On Structure and Restriction

Writing a sonnet is (fundamentally, at least for me) about creation within structure. It is about allowing the constraints and requirements of the form to shape but not dictate the work that you are doing and the expression of your ideas. It is about finding the parts of an idea that can be constructed into the sonnet form. In a sense then, any poem can be or could be recast as a sonnet if the ideas and emotions contained within it can be reforged.

This is the reason that I hold so firmly to my belief in certain restrictions on the sonnet. I believe that sonnets should have 14 lines. I believe that sonnets must rhyme. I believe that sonnets must have meter. It is of course possible to think that some of these restrictions can be relaxed or that some of them could be tightened. The name of this blog of course suggests iambic pentameter or at the very least some 10 syllable line in a 14 line poem to make 140 syllables. And yet many of the sonnets on this blog use iambic tetrameter and I have not renamed the blog to 112syllables. similarly there are poems on this blog that use extremely unusual rhyme schemes, though I believe there are no unrhymed sonnets on the blog. 

The point for me is that there needs to be a certain level of restriction; and for me the quantity of lines, the consistency of meter, with (historically) the one exception of the final couplet, and the use of a consistent rhyme scheme where every line has a rhyme somewhere in the poem are those restrictions. I cannot and do not object to others viewing this differently, but I think it is relevant to considering the creative process of writing a sonnet to factor in the restrictions that should be placed on it. I find that this also permits certain types of analysis based on the choice of rhyme scheme and meter and their interaction with the 14 line structure. 

There are also of course sonnet traditions. Thus a poem that is or is adjacent to a Petrarchan sonnet has different restrictions and should be analyzed differently than one that approaches the Shakespearean sonnet tradition or the Spenserian or that creates its own rhyme structure entirely. The turn, for instance, is a common element in sonnets but it's placement, effect, and connection to the rest of the poem are elements that can be moved around depending on the tradition or the invention of the author. but operating within the general restriction of the sonnet or the more specific restriction of a son of tradition (for me) brings meaning both to the creation and the analysis of the sonnet.

On Turns

It occurred to me today, as I was teaching my class about sonnets, that a key factor in a successful sonnet is the use of the turn. The turn is a part of a sonnet I have not yet written about here in any depth, but it is intimately bound up in the content, form, and meaning of a sonnet. The turn(s) is (are) where the sonnet differentiates itself from other forms, because the turn is where the movement happens.

A sonnet is not a good sonnet unless it takes advantage of the opportunity that every sonnet rhyme scheme provides for a turn: a change from setting up or describing a situation to developing that situation. I use "developing" intentionally, as there are many ways to develop a situation: a reversal, a continuation, an explanation, a narrowing of focus, a broadening of focus, etc. What is crucial here is that something changes: that the sonnet is not static, but progressive.

The standard place for a turn is where the rhyme scheme changes. This can be a big bold change like in a traditional Petrarchan or Italian sonnet (ABBAABBA/CDECDE or CDCDCD with the turn at the end of the AB section). It can be a last-minute whiplash like in a traditional Shakespearean or English sonnet (ABABCDCDEFEF/GG with a turn before the couplet). There can be a series of smaller turns, as in the same form (ABAB/CDCD/EFEF/GG with turns after each change in rhyme). And I find that having this alignment between rhyme and turn is actually a good sign of a well-crafted sonnet: there is no ironclad rule that says a sonnet cannot have its turn where there isn't a change in rhyme, but doing so allows the rhyme scheme to pull double duty. This can apply to other elements as well: metrical substitutions or changes, for instance, can also be a turn's best friend.

What I wanted to focus on here is that the turn often makes less traditional rhyme schemes more interesting. Take, for example, a Spenserian sonnet (ABABBCBCCDCDEE). This has quatrains like a Shakespearean sonnet, but the rhyme scheme links across them by the reuse of the same rhyme, creating couplets. This means that a Spenserian sonnet flows together until the climactic EE rhyme at the end, offering the potential for an extremely potent couplet turn, even more powerful than in a Shakespearean sonnet. A similar effect appears in Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey's early sonnet "The soote season," which has the unusual rhyme scheme ABABABABABABCC. The sense of motion is different than in the Spenserian rhyme scheme, but the core element of heavily emphasizing the couplet turn remains, if anything made stronger by the use of only one rhyme pair before the turn and by refusing all couplets before the end as well.

A different but equally potent effect can come in poems with multiple turns, as in the 4/4/4/2 Shakespearean example but also in other forms as well. Sir Thomas Wyatt's "Whoso list to hunt," another early sonnet in English, finds a hybrid form derived from Petrarch with an ABBAABBACDCDEE rhyme scheme. This provides for two turns: as in Petrarch, between AB and CD rhyme schemes, but also between the CD and the final EE couplet. Petrarch's own poem on which this is based (Sonnet 190) does a softer version of this by having a mini-turn in the middle of the sestet between the CDE and CDE rhyme pairs. This is an advantage of the CDECDE ending to a Petrarchan sonnet (as opposed to CDCDCD) in that the two repetitions of the three-line CDE unit is more congenial to this kind of mini-turn than the three repetitions of a two-line CD unit. It's not that a turn can't be two lines (see: every couplet turn ever) but rather that the CD units would require an additional turn (between each pair), which is harder to achieve.

There is no reason, of course, why this turning element in the sonnet should be limited to traditional rhyme schemes (though as I hope the above shows, "traditional" covers a wide range already). Shelly's "Ozymandias" is ABABACDCEDEFEF, a decidedly untraditional scheme, and main two turns come exactly where you'd expect: at the hiccup in the rhyme, the E ("And on the pedestal these words appear") and at the final turn to the F rhyme ("Nothing beside remains. Round the decay"). Changes in rhyme can overlap with turns wherever they are found. Want to write a sonnet with seven different rhymes and put a turn every time you switch? More power to you (it's going to be hard though). Want to put your couplet at the start and then run four quatrains of turns after it? Enjoy! The central idea though, remains: a good sonnet has interesting turn(s), where the ideas shift and the poem moves, and those turn(s) should line up with the changing rhyme. This is a classic example of how craft meets meaning, and of how the tools of the sonnet can contribute to the forms' poetic effects.

Lin-Manuel Miranda's Sonnet at the Tony Awards

The sonnet just got a boost in the news in the reporting of this year's Tony Awards, as Lin-Manuel Miranda, the brilliant author of Hamilton: An American Musical, recited one in accepting his Tony for composing the musical. This poem has been published with a couple of different line divisions, none of which (that I've yet seen) make it a sonnet--but I think there is a set of line divisions that would make it one.

CNN has Miranda's 'sonnet' without line divisions at all

"We chase the melodies that seem to find us until they're finished songs and start to play when senseless acts of tragedy remind us that nothing here is promised, not one day. This show is proof that history remembers. We live through times when hate and fear seem stronger. We rise and fall, and light from dying embers, remembrances that hope and love last longer and love is love is love is love is love is love is love is love cannot be killed or swept aside. As sacred as a symphony Eliza tells her story. Now fill the world with music, love and pride. And thank you so much for this." 

(From http://www.cnn.com/2016/06/13/entertainment/lin-manuel-miranda-sonnet-hamilton-orlando/)

This is probably appropriate for Miranda's well-known spoken-word, hip-hop origins, but it's not a sonnet. Sonnets have lines, meter, and rhyme. And of course they include the "thank you so much for this," which refers to the Tony award but probably isn't intended as part of the poem.

Vanity Fair has it as, basically, a ballad (four quatrains), although they don't emphasize the quatrain divisions.

My wife’s the reason anything gets done

She nudges me towards promise by degrees

She is a perfect symphony of one,

Our son is her most beautiful reprise

We chase the melodies that seem to find us

Until they’re finished songs and start to play

When senseless acts of tragedy remind us

That nothing here is promised, not one day

This show is proof that history remembers

We live through times when hate and fear seem stronger

We rise and fall and light from dying embers

Remembrances that hope and love lasts long

And love is love is love is love is love is love is love is love is love

Cannot be killed or swept aside,

I sing Vanessa’s symphony, Eliza tells her story

Now fill the world with music love and pride

(From http://www.vanityfair.com/culture/2016/06/lin-manuel-miranda-tony-speech)

This isn't a sonnet because a) sonnets have 14 lines, b) sonnets are consistently rhymed, and c) it's a ballad. Ballads aren't sonnets; different lyric forms exist for different reasons and uses, and it's not helpful to conflate them. There's nothing wrong with Miranda's poem as a ballad (except that he called it a sonnet). This was how I first encountered the poem set, and it has a strong appeal--partly because the lines end up the same length or roughly so throughout. But it's not a sonnet, which is a problem given that Miranda told us it's a sonnet.

The NY Times has it as follows:

My wife’s the reason anything gets done

She nudges me towards promise by degrees

She is a perfect symphony of one

Our son is her most beautiful reprise.

We chase the melodies that seem to find us

Until they’re finished songs and start to play

When senseless acts of tragedy remind us

That nothing here is promised, not one day.

This show is proof that history remembers

We lived through times when hate and fear seemed stronger;

We rise and fall and light from dying embers, remembrances that hope and love last longer

And love is love is love is love is love is love is love is love cannot be killed or swept aside.

I sing Vanessa’s symphony, Eliza tells her story

Now fill the world with music, love and pride.

(From http://www.nytimes.com/2016/06/13/theater/lin-manuel-mirandas-sonnet-from-the-tony-awards.html)

This is not a sonnet; they've made it 14 lines, but they wrecked the rhyme scheme and the line lengths end up really weird and inconsistent. Nice try, but it's not quite there.

EW reports the line divisions very oddly, dividing some lines with a virgule (/) and some with actual line breaks:

My wife’s the reason anything gets done/ She nudges me towards promise by degrees / She is a perfect symphony of one/ Our son is her most beautiful reprise.

We chase the melodies that seem to find us until they’re finished songs and start to play/ When senseless acts of tragedy remind us that nothing here is promised, not one day.

This show is proof that history remembers/ We live through times when hate and fear seem stronger/ We rise and fall and light from dying embers remembrance that hope and love last forever. 

Love is love is love is love is love is love is love is love cannot be killed or swept aside/ I sing Vanessa’s symphony. Eliza tells her story. [we] fill the world with music, love, and pride.

(From http://www.ew.com/article/2016/06/12/tony-awards-2016-lin-manuel-miranda-sonnet-orlando, italics removed) 

This is almost there, but like the NY Times version, it too ends up mucking up the rhyme scheme (and actually ending up as a thirteen-line poem) because of what looks like a missed line division in the third from last line.

So what do I think Miranda's sonnet should look like? This:

My wife’s the reason anything gets done

She nudges me towards promise by degrees

She is a perfect symphony of one

Our son is her most beautiful reprise.

We chase the melodies that seem to find us

Until they’re finished songs and start to play

When senseless acts of tragedy remind us

That nothing here is promised, not one day.

This show is proof that history remembers

We lived through times when hate and fear seemed stronger;

We rise and fall and light from dying embers, 
Remembrances that hope and love last longer

And love is love is love is love is love is love is love is love cannot be killed or swept aside.

I sing Vanessa’s symphony, Eliza tells her story. Now fill the world with music, love and pride.

 Now this is a sonnet! 14 lines, rhyme scheme, and meter. The meter changes in the last two lines of the sonnet, but this is not unprecedented: Sir Philip Sidney's great sixteenth-century sonnet sequence, Astrophil and Stella, frequently moves from iambic pentameter in the first twelve lines to hexameter in the final couplet. Miranda's move is more dramatic, into duodecameter (twenty-four syllables a line, twice as many as Sidney's twelve-syllable hexameter), but it fits his aggressively innovative and over-crammed poetic style. The strictest form of the definitions I've introduced in my Introduction to the Sonnet (beginning here) would exclude it for the meter change, but as I've noted before in different contexts, as long as the poem builds up an expectation of consistent meter, the rhetorical effect of a sudden change towards the end can be very effective while remaining within the tradition of the sonnet.

Why does this matter? I'm sure, to many people, it simply doesn't. Lin-Manuel Miranda called it a sonnet, so it's a sonnet. But I believe that there is a reason we don't just call all poems, or even all short lyric poems, sonnets. There is a value to having standards and constraints within--and against--which to work. Writing a sonnet is different than writing a ballad, than writing an ode, than writing anything other than a sonnet, because of its particular constraints, its particular history, and its particular rules. In Lin-Manuel Miranda's sonnet (once properly set as a sonnet) we can see the particular ways in which he plays with those rules: by keeping fairly strictly to the iambic pentameter mode in the first twelve lines, the powerful expansion of the meter in the final couplet (and especially the moving "Love is love..." half-line, which begins the metrical change, going far beyond the pentameter restriction all on its own) is substantially heightened. Compare the Vanity Fair setting of the poem as a near-ballad with the sonnet setting above, and you will see that the final two lines of the sonnet are remarkable for their vitality and power in a substantially different way than the final quatrain of the ballad. This power comes not just from the words of Miranda's poem, but also from its context. Alexander Hamilton, the subject of Hamilton, was particularly known for writing "Non-Stop" (in the title of the first-act finale) and so the overstuffed last two lines are not just moving in their content, but in their Hamiltonian nature. The strong caesuras in these lines (after the last "love" and after the penultimate period, respectively) are what clearly suggested to the Vanity Fair editors that these should be line breaks, but both come more than halfway through their respective lines, which is a signal to us that they are in fact caesuras--and that this is in fact a sonnet.

A Note on Feminine Rhymes and John Fletcher

It has been quite a while since I sullied this blog with something other than a poem, but the itch has come again and will not be denied. In today's edition, I will ponder an aspect of rhyme that I have come to reconsider since this blog began: the feminine rhyme in the style of John Fletcher.

For those of you who are looking at the page very blankly, John Fletcher is a playwright - or was a playwright, as far as I am aware he is dead, buried, and gone, sans Zombie Fletcher, though that would be cool but I digress - from the late Elizabethan, Jacobean, and even Caroline periods of the English Renaissance. He was a major force in his day, especially in collaboration with Francis Beaumont (so much so that after Fletcher's death {he outlived Beaumont} a large number of his solo works were bundled into a Beaumont and Fletcher joint folio), Philip Massinger, and William Shakespeare, among others. He is supposed to have had a hand in many of Shakespeare's later works, including the lost Cardenio, but his reputation has faded with the years as the kind of showy, mixed genre theater he primarily wrote has waned in popularity and critical acclaim.

For those of you looking a little less blankly, or who just read that, Fletcher had a somewhat distinctive writing style, characterized for our purpose by a particular verbal tic: the tendency towards feminine rhyme (or at least feminine endings of lines) with a monosyllablic word at the end of the line. That is, "I am a poet though I did not know it": 11 syllables, iambic, and therefore with the stress on the penultimate rather than the ultimate syllable, despite the last syllable being a word in and of itself.

Now, as far as I know Fletcher published no sonnets (he was big a little after the late 1500s sonnet craze) but that does not in any way reduce how associated he is with that style. I have no doubt he would have used it in sonnets had he published them, and the question still remains of what to do about the style within the sonnet. Are these rhymes useful or appropriate to the sonnet?

I have for years disliked this choice and considered it inartistic and ugly, especially in rhyme (I have fewer reservations about blank verse in the style, though I still try to avoid it). This is because I have always felt that rhyme should use new words each time as much as possible (I am not of the Homer Simpson bowling episode position that rhyming Homer and homer deserves applause), and this style results in rhymes like "know it" and "blow it" which use the same rhyme word at the end. I am less troubled by "poet" and "know it," assuming your dialect makes it a true and not slant rhyme, because they are different words.

However, recently I have come to a greater comfort with this style, as I have reasoned that certain words are almost unrhymeable without it, as they have difficult stress patterns to match or complicated internal assonance or consonance. Also, I have had to confront the fact that my idea that the restrictions on form should be pared down to the minimum necessary in order to highlight the chosen restrictions more brilliantly conflicts with this prejudice. As such, I am now much more open to this style, which I hope in the fullness of time will be a good thing, artistically and critically.

On Spenserian Form

There is one more type of standard stanza that I have neglected to mention, an oversight which I will here rectify. This is another English form, known as the Spenserian sonnet from its association with the sixteenth-century poet Edmund Spenser. It consists of a set of three quatrains and a couplet, much like a Shakespearean sonnet, but with a specific set of rhymes that overlap between quatrains. Specifically, the sonnet has a rhyme scheme ababbcbccdcdee: the second rhyme in the previous quatrain becomes the first in the new one. This allows for substantially more couplets within the overall structure, while retaining the flexibility of alternating rhyme as well.

The effect of this rhyme scheme is, broadly speaking, to tie the quatrains together more tightly and place (even) more emphasis on the division of twelve and two rather than the Petrarchan eight and six. Where a Shakespeare sonnet has three clear rhyme divisions (after each quatrain), the Spenserian has only one, after the last quatrain; in this, and in its number of rhyme sounds, it resembles the Petrarchan sonnet, but the placement of the turn is substantially altered. The Petrarchan form permits an extended discourse in the sestet concerning the situation set up in the octave; the Shakespearean allows incredible flexibility in where a turn can come; the Spenserian demands, insists, requires that there be a turn at line thirteen - or if there is not, it demands explanation (it is crucial to recall that poems can create effects by pushing against, as well as going along with, the conventions associated with the form). In either case, there is a magnifying glass placed on that section of the poem - as well as an expectation, again to be played with if desired, that the three quatrains will meld together. The intricate interlacing of those quatrains can produce beautiful effects; and it can also be used to create a heightened sense of disharmony if the enfolding rhymes are thrown into contrast with discontinuous thought. Scorn not the Spenserian sonnet, for it has hidden depths.

Parallel Poetry Demonstration

So occasionally a line arrives in my head, only to be followed quickly by another line formed almost exactly on the same lines (usually because I somehow temporarily forget the first and recreate it inexactly). Sometimes I like only one, sometimes neither, sometimes both. But I thought it might be interesting to create poems off of the two that just occurred to me, commenting as I go and showing (possibly) how slight initial differences in rhythm or diction can lead to different poems, as well as how I write a sonnet.

First Lines:
My poetry is parenthetical

My poems are all parenthetical

These are clearly almost the same line. The differences lie in rhythm - the first flows faster because there are fewer words that hit the stresses more firmly, while the second has that "all" that wants stress it can't have - and diction, where "poetry" implies the generality and "poems...all" emphasizes the discrete products.

Second Lines:
My poetry is parenthetical;
It hides inside the corners of my life

My poems are all parenthetical;
They hide inside the corners of my life

So we again have a singular/plural distinction: one is giving us a sense of immanence, with poetry hiding everywhere, the other of secrecy, with individual poems waiting to be discovered, or hoping not to be.

Now we speed up.

Octave:
My poetry is parenthetical;
It hides inside the corners of my life.
If I were settled, with a loving wife
And children, I think it is possible
I would not write it. My rhetorical
Flourishes exist to mirror strife
And flicker on the edges of a knife,
Not in a happy home, which is too full

My poems are all parenthetical;
They hide inside the corners of my life.
If I were settled with a loving wife
And children, I think it is possible
I would not write them. I would be too full
Of other thoughts, for happiness is rife
With great distractions, and it lacks the strife
That opens space for poems. As I mull

So first: yes, I pronounce all the A rhymes the same way. I was as surprised as you.

Now we really see the difference between the poems. While I will concede I could force either octave onto either opening, I feel these differences flowed naturally from the differences in the openings. "Poetry," which had a faster flow and a sense of immanent, immaterial poetry, slides easily into general thoughts about not writing "it" and about the "rhetorical/flourishes" that make up my poetry. It wants to talk generally, and talk about how I write, the characteristics of my "poetry." And it does so with only one sentence break, smoothly. "Poems" is jerkier, with an additional sentence break, and it takes a different tack. It is not as interested in broad poetic strokes, but in the "space for poems" and being "too full." Poems hiding in the corners need space; poetry can exist at the same time as whatever might fill those corners. "Poems" is interested in the mind and how it juggles multiple inputs; "Poetry" in the situations that produce different effects.

Beginning Sestet:
My poetry is parenthetical;
It hides inside the corners of my life.
If I were settled, with a loving wife
And children, I think it is possible
I might not write it. My rhetorical
Flourishes exist to mirror strife
And flicker on the edges of a knife
Not in a happy home, which is too full
Of other thoughts that dampen that raw sense
Which touches poetry. If all is light,
Where are the shadows which inspire song?

My poems are all parenthetical;
They hide inside the corners of my life.
If I were settled, with a loving wife
And children, I think it is possible
I could not write them. I would be too full
Of other thoughts, for happiness is rife
With great distractions, and it lacks the strife
That opens space for poems. As I mull
That possibility, I ask myself
If that could make me happy. Could I be
Satisfied with life too full to write?

Obviously the differences have widened, partly because the end rhyme needed for "Poems" threw it in a new direction, partly because "Poetry" had not actually caught up to "Poems" and it's thoughts about "other thoughts." Each is going for a three-rhyme sestet, but the themes have clarified their differences: one is about situations, and the other space, even as both are obsessed with when the narrator would not write a poem.

Finish:
My poetry is parenthetical;
It hides inside the corners of my life.
If I were settled, with a loving wife
And children, I think it is possible
I would not write it. My rhetorical
Flourishes exist to mirror strife
And flicker on the edges of a knife
Not in a happy home, which is too full
Of other thoughts that dampen that raw sense
That touches poetry. If all is light,
Where are the shadows that inspire song?
But if I were to penetrate the fence
Surrounding happiness, I fear it might
Make both the joy and poetry go wrong.

My poems are all parenthetical;
They hide inside the corners of my life.
If I were settled, with a loving wife
And children, I think it is possible
I would not write them. I would be too full
Of other thoughts, for happiness is rife
With great distractions, and it lacks the strife
Which opens space for poems. As I mull
That possibility, I ask myself
If that could make me happy. Could I be
Satisfied with life too full to write?
If all my poems pile on the shelf,
Or even lie unwritten? Such a sight,
I think, would scare the joyfulness from me.

And we're done. "Poems" ends frightened of the lack of space; "Poetry," worried that everything, not just the poetry might fail. Neither optimistic, but not nearly the same. The rhymes in "Poetry," which was always more direct, run CDECDE, where "Poems," always more jerky, is CDECED. Even the endings, each in fear or worry, differ according to how the beginnings did: one concerned with space, joy being "from me," and the other situations as a whole, with both "joy" and "poetry" being utterly spoiled. I think these changes flow logically from the initial small differences, and I think they are each a good reflection of the initial mindset of their first lines.

What Is Not A Sonnet

To reiterate what a sonnet is: a fourteen line poem in meter and rhyme.

So this is not a sonnet:
Now when the time of fruit and grain is come,
When apples hang above the orchard wall,
And from a tangle by the roadside stream
A scent of wild grapes fills the racy air,
Comes Autumn with her sun-burnt caravan,
Like a long gypsy train with trappings gay
And tattered colors of the Orient,
Moving slow-footed through the dreamy hills.
The woods of Wilton, at her coming, wear
Tints of Bokhara and of Samarcand;
The maples glow with their Pompeian red,
The hickories with burnt Etruscan gold;
And while the crickets fife along her march,
Behind her banners burns the crimson sun.
--"Autumn" by Bliss Carman (The Atlantic Monthly, 1916).

It looks like a sonnet, oh yes it does; it wants so badly to look like a sonnet. Iambic pentameter! Quatrains, in sense if not in rhyme! A couplet with a little turn at the end, even if without rhyme again! Fourteen lines! But this is not a sonnet. It is a fourteen line poem in iambic pentameter. It is a beautiful piece of poetry. But it is not a sonnet. It partakes somewhat of the nature of a sonnet, in that it puts one in mind of the sonnet form and so draws some power from the rejection of that form by the avoidance of what John Milton would have called "the troublesome and modern bondage of rhyming," but by that very avoidance it carves out new genre territory for itself, and is not a sonnet. Sadly, not all beautiful poems are sonnets, even if they do have fourteen lines of iambic pentameter.

Introduction to the Sonnet VII: Metrical Irregularities

So a topic that requires further elaboration is meter, and specifically at what points a poem can, and ought, to deviate from the purity of its meter. Here I will discuss two points: the value of having a predictable meter, and something of the difference between an extra syllable and a missing one.

A predictable meter is definitionally necessary for a sonnet. A poem cannot be a sonnet without a meter. But it is also a good and effective tool. Not only does a predictable meter give a poet something to display against - a framework whose very constancy makes deviation significant - but it also in and of itself gives the line a pitch and roll whose value should not be discounted. Metrical lines read easily; they give emphases to the stressed beats and take them from the unstressed (about which more in a later post); they provide the reader or hearer as well as the author with a structure which can ease both interpretation and the growth of expectation and preliminary understanding (which can be undercut or respected much like the metrical framework itself); and last but not least they can just sound gorgeous if done correctly. A poem - much less one that wishes to be a sonnet, a formal form - that abandons meter abandons one of its primary potentials for affecting the reader and his or her expectations and understanding.

One of the ways to modulate the effect of meter is by eliding or adding syllables. These have a few obvious effects: making the line hiccup or trip, making it last longer or be over shorter, drawing attention to the line and specifically to the moment inside the line where the effect occurs, and (relatedly) raising the stakes for that moment and line. Not all of these necessarily have to be at play - especially not the hiccup, if the first syllable is dropped or the extra one is at the end of the line - but they all can be and awareness of them is critical.

The most common elided syllable is the first, in an iambic or anapestic line, or the last in a trochaic or dactylic; other elisions are very rare from iambs and trochees and still uncommon from the others (except in intentionally mixed meters, where it is not properly an elision but a change of foot). Only unstressed syllables are elided, and those mentioned above are the ones least missed, because they either trail after the last stress or precede the first, which since lines pivot around stresses means they are in some, very very limited, sense extraneous. Mid-line elisions are extremely odd in iambic or trochaic meter because it slams the stresses together and is very very marked as such. In the trisyllabic meters, it is possible - and functionally equivalent to an iambic or trochaic foot being substituted for the original foot - and much less marked. It is still somewhat rare however.

Added syllables are also most common at the beginning and end, as exact opposites of the elisions: before a trochee or dactyl and after an iamb or anapest. This is from the same limited sense of extraneousness as above, as they are beyond the pivot of the stressed syllables. In the case of iambic pentameter, an added unstressed syllable (and again, extrametrical syllables are unstressed, as it is otherwise referred to as adding a foot to change the meter) placed after the normal ten results in what is known as a "feminine ending." Adding other, internal, syllables is again the opposite of eliding internally: more marked with trisyllabic feet (which morph into odd four-syllable feet with too few stresses to hold them together) and less with iambs and trochees. Again, these are rarer internally than externally, and should be used with care.

Introduction to the Sonnet VI: Enjambment

One of the most basic questions in a sonnet - and indeed in any poetry written in verse - is how to end a line. By this I do not mean how to end a line metrically - the meter tells you that - but whether the line break should correspond to a break in the internal rhythm or sense of the poem. If the line break does correspond with such a natural break, the line is referred to as "end-stopped;" if it does not, the line is "enjambed," and the poet is said to be using "enjambment."

To illustrate the difference, let me use two of Shakespeare's sonnets. Sonnet 130 is almost entirely end-stopped; sonnet 116 uses a lot of enjambment. We will look at both, and I will attempt to show how the two different styles affect the poems.

Sonnet 130
My mistress' eyes are nothing like the sun.
Coral is far more red than her lips' red.
If snow be white, why then her breasts are dun;
If hair be wires, black wires grow from her head.
I have seen roses, damasked, red, and white,
But no such roses see I in her cheeks,
And in some perfumes is there more delight
Than in the breath that from my mistress reeks.
I love to hear her speak, yet well I know
That music hath a far more pleasing sound;
I grant I never saw a goddess go;
My mistress, when she walks, treads on the ground.
And yet by heaven I think my love as fair
As any she belied with false compare.

Sonnet 116
Let me not to the marriage of true minds
Admit impediments. Love is not love
That alters when it alteration finds
Or bends with the remover to remove:
O no! It is an ever-fixed mark
That looks on tempests and is never shaken;
It is the star to every wandering bark,
Whose worth's unknown, although his height be taken.
Love's not time's fool, though rosy lips and cheeks
Within his bending sickle's compass come;
Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks,
But bears it out, even to the edge of doom.
If this be error, and upon me proved,
I never writ, nor no man ever loved.

One thing that's clear from these examples (or at least, from my assertion that these examples have some value as examples) is that end-stopping is common in sonnets; even sonnet 116 has a lot of end-stopped lines. And it is common, especially in English sonnets, and particularly (as we see a lot of in sonnet 116) at the end of the quatrains and even in the middle of them. It is particularly common to see an alternation of end-stopping and enjambment, where the even lines are end-stopped but the odd lines are enjambed.

Looking more specifically at these poems, though, we can see the way end-stopping allows sonnet 130 to build up a series of propositions: all but two of the lines (the lines ending with delight and know) are end-stopped, and each line or pair of lines in the case of enjambment is a separate section of the build-up. This orderly erection of line upon line allows for the swift (enjambed) turn at the end to have its maximum effect; if such a massive edifice had not been provided, the turn would be much less effective. The end-stopping contributes by allowing each line to seem like its own separate entity, emphasizing the sheer number of points; if they were more enjambed, they would flow together more into a single mass and not separate out. Their separation makes them seem larger, as they add up more massively. Obviously there is a lot more going on in this poem, and a lot more that can be done with end-stopping, but that seems to me to be a suggestive start.

Sonnet 116, by contrast, is built up in the opposite manner. The lack of impediments to love is indicated by the flow between lines allowed by the enjambment; even the later lines, where every other line is end-stopped, give a sense of continuity and unity not really present in sonnet 130. I suggest that this effect is due to enjambment; by making the lines run into each other in sense, the line breaks are in some sense eradicated and made to seem more artificial than they otherwise might; this in turn creates a sense in which the poem as a whole, and the meaning of the poem as a whole, become paramount over the meaning of individual lines. That effect in turn contributes to the singularity of the "this" in the final couplet: the first twelve lines are indeed a unity. It is not "these," as might be said about the series of end-stopped propositions in sonnet 130, that must be true or false, but "this:" the single, holistic suggestion of the previous part of the poem. That unity is heightened by the flow permitted by the enjambment. Just as with end-stopping and sonnet 130, there is much more that can be done with this poem and this technique; but again, this should be suggestive of the ground available to work in.

The choice to end-stop or enjamb is of course mixed in with the rhythm of the poem and the diction; certain words and certain sentence structures are easier to enjamb or end-stop, as the case may be. But the overall effect of a series or pattern of end-stopping or enjambment should not be overlooked. Nor should certain conventions; traditionally, the eighth line of an octave in an Italian sonnet, and the twelfth line of an English sonnet are end-stopped, to allow the turn in the succeeding line to start fresh, and often, as noted above, the even lines are end-stopped and the odd lines enjambed. But each of these conventions existed just as much to be violated with a purpose; an enjambed octave-into-sestet or quatrain-into-couplet can be extremely effective, and other rhyme schemes entirely can have different implications in the interplay between rhyme and enjambment. Enjambment is simply another register on which the poetry of a sonnet can play itself out, to join with meter, rhyme, and diction.

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.

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.