The Writing Process

Or at least, my writing process. It seems like an opportune moment to discuss something so individual, so subjective, so idiosyncratic I don't feel comfortable putting it in the Introduction to the Sonnet series. There are, I suppose, general rules about how to write, even how to write sonnets specifically, but it is still by and large something that does and must of necessity flow from the individual poet. If I could tell you exactly how to write a sonnet, what words to use and when, what attitude to have towards composition and at what rate to compose, how and when to throttle the Muse, where would your own poetry come in? But nevertheless I will say something here about how it works, for me at least.

I'll start by mentioning that most of the sonnets seen in this blog, the new original ones anyway, are written, as I am now, on my Android phone. This is not to say that I am plugging for the phone or that something about mobile devices makes a sonnet; after all, most sonnets predate that technology. It is to say that my sonnets are fundamentally akin to text messages. This is not solely applicable to the mode of writing; it would hardly be worth mentioning if it were. Rather, it applies equally to the speed in writing and form of construction of the sonnets.

I write my sonnets fast. I've won bets that I could write a metrically correct, thematically coherent sonnet in less than 1 minute (my friends and I make odd bets). I don't usually write that quickly, but it is very rare that a first full draft of a sonnet takes me more than 5 minutes. Honestly, it is usually more like 2 or 3 minutes.

I start almost always with the first line, part of a line, or line and a half, often the first two lines, occasionally the first three. That's just what usually comes; a packet of pentameter popping into my mind. On the occasions when I get three lines in that initial burst, I know from that what sort of sonnet (Italian or English) I have; otherwise, my first mental order of business is to figure that out so my subconscious can start spitting out rhymes for me. When the poem is really flowing, my subconscious is doing most of that work, tossing up the fragments (usually clumps of 6-10 syllables, with a few longer 12 or 14 enjambments sliding thrmselves in) and letting my conscious mind merely vet those suggestions. I know that is the division of labor because when I dislike my first thought a similar size of verse almost always pops up in its place without my having to puzzle over it. These chunks are, as I've said, of fairly standard size, usually just about one line long, give or take a foot or two.

The trick comes when that subconscious flow stops, pauses, or is muddied. This almost always happens at the turn between octave and sestet (in an Italian sonnet) or the end of the last quatrain (in an English sonnet). Often it happens at both lines 8-9 and 12-13, regardless of the type of sonnet actually being written; those seem to be the key points within a 14 line scheme. Sometimes the 14th is the hardest line of all - in fact, this is often true - but that is primarily as a result of a pause that happened at the 12th or 13th line. In these cases, regardless of when they happen, I have to bring my conscious brain to the problem. For this I first try to simply use my own sense of where the poem should go (something that, along with the rhyme scheme, I try to figure out as early as possible, but unlike the rhymes I tend to remain flexible about all the way to the end) and my own vocabulary; when the latter in particular fails, or the words are simply not coming, I tend to use an online rhyming dictionary (rhymezone.com is a favorite).

The greatest difficulty in these moments comes when the line wants to be too long, either because the rhyme word(s) that seem natural are too long or because too much information has to be smashed into too little space. In these cases my first instinct is generally to revise earlier lines, either incorporating that information into them or using them as a vehicle to move syllables upwards. This often results in changing the rhyme words (easiest in the sestet of an Italian sonnet or the couplet of an English one, slightly harder but not too hard in the quatrains of an English sonnet, and fiendish at times in the octave of an Italian). If this fails, which it rarely does, I change the rhyme scheme or change the (treatment of the) theme; or in rare and worse cases, simply make do with a poorer word than I would like. But that is the order of preference I have: change the earlier lines, change the structure, hack the line.

This process usually carries me through the sonnet rather rapidly, as I have mentioned. All these sub-processes are almost simultaneous, except when it gets really bad. Which leaves really only the question of theme, and how themes or topics arise in my sonnets.

I have mentioned that I tend to have a line pop into my head and build the sonnet off of that line; this in turn brings me to the other way my sonnets are like text messages, in that they tend to come off the top of my head rather than after deep analysis and thought. Sometimes this can have negative externalities associated with it, such as when too much of my momentary thinking, feeling, or other associations gets sucked into the sonnet and it ends up either boring everyone else or revealing disturbingly large amounts about where my head was when I wrote it. But generally it is a positive, as the flow of the sonnet is much improved when I am not fighting against my current state of mind to produce it. Wordsworth said in the Preface to Lyrical Ballads that poetry was "emotion recollected in tranquility"; this is somewhat true for me, but it is more the "spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings" he also references there, and it is neither wholly. Rather, it is the spontaneous overflow of thought itself, rather than feeling. Certainly feelings come into the picture, but my poetry arises out of my conscious mind, even when it is written by my subconscious. I do not tend to write poems after the fact, or when I do they are tinged by the wistfulness of the recollecting present. I will begin to write a poem about the rainstorm falling on my head not in the dry recesses of the welcome house where I find relief and shelter, but in the midst of the defiant tempest.

This I believe should serve as a rather lengthy introduction to my writing process; there is of course more, but I must leave something for future reference and save both my fingers and your eyes more text. I will leave you with a simple thought: I began writing poems with the goal of writing one a day to my sweetheart. I have not maintained that pace, nor (alas for youth) the sweetheart, but I have written somewhere in the vicinity of a thousand sonnets; and I see no end in sight.

Venus

If you were ever real you'd have to be
A different person from the one you are
Standing there and smiling at me;
It's definitional. You are too far
From what you make define reality;
A paying job, a mortgage, or a car,
A burden of responsibility;
Instead you twinkle like the evening star
Reminding me, although the sun goes down,
And burns the clouds around it in its fall,
Igniting land and sea to mourn it, still
It doesn't have to leave us dark at all:
A lack of sunbeams does not make me frown
And as you shine I think it never will.

Excelsior

The train is moving slowly down the tracks
And will not pick up speed. Instead, it coasts
Seeming to let its hair down and relax
Ignoring or not seeing mileposts
That indicate the creep of onward flow
Encouraging a greater turn of speed.
The rails are smooth, and yet it will not go,
Despite the passengers implicit need
To reach their destinations. It will glide
At its own pace, concerned with nothing more
Than its inanimate desires. Ride
At your own risk; it is a quiet tour
And if you wait, it may give benefits.
Regardless of the truth of that, it sits.

Chickens

I don't turn the heads of pretty girls
I never have, and so I never will;
I don't produce that momentary thrill
Which causes those involuntary twirls
To gape unnecessarily. No curls
Will flounce at me; they stay forever still
Unusually so, as if I chill
Unwittingly whatever force unfurls
Them into joyful motion. Yet I find
Through hosts of heads unturned and eyes upraised
To look on by me as if they were blind
Or I invisible, and though ungrazed
By such innate affection, I don't mind.
I know it's strange; and I too am amazed.

Patiens

There have been times I waited patiently
And bit my tongue, insisting that no wrong
Could ever have accrued by you to me,
No matter what the cause or for how long
It had been aching, times when I was sure
That any slight or fault could not have grown
From your intention, which was always pure
And therefore must in some way be my own,
When I was certain everything you did
Was as it should be, ultimate, ideal,
And those small things that you obscured or hid
Were unimportant, or somehow unreal.
But no I see with different eyes and know
You're human, though I wished it wasn't so.

Credits

Perhaps I ought to pay attention to
The slight, insistent pressure in my brain
Which, while quite near to driving me insane,
Repeats a single word. Of course, it's "you."
Although that doesn't tell me what to do,
Or even to which "you" it should pertain,
It's in my mind, and so it's very plain.
I don't imagine that there's that much new
In what I've said, except, maybe, for this:
I cannot listen, though I wish I could,
Because there is no point to following
My mad self-urgings. There will be no kiss,
No cinematic ending to this thing,
And so it's best to say goodbye for good.

Sonnet Analysis: My Old Sonnets IV

I apologize for the delays in posting; certain scheduling difficulties arose, which I do not anticipate arising again anytime soon. Let's just jump right back into the swing of things with another analysis; while this blog will often consist predominantly of new work, if only because it can be hard to shift gears when in what feels like a creative state, the call of analysis is ever-present, and should not be ignored. So let's go ahead and look at one of my old sonnets, so that I can be appropriately nasty to it.

My face is just a mirror of desire
But mirrors are not windows. Look at me
As closely as you like, and you will see
Nothing but what is in you. I acquire
The outside form of what you would inspire
But do not show my own. Stare carefully
And you might notice something silvery
Behind the glass. Of course, if you inquire
You might see what's behind that - but unless
You ask directly, do not think you'll find
The secret to my future happiness
Or what I want right now so clearly lined
In how I look. If asked, I may confess,
But otherwise my face won't show my mind.

What Went Wrong:
So the first thing that's a little awkward about this sonnet is the rhythm. We must assume that the "-ire" ending is bisyllabic (ac-qui-re) rather than monosyllabic (ac-quire), but that's an acceptable option, I think; more troublesome are things like "what I want right now so clearly lined," with both "right now" and "so clearly" looking much more like placeholders for the verse than necessary modifiers. Obviously they do contribute to the poem, mostly by accentuating its insistence on the individuality of this precise moment (maybe later, not now) and the ambiguity of the emotions being expressed (not clearly visible, reflective, unrepresentative). So they aren't a complete loss. But they're definitely weak, and their placement in the last line of the last quatrain, a powerful position, somewhat undercuts the strength of the poem. The silveriness of what is inside the narrator is also never explained, and looks awfully like a reach for a rhyme. There is a possibility of a quicksilver/mercurial temperament that might be implied by the adjective (and obviously, mirrors are silvered) so there is, again, some justification for it, but it is also weak. And some of the emphases in the lines, especially "You might see what's behind that, but unless," seem to fall a bit off of the meter, although again that might be salvageable by pointing out that the poem is all about expectation, the seeming satisfaction of that expectation, and the implication that the satisfaction is false - something is just a little bit off, just as in the verse.

Not Too Shabby:
Besides the exculpatory points offered above in defense of weakness, there are some more definitely positive things about this poem. The Italian form, I believe, contributes to the flow of the poem and to its meaning; by using a more strict rhyme scheme, the issue of expectation and seeing only what you look for is heightened, and the rhymes, with the possible exception of "silvery," fit well into both the meaning and the meter. The poem as a whole is a good unpacking of the first sentence (lines 1-2) and an explanation, yet there still manages to be a turn at line 9 just as there should be. The theme is an interesting one too. Sadly, I think this poem comes out as a little less than the sum of its parts; the exculpatory points end up not covering the weaknesses as much as they might, and so the poem is unsatisfactory on the whole, despite good technique. But the technique is there, as a building block for either editing or future poetry.

Evenings

When time is dragging slowly past itself,
And everything seems overly congealed,
When hours trickle off a plastic shelf
As if some massive stopper were unsealed
And life was leaking out, when all is gray,
Tinged over with an extra coat of black,
I sit and wonder useless things, and they,
As bored as I am, sit and wonder back.
Between us there is some unspoken bond
That keeps us from investigating more
The only topic to which we respond:
The question of what might have gone before.
And even that is constantly not new;
It's only ever some small thought of you.

Fires

There used to be such heat surrounding you,
So much intensity, which burned away
The limits of what's possible to do,
Create, imagine, write, invent, and say.
I thought no task was large enough to prove
How much you mattered, and no wall too high
To climb upon, no stone too great to move,
If it could bring me to you. But now I
Sadly aware of what you used to mean
Can feel the fading warmth, and see the glow
Of embers giving off a little sheen
Of partially-reflected light, but no
True heat to kindle what remains,
And even that small glow forever wanes.

Kea

The fires that burned so intensely here
Have faded, but they will not go away.
The still remains of anger, and of fear,
Vulcanized and fossilized, will stay
Until fresh flows of rocky anguish gush
Across the still-embittered landscape's heart.
Then, only then, with that ecstatic rush,
Will anything here change; unless the start
Of slower processes is seen in this:
The quiet reappropriation of
The stone by wind and raindrops' calming kiss
Eroding harshness into growing love,
Until, of course, the fire flows once more
And covers all the landscape as before.

Notes

The music playing tinnily next door
Reminds me of a better time and place;
A different set of clothes, a fresher face
That had a smile on it once, and more
Than all of these, I had, before,
A quarry I was readying to chase,
And hunt into my welcoming embrace,
And she was happy with that fate. We wore
Upon each other, though, with too much care,
So now the songs we both used to desire,
Are hard to listen to, harder to hear;
The feeling is too raw. I wouldn't dare
To play that music on my own. But here
I cannot choose; and so I touch the fire.

Umbrellas

The sunshine slants down harshly through the trees
Illuminating where you should have sat;
Where, if the world were ordered as I please,
I would have looked at you. Remember that,
If you remember anything; that I
Still wanted you to be here. Even then,
When everything was finished but the sigh
That echoes in my ears, and even when
We both could see the writing on the wall
I wished that you were here. But you are not;
The chair is empty where the sunbeams fall
And as I sit and sigh the day grows hot.
I might have sat there endless if we
Had been what we had been supposed to be.

Kol Nidre

All the vows that we had made before
That we, through honest effort, could not do;
All the promises, the oaths we swore
The obligations we acceded to
And could not, though we tried our best, fulfill;
Let them be counted not as deeds undone
Nor as requirements to be done still,
But, if they had been forthrightly begun,
And still we failed, let them be set aside,
Discounted and unmade, or nullified;
Let us begin anew. Yet if we made
The vows not to our God, but to our friends,
Let them still bind us; let them never fade
Until by their consent the promise ends.

UPDATE: "completion" in line 8 changed to "they" 10/11 for metrical reasons.

Cliques

They're watching me; I'm certain that they are.
No matter where I go, I feel their eyes
Dissecting me, though hidden, from afar,
And analyzing me. I know the lies
They spread about me; I can see the signs.
The silent shoulders turned away from me,
The way a single moment now defines
My whole entire life, how I can be
Excluded from the places I belonged.
I know those ways. I used to practice them;
And now I am their target. I am wronged
By those whom I would normally condemn.
But even as I see myself abused
I don't repent the snobbery I used.

Storms

The grayness of the day intensifies
The dying of the sun; a drop of rain
Splatters the pavement. Everybody's eyes
Are drawn to where it fell. The watchers crane
Their necks, but cannot make a single cloud
Blush in admission of the liquid sin;
Instead, as for protection, they all crowd
In such a mass that no one can begin
To differentiate one from another.
They flow together, and the drops they shed
As all together, one after the other
They start to pour on every watching head
Are just as indistinct. The night will fall
But not before the sky has cleansed us all.

Introduction to the Sonnet V: Diction I

I think it is appropriate at this juncture to say something about word choice in sonnets. First of all, word choice in sonnets is, in a sense restricted; that is, there are words that are legitimate English words, have definitions and spellings and pronunciations and all that, and yet are typically not found in sonnets. That does not mean these words cannot be found in sonnets, or should not; merely that their use must be carefully calibrated because they sound unusual, odd, or even forced within the sonnet form.

This concept may sound foreign, or even offensive: who am I to say that words should not be used? But the idea of restricted word use is not actually that strange or unusual. Some words are generally unused, either because they are overtechnical (laminar air flow is not something you tend to drop into ordinary conversation), archaic (how much use do thee and thou get outside of Pennsylvania?), rude (certain words I refuse to dignify with print here and tend to be spelled with asterisks, especially ones denigrating certain racial or ethnic origins), too Latinate or complex (mellifluous comes to mind), too Anglo-Saxon (how often do you see a cart called a wain?) or simply otherwise rarely used. If you're going to use those words, you can; there's nothing stopping you, nor is it in any sense inappropriate, with the exception perhaps of the rude words. But you have to be careful how you use them, and when. The same applies in a sonnet; only there are different (and generally, I would say, more) words that seem odd in that context. They can still be used, but care should be taken that they are justified.

Ignoring for the moment the issue of whether the words listed above for general restriction are restricted in sonnets, I would add certain others. Typically, modernisms are rare in sonnets; this is partly due to the sonnet being an artform rather less published in recent years, but whatever the cause, it will almost undoubtedly sound strange to a reader to have the terms of modern technology slapped directly into a sonnet without care. The same, for a totally different reason, goes for multisyllabic words whose emphases do not fall in the rhythm appropriate to the meter being used. Multisyllabic, for instance, is multisyllabic; neither iambic nor trochaic, but potentially anapestic or dactylic. Take care to make sure you want that irregularity in the line; if you don't, find another word or change things about so that you do want the irregularity.

But the real questions with diction come up regarding the words that don't usually show up in English. Rude words, technical terms, and otherwise rarely used words should obviously be used with caution, just like they are in normal use. But the real questions arise about Latinate words, Anglo-Saxon words, and most of all archaisms. Obviously there is substantial overlap between these three categories. In all three cases, the tradition of the sonnet form would seem to imply that these words should be embraced rather than avoided. After all, how can "I compare thee to a summer's day" without thee? And how can you get more archaic than Shakespeare (ignoring anyone who lived before him, of course)?

I firmly believe those days have passed. This is not the sixteenth century, nor the nineteenth, and the words appropriate to that time are not the words appropriate to this time; we have passed through modernism and post-modernism, e.e. cummings, Ezra Pound, and William Carlos Williams, and along the way we've lost the affection for intentional archaism and a lot of the tradition of using certain words, phrases, and formulations. This history cannot be undone; and sonnets must acknowledge that fact. If you wish to use those sorts of words, go ahead; but be as careful as you would be using them in other contexts. There are places where they are right, but there are also places they are wrong. The sonnet cannot survive if thee and thou are the default second person pronouns.

Solitude

I guess I should admit you're not unique;
Not only you can make me feel this way.
This isn't quite an easy thing to say;
But sometimes my emotions seem to sneak
Up on me, leaving me to vainly seek
A reason for the change. I try to pay
Attention to myself, but, if I may,
I cannot notice everything; I'm weak.
But when I say that you are not alone
Do not imagine that I do not feel
The same affection that you always see;
My stomach still stands still, and shivers steal
Into my shoulders when you telephone;
But someone else can also jelly me.

Presence

Why does it feel so right to hold you close
Here, in my arms and just above my heart?
It's like my body itches for a dose
Of your affection. When our bodies part
Even though I knew that time would come
I ache where we were touching, as I feel
Your warmth removed, the subliminal hum
Of your beloved heartbeat start to peel
Away from me. I long to grab you back
And slide you in where you have always fit;
I hate the moment when I feel your lack.
I never seem to quite get used to it.
Why did it seem so natural, and why
Are you no longer here to see me cry?

Mornings

I sometimes wonder. Not too often though.
Sometimes instead I marvel, or am awed.
But usually I want to say I know
The hidden causes, why the act is flawed
Or what is really happening. To be
A cynic is my nature, which
I typically encourage. If I see
A miracle, I have a sudden itch
To pierce it through-and-through. I ought to say
That all this is conditional: unless
I've had my coffee, all is dully gray
And I'm a skeptic. But I must confess
That, caffeinated, all my troubles leave,
And there is nothing I will not believe.

Sonnet Analysis: Thomas Gray

I would call this post "Thomas Gray I," except Mr. Gray only ever published one sonnet: On the Death of Richard West. So, unsurprisingly, that is the sonnet I will be looking at today.

In vain to me the smiling mornings shine,
And reddening Phoebus lifts his golden fire;
The birds in vain their amorous descants join,
Or cheerful fields resume their green attire;
These ears, alas! for other notes repine,
A different object do these eyes require.
My lonely anguish melts no heart but mine;
And in my breast the imperfect joys expire.
Yet morning smiles the busy race to cheer,
And new-born pleasure brings to happier men:
The fields to all their wonted tribute bear;
To warm their little loves the birds complain.
I fruitless mourn to him that cannot hear,
And weep the more because I weep in vain.

Triumphs:
Let us begin with an absolutely beautiful line: "My lonely anguish melts no heart but mine" is a wonderful pentameter, and (as you can tell) it hits the main theme of the octave pretty much straight on. I am also a great fan of "a different object do these eyes require," even though it somewhat violates my sensibilities by inserting a "do" that is only metrically, not grammatically or logically, necessary. The reason for this is that the rest of the line flows sufficiently well, the line itself locks into the rhyme scheme extremely well, and the sentiment is well-expressed (and better, I believe, than in the previous line). The line "And in my breast the imperfect joys expire" seems weak until you realize that the hiccup in the verse where "the" has to be elided only serves to emphasize the imperfection of the imperfect joys. That realization makes it a very enjoyable line instead. The last line is also beautiful; archaic, alas, but beautiful. Also, the rhyme scheme is itself interesting; instead of choosing between the Italian and English sonnets, Gray blends them together to give us an ABABABABCDCDCD rhyme scheme, lacking the chiasmus of ABBA Italian octave but also the couplet of the English sonnet. It's an interesting system, and I'll say more about it below.

Imperfections:
I am usually somewhat reluctant to criticize earlier poets, more famous poets, more successful poets, and what must be admitted to be better poets; and Gray is all of the above, as are almost all the poets I will treat here (basically all but...myself). But here I find Gray using a lot of crutches in his verse: particularly the "do" in line six and the "alas!" in line five, which are really there to add a bit to an otherwise halting line. The line "and new-born pleasure brings to happier men" seems oddly divorced from the "morning" in the previous line that is the subject of the sentence, which is a direct result of inverting "new-born pleasure brings" from "brings new-born pleasure" - the inversion hits the meter, but it also makes pleasure seem like the subject of "brings," when it is actually its object.

Archaisms:
There are a lot of archaisms in this verse that I almost want to call imperfections. The way "in vain" is treated in the first 3 lines, moving around to suit the verse, is definitely unusual in modern English; appeals to "reddening Phoebus," while once beyond acceptable towards being almost standard, are now quite out; the "fruitless" in line thirteen is oddly placed for modern ears, primarily because it is in apposition to "I" rather than truly acting like the adverb that would seem appropriate (since I fruitlessly mourn); even "the more" in the last line is strange-sounding, although it is not fully out of the language. But most archaic are the rhymes; the rhyme scheme only works if one takes "join" rhyming with "shine," and "men" with "vain." Some of that change is vowel alteration since the poem was written; some of it is slant-rhyming verging on true rhyme; and some of it is dialect. All together it doesn't quite work anymore, even though it did when it was written.

Noisiness

I cannot bear distraction, nor ignore
The sounds and smells around me; I must flee
To where no creature may discover me
And I can be alone; and so, therefore,
Though I might wish I had a little more
Ability to concentrate, or be
Surrounded by my friends more easily
Without my mind deciding it should tour
The world around me, disregarding what
I'd rather do. I cannot keep it home,
Focused on the task at hand to do
As others can. I ought to fix this, but
As my attention and my thoughts both roam
I find I like that inattention too.

Equinox

Summer lingers in some happy lands
Where even winter cannot threaten harm;
Where breezes warm the heat-retaining sands
And mountains never gain the winter charm
Of snowy tops to melt in coming spring;
The people living there won't see the days
That shrink into themselves as threatening
Or fear the falling of a misty haze
Across what used to be a warmer sky;
They will not huddle closer in the night
For warmth instead of love, or wonder why
The sun has hidden so far out of sight.
But they will never know the other half:
When sudden bouts of spring will make me laugh.

Nightfall

The early night is dangerous, unless

You close your eyes and let it pass you by;

It pushes at the edges, where you guess,

Cut corners, obfuscate, let problems lie,

Ignore the details, or let them expand

Until the larger picture, never quite

As clear or obvious to understand,

Becomes obscured; that little bit of night

Wants you to answer everything. Take care,

Or it will drag you under, and erase

The boundaries that keep you sane, lay bare

Imagination's bones. I fear to face

Those darkest moments on my own; but then

If they're not faced, they'll just return again.

Indecision

I wonder what I ought to do today?

So many options I don't understand.

If I were competent in any way,

Perhaps I'd see the choices now at hand

As something other than a blurry mess

All intermingled, hard to tell apart;

But as it happens now, I must confess,

I can't pick out the details. I might start

By listing out the possibilities

I know already; but there aren't enough

To make a difference. It's like some disease

Infected me; why else is it so tough

To make decisions? But that's nothing new;

I never know what I'm supposed to do.

Sonnet Analysis: My Old Sonnets III

In honor of Rosh Hashanah, which it is as of nightfall today wherever you may be, I'm going to analyze another of my old sonnets: specifically one from 2005 entitled "Tashlik," named for a ceremony traditionally performed on Rosh Hashanah.

They said to us: go down to riversides
And coasts and shores; wherever water flows,
Go ye where the clear blue stream arose
Or where the dark brown river mouth resides.
Bring with you crumbs of every shape and size,
Made from the corn that 'round your city grows,
That you do reap though, not a one that sows
Among you. Do you this when summer dies.
Go to the water, watch it as it runs
Beneath the sky that mirrors back the blue.
Then look inside, take that your own soul shuns,
The sin, the evil that abides in you.
Now grasp the corn, in crumbled mealy buns,
And cast it out. The water shall renew.

Mistakes Were Made:
I should probably start out by mentioning in preemptive defense that this poem was written intentionally in an archaic style. That does not excuse it from using that style poorly, however. Having just written a post mentioning that "ye" is hard to get away with in modern poetry, here I am guilty of that very crime; and it does not, in fact, work, although it might if the rest of the poem were good enough to carry it. It is not. "Do you this when summer dies," while a good rhyme for "size," is a terrible inversion; or even more so, simply an artificial insertion of "you" into a line that does not need it. "Corn" for grain is archaic, British and unnecessary, since grain and bread are both single-syllable (and the tradition involves baked grains, ie bread products). It's probably best as well to avoid words like 'round, unless the poem is informal, because eliding syllables is either informal or obnoxious - or both. But all of this is beating around the horrible, obvious elephant in the room (which is so bad that I had to mix those stock phrases just to get at how terrible it is): the tragedy that is lines 6-8. "Made from the corn that 'round your city grows,/That you do reap though, not a one that sows/Among you" is basically scraping the bottom of the barrel of imagination. The first line is fine, excepting the corn issue that has already been discussed; it's the inability to come up with another rhyme for grows, and also keep the sentence in some semblance of proper English syntax that creates the monster. The sentence ends up both snarled and senseless, with a little additional hint of pointlessness (and the "though" in the middle of line 7 sums everything up by having literally no reason to be there). The fact that lines 5 and 8 are a different rhyme from lines 1 and 4 in what is clearly supposed to be an Italian sonnet is just icing on this badly made cake.


Not Too Shabby:
Well, the heart is in the right place. Ignoring the corn issue, I actually like the last four lines. "The sin, the evil that abides in you" is a good line, as it both captures what is meant and hits the rhyme and meter perfectly; so is "and cast it out. The water shall renew." Basically, for me, those two lines make the poem, along with "then look inside, take that your own soul shuns;" they hit the meaning of tashlik and they hit the purity of the sonnet meter and rhyme scheme, fitting well into the architecture of the rest of the poem. Too bad that architecture is so flawed.

Pacific

The world was made for afternoons like this

Where rainy skies surround the sun in gray;

The air is heavy with electric bliss,

Obscuring all the normal signs of day;

The drops that don't quite fall congeal around

Whatever creatures dare to stir outside;

They never even seem to reach the ground,

As if to hover was a point of pride;

Somehow the breath is crisper, less oppressed

In atmospheres that do not touch the sun;

It energizes everything with zest

To see the world picked out in shades of dun.

Though everyone adores a sky of blue

I much prefer a cloudy rendezvous.

Choice

Decisions don't come easily to me;

Opinions do, but whether I should act

On my own say-so is, depressingly,

A harder question than I'd wish. The tact

And care for others' feelings I was taught

When I was young have carried on so far

That choosing for myself is always fraught

With questions, which inevitably are

Unanswered, or unanswerable alone.

I'd ask for help, but that would obviate

The question being asked: if, on my own,

I ought to, or am capable to, state

Which way I will proceed, or what to do;

And so the choice is always up to you.

Sonnet Analysis: Longfellow I

As a poet not generally known for his sonnets, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow may seem to be an odd choice to begin the analysis of other poets' work besides my own on this blog. Yet the fact that Longfellow, renowned for poems like "The Song of Hiawatha," written in emphatically different meters and rhyme schemes (to the extent that he even had rhyme schemes), was also a writer of sonnets is, I think, indicative of a very important point about the sonnet: it used to be such a common, almost default, form that every poet tried his or her hand at sonneteering, and published them too. Nowadays, poets may (and most likely do) write sonnets, but the odds of a published poem being fourteen lines with meter and rhyme, whether published as a sonnet or not, are falling fast. Not coincidentally, a certain archaism of the sonnet form is obvious within Longfellow's poem, as well as his general poetic project, as we shall see below. You may notice that the analysis below is broken into different categories than the analysis of my old sonnets; this is because it seems impertinent to attack the poems of those whose minds I cannot read as vigorously as my own. Without further ado, here is Longfellow's sonnet "The Poets:"

O ye dead Poets, who are living still
Immortal in your verse, though life be fled,
And ye, O living Poets, who are dead
Though ye are living, if neglect can kill,
Tell me if in the darkest hours of ill,
With drops of anguish falling fast and red
From the sharp crown of thorns upon your head,
Ye were not glad your errand to fulfill?
Yes; for the gift and ministry of Song
Have something in them so divine and sweet,
It can assuage the bitterness of wrong;
Not in the clamor of the crowded street,
Not in the shouts and plaudits of the throng,
But in ourselves, are triumph and defeat.

Triumphs:
This poem is a perfect example of an Italian sonnet in English. The octave is nicely balanced and the rhymes are not forced; the sestet turns to answer the question of the octave and expound on the reasoning; the lines themselves are generally smooth and rhythmic. The counterpoise achieved between the living and dead poets is a treat to read, particularly as it threads itself through the fixed rhyme scheme of the octave. The simple "yes" beginning the sestet, and the immediate launch into the why behind that yes (and also what that yes means; it is actually ambiguous in context whether it is a yes to being glad or to not being glad) is a perfect turn.

Imperfections:
Since this is a nineteenth-century poem, and not a modern one, I will wait until the next section to comment on forms and phrases that feel archaic. Within the poem as it stands, I do feel there are a few minor weak points. The Christ reference in the crown of thorns feels a bit overdone, especially as it contrasts with the "neglect" which threatens the poets in line 4; which are they, neglected or persecuted? Similarly, to a small degree, the poem treads a very fine line between the immortality of verse in line 2 and ignoring the "throng" or the "street" in the final lines; how does the concept of an immortal poet articulate with the idea that a poet ought to be only concerned with what's within himself? But these are nitpicks, and I find very little even to nitpick in this poem.

Archaisms:
When was the last time you heard the vocative of the second person pronoun in English? Yep, there's good old "ye" (and I do mean old) sitting right there in the first line. And the third, fourth, and eighth. It even has its good friend "O" hanging about in the first two instances. You simply can't get away with those in modern English, even in poetry; Longfellow never knew how good he had it. And topping that off with the eighth line as a whole ("Ye were not glad your errand to fulfill?") is just murder to a modern ear. There's a poetic inversion there, swapping the complementary infinitive "to fulfill" and its object "your errand" and creating a mush of standard word order. It's great poetry; it has a long and venerable tradition behind it; and it's not going to work anymore. It sounds too alien to a modern audience; it will only fly if they think the poem older than it is, which is slightly better than "ye" and "O," which have a hard time doing their work even then. On the level of theme and superdictional expression, the Christological reference mentioned above and the general pat message of writing for yourself and not others are also a little off the current fashion. The rub is that they work so well here, especially the message, which is conveyed expertly and beautifully. So I guess the message from this commentary is that we've lost a lot of the tools out of the sonnet toolbox since Longfellow wrote; and also, that a poem can use those tools in beautiful ways even when it sounds a little foreign to our ears. So don't give up on those tools quite yet; but be extremely careful when using them. Not all of us (or perhaps I should say, none of us) are Henry Wadsworth Longfellow.

Power

A poem can't encapsulate the thought

Of millions pressed together, suffering,

Or in defiance of oppression bring

Forbidden words to those who would be taught;

It cannot raise up those who have been shot

And let them walk again, it cannot sing

For those whose mouths are silenced, or give wing

To birds whose flight is caged. It is not

A panacea; but it can bring out

The better parts of us, so that we all

Will be the people that we ought to be;

It can bring courage in the face of doubt,

And may remind us, that although we fall,

We must stand up so others can be free.

Waiting

A hundred years from now I will not be

Prepared to say what I must say, and so

I might as well just sigh and let it go,

Because it's easier than setting free

My inhibitions, which have clung to me

So long and so effectively. Although

When all is analyzed, I find I know

What I should say and how, I cannot see

A way to say it without fear of loss,

And I hate losing anything. Of course,

I might not lose, and if I do not try,

I cannot win; yet though I try to force

That thought into my mind, it cannot cross

My inhibitions; so I simply sigh.

Sonnet Analysis: My Old Sonnets II

Here we shall approach another one of my own old sonnets (as usual, a much easier task than criticizing another's work, and almost as useful for the demonstration of good practice) with a sonnet on a different theme, in face the most common and as far as we can tell first sonnet theme: love. This does not have a title, except I suppose for the first line:

Were th'ethereal made solid, flesh sublim'd,
This jaunty verse reset as sullen prose,
And leadfoot prose made meter, quickly rhym'd,
The granite rocks come blooming like the rose,
The growing tree converted into stone,
Bread stay'd unrisen, meats made to expand,
While pencils take pen's inkings for their own,
Replacing them with graphite near at hand,
Should towers fall and tunnels rise to height
While pigs ascend and eagles tread the ground,
Be beacons dark while shadows are alight
And deaths be lost as lives become newfound,
Though all these changes come, one must remain:
My love's already sunny in the rain.

Mistakes Were Made:
I think it's pretty clear here that the diction is one of the largest problems with this sonnet. Intentional archaisms like "rhym'd" for "rhymed" and "sublim'd" for "sublimed," which do not in fact change the pronunciation of the words in question, is acceptable if a little silly. Attempting, as in the first line here, to axe out an entire syllable for metrical purposes via archaism ("th'ethereal") is simply too much. If we swallow that choice, the line is actually not that bad, I think, but that's like saying that if we ignore the radioactivity, late 1980s Chernobyl was a lovely vacation spot. Describing the verse as "jaunty" (line 2) is an attempt to face down this absurdity directly, but a failure is a failure no matter how it is massaged. "Leadfoot" in line 3 is also a gaudy neologism, whose greatest virtue may be that horror over it might stun the mind for the upcoming travesty of an inserted syllable in line 4: what on earth could it mean for something, rocks or otherwise, to "come blooming like the rose"? Say "bloom like a rose" and get the extra two syllables somewhere else. "Graphite near at hand" is an awfully stretched-for rhyme for "expand." These are the larger issues, next to which things like eagles that actually do tread the ground or the slight awkwardness of "pencils take pen's [sic; should be pens'] inkings for their own" pale in comparison. The conceit here may be acceptable, but it is certainly set in a manner that gives it few advantages and many demerits. It seems unable to decide if it is really supposed to be imagined as arising from a lost sixteenth-century text or if it is modern. On top of all of that, the final line is rushed; it takes an awful stretch to realize "my love's already sunny in the rain" is not only "love is already sunny" but also intended as a contrast with all the new topsy-turvydom above as an oxymoronic constant topsy-turvydom of its own. As I say, it is rushed, and ends up stretching for what should be an easy transition.

Not Too Shabby:
Well, it might be easy, based on the above, to simply toss this poem in the garbage can in the stereotypical way of writers on TV shows, crumpling up the paper into a little ball so that it flies more easily. But I actually like this poem, for two primary reasons. One, I think the conceit is actually fine; the idea, that even if everything else in the world is suddenly turned on its head, this love is so absurd and so contrary to expectation (and, in a sense, also so all-encompassing) that despite the change it would remain as it is, is I think a good one, and I think the examples express it well (except for their own internal diction issues). Two, I think that the poem flows well. Individual words sadly cause hiccups, and there is an overall failing of word choice and appropriateness, but for all of that the verse sweeps on its merry way; the end-stopped lines and English rhyme scheme allow each example to slot in naturally, and the balanced antithesis inside the lines with paired examples (and between the lines of paired longer examples) emphasizes this virtue. The word lengths and emphases are well-balanced; unlike the final line, none of the individual examples themselves are rushed in or seem neglected (or overemphasized). It might be hard to revamp the diction while retaining that effect, and the effect may heighten the disappointment of the rushed final payoff, but the current poem is one in which the examples successfully build precisely because of their use of the formal structure as a scaffold with which to ascend to greater and greater heights. The poem never falls flat or seems haphazardly constructed in regard to its larger conceit, only as regards the smaller building blocks, the individual words, and that particular dance is an interesting one to see accomplished, or at least attempted (if you disagree with my weighing of the two components relative importance). I see this as a poem that succeeds despite of, rather than because of, the individual words that make it up.

Words, Words, Words

It ought to be so easy. Shouldn't it?
It's just a little motion of the lips,
A breath of air that lingers on the tips
Of tongues that are no different, not a bit,
From mine or yours. Why then should we just sit
In sudden silence which intensely grips
The room around us as the moment slips
Out of our grasp, and we at last emit
Almost unnoticed sighs because we each
Can see the thought escaping both our minds,
And as it passes, time speeds up again,
So we can watch it pass beyond our reach,
As opportunity swiftly unwinds,
And both of us are left to wonder: When?

Equinox

The softest whisper through the autumn trees
Might promise something darker on the way;
A single cloud above a sunlit day
When mixed with scintillations of the breeze,
Presage a distant echo of unease;
A lighter patch of grass when growing may
Suggest that what was green will turn to grey
And dying stalks; a touch of chill may freeze
Septembers otherwise delightful. Yet
To read the future into every storm
And seize the darkness every shadow keeps
Is asking for more trouble; suns will set
While deep Decembers huddle to be warm,
But in the darkness hidden summer sleeps.

Off Kilter

Flailing pentameters and tortured lines

That pull against their form and fight the sense

They ought to have, whose flawed designs

Conceal themselves, and seem so dense

That nothing can be gleaned from them; this sort

Of error slides so easily inside

Too-lengthy verse. But that which is too short

Will just as quickly find itself tongue-tied

By trying to incorporate too much,

And over-thickly stuff the verse with words

Which will not fit, and therefore tightly clutch

The syllables before them, making herds

That cannot be corralled. But what's worse

Is both of these - like this - just one verse.

Introduction to the Sonnet IV: Meter II

As previously discussed, sonnets are traditionally written in a consistent meter, most frequently iambic pentameter. But as any reader of poetry might notice, this is hardly the whole story concerning meter in sonnets. The expectation of regular meter can be exploited by the poet for substantial effect, both by altering the rhythm within a line and by inserting lines written in an unexpected meter into an otherwise regular poem.

The first category divides more specifically into two broad categories: the transposition of single feet within a line and the addition or removal of a single syllable from the line. We may find examples of both in William Wordsworth's sonnet Composed Upon Westminster Bridge, Sept. 3, 1803:

Earth has not anything to show more fair
Dull would he be of soul who could pass by
A sight so touching in its majesty:
This city now doth like a garment wear
The beauty of the morning: silent, bare,
Ships, towers, domes, theaters, and temples lie
Open unto the fields, and to the sky;
All bright and glittering in the smokeless air.
Never did sun more beautifully steep
In his first splendor valley, rock, or hill;
Ne'er saw I, never felt, a calm so deep!
The river glideth at his own sweet will:
Dear God! the very houses seem asleep;
And all that mighty heart is lying still!

The first foot of the first line can be scanned iambically - Earth has - but seems most naturally to fall into a trochee - Earth has. So too the second line's "Dull would he be" can scan either iambically or with an initial trochee, depending on the choice of emphasis. But in the sixth line the reader has no choice: it cannot be a pure line of iambic pentameter if the words are not to be strained to their breaking point. "Ships, towers, domes" can be purely iambic or begin with a spondee - to me the latter seems more natural - but "theaters" absolute refuses to have its emphasis on the middle syllable as required by the iambic rhythm. It must have its emphasis on the first syllable - "theatres." And so the iambic rhythm breaks for a moment.

Equally important, we must realize that the line has, in fact, eleven syllables. There is an important stylistic note relating to iambic pentameter that should be mentioned here: a line of otherwise perfect iambic pentameter that ends with an extra unstressed syllable is called a "feminine ending," and is a perfectly usual poetic technique to avoid straining a word that ends with an unstressed syllable (like, say, "ending"). But Wordsworth's line does not have its extra syllable at the end in an unstressed position; the last four syllables of the line must naturally be "and temples lie," with the stress at the end where it would be expected at the end of the line. The extra syllable comes rather in the middle of the line, just after the moment we have just looked at where "theatres" bucks the rhythm. The last syllable of "theatres" is extraneous - it is not emphasized, and an attempt to use it as the first syllable of an iamb with the "and" throws the last three syllables ("temples lie") into a confusion of having too many stresses in too little space (a foot cannot have more than one stressed syllable, nor can a stressed syllable alone make up a foot). Rather, we must take "theatres" as the dactyl it is, and recognize a dactylic substitution into this otherwise iambic line (and poem). Such a substitution plays on the expectation of iambic rhythm established by the rest of the poem, and by the sonnet form in general, to draw attention to the line in which it appears and the word(s) it includes. In this case, at a basic level at least, inserting a dactyl into the line listing everything that lies silent, bare, and open emphasizes two things: first the sheer number of things lying so (so many that it overflows out of the verse!) and second that even the theaters, places of crowds and noise, are silent and bare. The bucking of the meter is an effective tool for drawing attention to such moments in the text.

A similar, if more limited, effect is also brought about by the trochaic substitution at the start of the ninth line, where"Never" cannot be forced into an iambic rhythm and must be instead a trochee. It draws attention to the word, and thereby to the uniqueness of the moment experienced by the poet. This effect is less pronounced, not only because trochaic substitutions (particularly at the beginning of lines) are more common than dactylic, but also because the shift in stress is not accompanied by the introduction of an additional extraneous syllable.

The effect of these substitutions need not be simply to draw attention to the word in question, nor do I mean to imply that this must be the only effect; there are rhythmic reasons, such as echoing a hiccup in the world of the poem with a halting in its verse, and also other stylistic reasons, such as a distaste for overprecise regularity, for substituting irregular feet into a line of iambic pentameter (or indeed into any regular line). The simple analysis presented here is intended merely to introduce the idea that irregularity within regular verse can be a significant tool in the composition of the sonnet.

As mentioned above, there are also more extreme changes of verse form that can occur within a sonnet, although they are much less common. An example of such a change (accompanied by many of the irregularities discussed above as well) can be found in Caroline Norton's sonnet "Like an enfranchised bird who wildly springs" (titled, as many poems are, after its first line):

Like an enfranchised bird who wildly springs,
With a keen sparkle in his glancing eye
And a strong effort in his quivering wings,
Up to the blue vault of the happy sky,-
So my enamored heart, so long thy own,
At length from Love's imprisonment set free,
Goes forth into the open world alone,
Glad and exulting in its liberty:
But like that helpless bird, (confined so long,
His weary wings have lost all power to soar,)
Who soon forgets to trill his joyous song,
And, feebly fluttering, sinks to earth once more,-
So, from its former bonds released in vain,
My heart still feels the weight of that remembered chain.


Passing over the many metrical irregularities in what can still be identified as iambic pentameter in the first thirteen lines (which do marvelous work assisting in the conjuring of the image of the bird struggling to fly), I would draw attention to the last line, which has twelve iambic syllables: iambic hexameter, or an Alexandrine line. Given its regularity, this is not a case of simply inserting an extra couple of syllables into a line of pentameter; it is a deliberate choice to change meter. And it has its effect, not least by adding metrical weight to the "weight of that remembered chain." This sort of extreme metrical change is, as mentioned above, unusual, but it is not out of the question. What maintains this poem's position within the metrical tradition of the sonnet is that the alterations rely on the assumption of regularity that the sonnet provides; only against the backdrop of a form that is usually and traditionally regular do the irregularities have significance; or at least their significance is heightened by that backdrop. The sonnet does not have to be completely regular; but a poem must interact with the implied regularity of the form or else it starts to leave the realm of the sonnet and become simply another form of fourteen line poem.

Inches

An inch or two, and it might be again

What it has been before; it will not be.

You will not slide yourself in next to me,

And I cannot move closer, even when

The looks that we exchange would say amen

And bless the motion that made unity

Out of our separation. I can see

A little of my thought in you; but then

I always could, and never knew if I

Imagined it. A little test would show,

But I lack courage, and we both lack will

To make the effort. So I turn and go

And looking back, I'll always wonder why

We both looked at that moment and stood still.

Comfort

I used to wander warily down streets
Whose names I could not read; the streetlights dimmed
With every step I took, and my heartbeats
Grew louder in my ears; the moon was rimmed
With almost hidden stars, which seemed to shrink
As if in fear of what might come to light
Were they to shine their brightest. Every blink,
Every momentary shifting of my sight
Would promise something lurking in the dark
Protected by the corner of my eye.
As now I sit at home, I miss the stark
Precision of those days; I often sigh
And wonder where they went. But I should know.
They left because I wanted them to go.

Sonnet Analysis: My Old Sonnets I

Let us start out the analysis side of this blog with something simple, at least in the simple-minded sense: one of my own older sonnets. First I'll post the sonnet, and then some analysis of what mistakes I made, and, if I'm lucky, anything I think went right (and why). Obviously when analyzing my own sonnets I will be emphasizing the mistakes more heavily than what went right; the opposite will be true when these analyses tackle other poets' work. We will start with a sonnet I have actually revised multiple times, but in its first form: this is War.

The thunder isn't thunder anymore
Now that the eyes have seen the dreadful guns
That threaten even now to end the war
By bringing down the walls. A child runs
Through streets that echo with the bugle's call.
He's screaming something, but nobody cares
For now the men are marching to the wall
In file, rank by rank, the endless pairs
Of booted feet make thunder of their own
To answer those without. The shrilling fife
And pounding drum beat down the panicked moan
Of poor civilians anxious for their life.
Yet naught hears he, the soldier with his pack,
But his own darling's whisper. Please come back.


Mistakes Were Made:
The most excruciating moment here is the end of line 12, where "their life," a forced rhyme with "fife," should really be lives - but fife's plural is fifes, not fives. There are also some extremely forced archaisms in this poem: "naught hears he" (line 13) is the worst, but "those without" (line 10) is hardly modern standard English either. It is generally better to avoid twisting syntax to fit the meter (as in "naught hears he") unless you happen to live in the 16th century, and similarly it is almost always better, unless a deliberate sense of antiquity is intended, to keep the word choice under control and contemporary to your own time. That doesn't mean only using simple words, but it does mean avoiding words (or meanings of words with multiple possible meanings) that have fallen substantially out of favor and have an archaic flavor. There are also a couple of moments - "his own darling's whisper" (line 14) and even "and pounding drum" (line 11) - where the poem seems to reach for extra syllables that end up seeming like wastes; we do not need to know it's his "own" darling, or that there are drums as well as fifes, except for the fact that the meter and form required additional syllables in those positions. Every syllable should help the poem, and it's arguable that these are merely placeholders.

Not Too Shabby:
I enjoy the effect of the enjambment after lines 1 and 4; there is a bit of suspense in each case about what exactly is meant, which is heightened in both cases by the ending of the line before the sense has run out. The substantial regularity of the meter reflects the marching of booted feet and the thunder of the cannon fairly well, and the one irregularity ("but nobody cares") creates a catch in the meter exactly where the sense also has a little hiccup - at the same moment we wonder why no one cares about the screaming child, we hit the irregularity in the verse, and as the explanation comes, so too the regularity reasserts itself in the verse. I'm also a fan of the sentiment of the last couplet, even though (as discussed above), its execution leaves something to be desired.

Books

They sit in jumbles on my bedroom floor,
And for their sake I never dim the light;
To finish one I'd sit up half the night
Forever turning over just one more
Exciting page; I'd run and lock the door,
And then rush back, sure that nobody might
Disturb my reverie, invade my sight,
Or ask me what I had been reading for.
My books demand no purpose, need no end,
Are self-sufficient in themselves for me;
In them I find an ever-present friend,
And who could ever doubt their constancy?
If you would aid my happiness, then send
Another book, and give me privacy.

Introduction to the Sonnet III: Rhyme

Sonnets rhyme. There are those benighted souls who disagree, but since this is my blog, and the weight of history is largely on my side, we can ignore them for the moment. Sonnets rhyme, and what is more, they rhyme in predictable ways; a sonnet will not have its first line remain unrhymed until the last line, for instance. With that said, sonnets do not have to adhere to a single rhyme scheme; and here I will present some of the most common and most interesting rhyme schemes available for the sonnet.

Probably the most familiar sonnet rhyme scheme is the English, or Shakespearean, sonnet. The rhyme scheme for this type of sonnet is usually given as ABABCDCDEFEFGG, where each letter represents a different rhyme sound. This is not strictly accurate, although the overall effect given of having three quatrains of alternating rhyme and a final couplet is correct. Although many English sonnets do have seven different rhyme sounds, a sonnet with fewer rhyme sounds still following the overall pattern is also acceptable: ABABCDCDEAEACC is a perfectly good English sonnet rhyme scheme for example, even if a couple of the rhymes are repeated. AAAA (or the like) is discouraged, however, as alternation of rhyme is an important part of the English sonnet. The last couplet often, but not always, undercuts or somehow reverses the effect of what has been built up in the previous twelve lines. This can be a nice effect, but is not necessary.

Shakespeare's sonnets (unsurprisingly, given the name) tend to follow this pattern, as do many, many others. As an example, however, I will give a sonnet by Shakespeare's contemporary, Michael Drayton, from his sonnet sequence "Idea," sonnet 61:

Since there's no help, come, let us kiss and part;

Nay, I have done, you get no more of me,

And I am glad, yea, glad with all my heart

That thus so cleanly I myself can free.

Shake hands forever, cancel all our vows,

And when we meet at any time again,

Be it not seen in either of our brows

That we one jot of former love retain.

Now, at the last gasp of Love's latest breath,

When, his pulse failing, Passion speechless lies,

When Faith is kneeling by his bed of death,

And Innocence is closing up his eyes,

Now if thou wouldst, when all have given him over

From death to life thou mightst yet him recover.

The other most common sonnet rhyme scheme is the Italian, or Petrarchan, sonnet, which is the form used by Francesco Petrarca, or Petrarch, the original popularizer of the sonnet form in Italian. This form is divided not into quatrains with a final couplet, but into two halves, an "octave" of the first eight lines and a "sestet" of the last six. The octave always has the rhyme scheme ABBAABBA; the rhyme scheme in the sestet is more flexible, although it never includes the A or B rhyme sound. The most common sestet rhyme scheme are CDCDCD and CDECDE, but almost anything goes so long as there are no unrhymed lines. Traditionally the point of division between the octave and sestet marks a turn, a change in the poem's approach usually associated with a re-examination or rejection of the idea presented in the octave.

Petrarch's poems are in Italian; since I would prefer to give examples in English, here is a poem by Christina Rossetti, a Victorian poet, entitled "Remember." Her rhyme scheme is ABBAABBACDDECE.

Remember me when I am gone away,

Gone far away into the silent land;

When you can no more hold me by the hand,

Nor I half-turn to go yet, turning, stay.

Remember me when no more, day by day,

You tell me of our future that you planned:

Only remember me; you understand

It will be late to counsel then, or pray.

Yet if you should forget me for a while

And afterwards remember, do not grieve:

For if the darkness and corruption leave

A vestige of the thoughts that I once had,

Better by far you should forget and smile

Than that you should remember and be sad.

There are also other rhyme schemes that can be used in a sonnet, as many as can be imagined so long as every line is rhymed and there is not so much space between the rhymed lines that the existence of the previous line is forgotten (ABCBCDEDEFGFGA might be hard to hold together, for instance). I will give only one example of another rhyme scheme, Percy Bysshe Shelley's great "Ozymandias." His rhyme scheme is ABABACDCEDEFEF.

I met a traveller from an antique land

Who said: Two vast and trunkless legs of stone

Stand in the desert...Near them, on the sand,

Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown,

And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,

Tell that its sculptor well those passion read

Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,

The hand that mocked them and the heart that fed:

And on the pedestal these words appear:

"My name is Ozymandias, king of kings:

Look on my works, ye mighty, and despair!"

Nothing beside remains. Round the decay

Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare,

The lone and level sands stretch far away.

Introduction to the Sonnet II: Meter

Sonnets are all written in some distinctive meter; this means that every line has (roughly) the same number of stressed and unstressed syllables in (roughly) the same order. To be more specific, each line has, or is expected to have, the same number of the same feet in the same order as every other line.

A line of poetic verse is divided into feet, patterns of stressed and unstressed syllables in a specific order. The most common feet are iambic (unstressed stressed: perhaps), trochaic (stressed unstressed: maybe), dactylic (stressed unstressed unstressed: carefully), anapestic (unstressed unstressed stressed: understand), and spondaic (stressed stressed: baseball). These feet can stretch over multiple words, and the division between feet can come in the middle of a word: Shakespeare's famous line "But soft what light through yonder window breaks" is iambic and it scans (breaks down into feet) as follows:

But soft/what light/through yon/der win/dow breaks.

In this case, both yonder and window are divided over two feet, and every foot has more than one word in it.

Meters do not have to consist of only one foot; the Greeks and Romans were very fond of meters that mixed dactylic and spondaic feet for instance. English verse tends to use meters that do not mix feet, but that is by no means a hard and fast rule. When you do use single-foot meters, however, they are properly named by the type of foot (say, iambic) and the number of those feet in the line, expressed with a Latin prefix to the word meter (say, pentameter for a five-foot line). So the line of Shakespeare we scanned above was iambic pentameter, since it had ten syllables, making five iambic feet.

Most English sonnets are and have been written in iambic pentameter. Of course, a lot of English poetry over the ages has been written in iambic pentameter, so this is hardly surprising. But sonnets do not have to be in iambic pentameter; they can be written in any meter. I am not particularly familiar with any that have been written in non-iambic meter, but here is an example of one of Shakespeare's sonnets, Sonnet 145, written in iambic tetrameter instead of pentameter:

Those lips that love's own hand did make

Breathed forth the sound that said "I hate"

To me that languished for her sake.

But when she saw my woeful state

Straight in her heart did mercy come,

Chiding that tongue that ever sweet

Was used in giving gentle doom,

And taught it thus anew to greet:

"I hate" she altered with an end

That followed it as gentle day

Doth follow night, who like a fiend

From heaven to hell is flown away.

"I hate" from hate away she threw

And saved my life, saying "not you."

Introduction to the Sonnet I: Definition

Before diving into either the details of the sonnet as a form or the production of new sonnets, it is probably a good idea to have some handle on what a sonnet is.

At the most basic level, a sonnet is a poem consisting of fourteen lines.

Some critics would prefer to leave it at that: a sonnet is a fourteen-line poem, and any fourteen-line poem can be called a sonnet. But any historical examination from the 14th century on would reveal that sonnets share more than this single characteristic. The most obvious addition characteristics are rhyme and meter. A sonnet has some sort of rhyme scheme in which every line of the sonnet rhymes with at least one other line (see below), and all the lines are of the same length, in the same meter (see below). So we can add to our definition.

A sonnet is a poem consisting of fourteen rhymed lines in a consistent meter.

To a large extent, that completes our definition of the sonnet; if you have a poem that is fourteen lines long, with a recognizable rhyme scheme and a single consistent meter, you have a sonnet. Most sonnets have more in common than that, especially in English, but those are issues for another post.