midnight makes Her giant heart of Memory and Tears Drink the pale drug of silence, and so beat Sleep's heavy measure, they from head to feet Were moveless, looking through their dead black years, By vain regret scrawled over the blank wall. Like sculptured effigies they might be seen Upon their marriage-tomb, the sword between; Each wishing for the sword that severs all.

CURTAL SONNET: LIKE PETRARCHAN BUT PROPORTION OF 6:4 ½ INSTEAD OF

8:6 “Pied Beauty,” Gerard Manly Hopkins (1877) Glory be to God for dappled things For skies of couple colour as a brindled cow; For rosemoles all in stipple upon trout that swim Fresh firecoal chestnut falls; finches’ wings; Landscape plotted and pieced Fold, fallow and trim. All things counter, original, spare, strange; Whatever is fickle, freckled (who knows how?) With swift, slow; sweet, sour; adazzle, dim He fathers forth whose beauty is past change; Praise him.

‘THE SONNET-BALLAD’GWENDOLYN BROOKS (1949)

Oh mother, mother, where is happiness? They took my lover’s tallness off to war, Left me lamenting. Now I cannot guess What I can use an empty heart-cup for. He won’t be coming back here any more. Some day the war will end, but, oh, I knew When he went walking grandly out that door That my sweet love would have to be untrue. Would have to be untrue. Would have to court Coquettish death, whose impudent and strange Possessive arms and beauty (of a sort) Can make a hard man hesitate—and change. And he will be the one to stammer, “Yes.” Oh mother, mother, where is happiness?


OTHER SONNET VARIATIONS• Caudate (tail) sonnet: a sonnet of any type, followed by an extra couplet • Chained or linked sonnet: each line starts with last word of previous line • Continuous or reiterating sonnet: uses only one or two rhymes in the

entire sonnet • Crown of sonnets: a sequence of sonnets, each of which begins with the

last line of the previous sonnet • Interwoven sonnet: includes both medial (middle of line) and end rhyme • Miltonic sonnet: an Italian sonnet with little or no break in sense at the

volta, creating a gradual culmination of the idea • Retrograde sonnet: reads the same backwards as forwards


CONTEMPORARY VARIATIONS INCLUDE:

• Unrhymed metrical sonnets• Rhymed non-metrical sonnets • Sonnets of various lengths that keep rhyme and meter• E.g. American poet Robert Lowell wrote three collections of unrhymed

sonnets in the 1960s and 70s:


History, Robert Lowell History has to live with what was here, clutching and close to fumbling all we had— it is so dull and gruesome how we die, unlike writing, life never finishes. Abel was finished; death is not remote, a flash-in-the-pan electrifies the skeptic, his cows crowding like skulls against high-voltage wire, his baby crying all night like a new machine. As in our Bibles, white-faced, predatory, the beautiful, mist-drunken hunter’s moon ascends— a child could give it a face: two holes, two holes, my eyes, my mouth, between them a skull’s no-nose— O there’s a terrifying innocence in my face drenched with the silver salvage of the mornfrost.


Education

The Sonnet (Poetry)