What is a sonnet?

[AlwaysHungry]

OK, let me get back to the original topic of this thread--the sonnet. There are a lot of different kinds of sonnets, but perhaps the earliest form of sonnet to appear in English is the Italian sonnet. Here's an excellent description of the form, from Laurence Perrine:

The Italian or Petrachan sonnet (so called because the Italian poet Petrach practiced it so extensively) is divided usually between eight lines called the octave, using two rhymes arranged abbaabba, and six lines called the sestet, using any arrangement of either two or three rhymes: cdcdcd and cdecde are common patterns. Usually in the Italian sonnet, corresponding to the division between octave and sestet indicated by the rhyme scheme (and sometimes marked off in printing by a space), there is a division of thought. The octave presents a situation and the sestet a comment, or the octave an idea and the sestet an example, or the octave a question and the sestet an answer.​

In addition, as Perrine mentions earlier in his discussion of form, the Italian sonnet, like English language sonnets in general, is written in iambic pentameter.

Here's a famous example of an Italian sonnet, by John Keats:

On First Looking into Chapman's Homer

Much have I travell'd in the realms of gold,
And many goodly states and kingdoms seen;
Round many western islands have I been
Which bards in fealty to Apollo hold.
Oft of one wide expanse had I been told
That deep-brow'd Homer ruled as his demesne;
Yet did I never breathe its pure serene
Till I heard Chapman speak out loud and bold:
Then felt I like some watcher of the skies
When a new planet swims into his ken;
Or like stout Cortez when with eagle eyes
He star'd at the Pacific—and all his men
Look'd at each other with a wild surmise—
Silent, upon a peak in Darien.​

Fourteen lines, check. Iambic pentameter, check. Rhyme pattern for the octave (abbaabba), check. Rhyme pattern for the sestet (cdcdcd), check. Turn in the discussion in the transition from octave to sestet (the octave speaks of the poet's experience with poems but that he has not really appreciated Homer until he read Chapman's translation, the sestet changes the discussion to how vivid Homer has become to the narrator in reading this translation--note the word "then" starting line nine), check.

This is about as perfect an example of the Italian sonnet form as one might find. The rhymes are true ("been" being pronounced like "bean" rather then the American "ben"), the meter not completely true (AH and I scanned the poem, slightly differently, in his scansion thread), but clearly iambic pentameter.

Not all Italian sonnets are so close to the basic form. It's quite common, for example, for the sestet to change the rhyme pattern around (cdcede, for example, though that still fits with Perrine's description. Nor is it particularly unusual for the rhyme pattern of the octave to change a bit. William Butler Yeat's "Leda and the Swan," for example, is basically an Italian sonnet in which the octave is structured like the first two quatrains of an English sonnet:

Leda and the Swan

A sudden blow: the great wings beating still
Above the staggering girl, her thighs caressed
By the dark webs, her nape caught in his bill,
He holds her helpless breast upon his breast.

How can those terrified vague fingers push
The feathered glory from her loosening thighs?
And how can body, laid in that white rush,
But feel the strange heart beating where it lies?

A shudder in the loins engenders there
The broken wall, the burning roof and tower
And Agamemnon dead.
...............................Being so caught up,
So mastered by the brute blood of the air,
Did she put on his knowledge with his power
Before the indifferent beak could let her drop?​

The octave here resembles the start of an English sonnet--two quatrains rhymed abab cdcd, but the sestet is a standard Italian sonnet sestet, rhymed cdecde (the third line of the sestet is broken with the indent, but should be thought of as a single line). The turn occurs at the start of the sestet, where the swan ejaculates, which leads inevitably to the fall of Troy (Helen of Troy and Clytemnestra are Leda's children).

The Italian sonnet is generally considered to be somewhat more difficult than the English sonnet because there are fewer distinct rhymes (you need four "a" rhymes and four "b" rhymes for the classic octave) and English is considered a "rhyme-poor" language compared to something like Italian.

I think that those two poems provide beautiful examples of the "volta", and by extension, they provide beautiful examples of the real power of metaphor. In "Chapman's Homer," the poet presents himself as an urbane, well-traveled poetry aficionado in the first 8 lines -- but upon reading Chapman's translation, he has a "eureka" moment, and suddenly he is experiencing the same life-changing excitement of the mind as does a scientific pioneer at the moment of ground-breaking discovery. In a poem about a poem, Keats uses metaphor to guide us through a demonstration of what poetry can really do, how it can access and vivify a sacred part of the mind.

From Keats to Yeats -- the first 8 lines are erotic, and hotter IMO than 99% of the poems on Lit. When the volta comes, suddenly our minds are transported to the immense sweep of historical events that follows on the heels of this erotic encounter. It creates a mysterious tension in the mind, which is intensified by the question, "Did she put on his knowledge with his power?" which seems very ambiguous to me, and also very provocative. The coupling becomes a punctum saliens, no longer just an ordinary non-con encounter between a maiden and a bird.

 

[Angeline]

I have a question and two comments.

Comment 1: I pronounce "been" as "bin." I believe "ben" is more Midwest and West, but I take your point about a proper rhyme.

Question 1: Are there earlier examples (i.e., before Yeats) of poets deviating from either the original Italian form or the Elizabethan? I mean combining them, as Yeats appears to do, or otherwise playing with them.

Comment 2: Expressions of nonconsent relationships between women and birds are kind of numerous when you think about it, like The Birds, which isn't a sonnet or even a poem so never mind.

 

[Tzara]

Question 1: Are there earlier examples (i.e., before Yeats) of poets deviating from either the original Italian form or the Elizabethan? I mean combining them, as Yeats appears to do, or otherwise playing with them.

Yes, there are several. Stay tuned.

 

[AlwaysHungry]

I love John Donne's sonnets -- he loved to play with theological paradoxes, and to mix the sacred with the carnal. He had a particular hybrid form which he favored:

ABBA ABBA CDDC EE, or ABBA ABBA CDCD EE.

So, he starts out Italian, and finishes up English.

 

[Angeline]

I love John Donne's sonnets -- he loved to play with theological paradoxes, and to mix the sacred with the carnal. He had a particular hybrid form which he favored:

ABBA ABBA CDDC EE, or ABBA ABBA CDCD EE.

So, he starts out Italian, and finishes up English.

His sonnets are among my favorite from that time. I find his writing, even now, both accessible and lyrical.

 

[Tzara]

OK, before I move on to variations on the form, let me define the other classic version of the sonnet. Or, that is, I'll again let Laurence Perrine define it for me:

The English or Shakespearean sonnet (invented by the English poet Surrey and made famous by Shakespeare) is composed of three quatrains and a concluding couplet, rhyming abab cdcd efef gg. Again, there is usually a correspondence between the units marked off by the rhymes and the development of the thought. The three quatrains, for instance, may present three examples and the couplet a conclusion or three metaphorical statements of one idea plus an application.​

As before, the poem is typically in iambic pentameter, as well. Here's the example Perrine gives of the form, Shakespeare's Sonnet 73:

That time of year thou mayst in me behold
When yellow leaves, or none, or few, do hang
Upon those boughs which shake against the cold,
Bare ruined choirs, where late the sweet birds sang.
In me thou see’st the twilight of such day
As after sunset fadeth in the west;
Which by and by black night doth take away,
Death’s second self, that seals up all in rest.
In me thou see’st the glowing of such fire,
That on the ashes of his youth doth lie,
As the deathbed whereon it must expire,
Consumed with that which it was nourished by.
This thou perceiv’st, which makes thy love more strong,
To love that well which thou must leave ere long.​

Fourteen lines, check. Iambic pentameter, check (though I scan line 11 as beginning with two trochees). Rhymed ababcdcdefefgg, check. The three quatrains describe age as (1) a tree whose leaves have fallen away, (2) oncoming night, and (3) a dying fire. The concluding couplet then states how the narrator's love reacts to these metaphors of his aging, "To love that well which thou must leave ere long."

The English sonnet is probably the one that schoolchildren are most likely to be exposed to, and the one that most adults would be most likely to recognize. It is considered slightly easier to write than the Italian sonnet for the reasons I mentioned in talking about that form--that, because there are more rhymes (seven pairs, instead of four or five sets with more rhymes required per set), it is simpler to find good (i.e. workable) ones.

 

[pelegrino]

un sonetto deve suonare,
ma anche cantare,
(dal punto di vista
di un musicista)

un sonetto deve cantare
ma anche curare
anime tormentate
stagioni andante

pensare al passato,
nessuna ragione,
solo in avanti,

l'ignoto è segnato,
come l'unica stagione,
anche se troppo tardi

​

 

[Tzara]

Now that we've looked at three three "standard" sonnet forms, let's look at some variations. A particularly interesting yet very famous one is Shelley's "Ozymandias":

Ozymandias
Percy Bysshe Shelley

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 passions 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.”​

There are a number of interesting things about this poem from the standpoint of sonnet form. First, the rhyme scheme is very odd: ababacdcedefef--it starts like an English sonnet, ends (sort of) like an Italian sonnet, but is really messed up in the middle. The meter is generally iambic pentameter, but there are a number of trochaic substitutions, perhaps most notably in line 12, where the first and the fourth feet are trochees:

Noth·ing / be·side / re·mains. / Round the / de·cay​

Line 12 is also where I think the turn occurs--very late by the standard of the Italian sonnet--where the narrator dramatically changes focus from describing the ruins to noting the general emptiness of the landscape. And finally, though this isn't contrary to anything about the classical form, there is a great big caesura smack in the middle of line 12 to emphasize the change of tone.

While all this messing with the "rules" of the form could just be the rock star posturing of one of the most Romantic of the Romantic poets, my own thinking about the poem is that Shelley is using variations of form to emphasize his subject--the ruins, the haughtiness of the ancient king laid low by time, the disruption of the memorial, etc. Note how the rhyme pattern of the first four and the last four lines are quite regular, but the middle six lines are kind of chaotically rhymed. The view shifts in the poem from the narrator's setting the scene, to the description of the ruins and the king's triumphant proclamation on the pedestal, to the ending where we are returned to the narrator's viewpoint--sanity to disruption back to sanity.

Or something like that. This is one of my favorite sonnets for these reasons.

 

[Angeline]

Now that we've looked at three three "standard" sonnet forms, let's look at some variations. A particularly interesting yet very famous one is Shelley's "Ozymandias":

Ozymandias
Percy Bysshe Shelley

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 passions 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.”​

There are a number of interesting things about this poem from the standpoint of sonnet form. First, the rhyme scheme is very odd: ababacdcedefef--it starts like an English sonnet, ends (sort of) like an Italian sonnet, but is really messed up in the middle. The meter is generally iambic pentameter, but there are a number of trochaic substitutions, perhaps most notably in line 12, where the first and the fourth feet are trochees:

Noth·ing / be·side / re·mains. / Round the / de·cay​

Line 12 is also where I think the turn occurs--very late by the standard of the Italian sonnet--where the narrator dramatically changes focus from describing the ruins to noting the general emptiness of the landscape. And finally, though this isn't contrary to anything about the classical form, there is a great big caesura smack in the middle of line 12 to emphasize the change of tone.

While all this messing with the "rules" of the form could just be the rock star posturing of one of the most Romantic of the Romantic poets, my own thinking about the poem is that Shelley is using variations of form to emphasize his subject--the ruins, the haughtiness of the ancient king laid low by time, the disruption of the memorial, etc. Note how the rhyme pattern of the first four and the last four lines are quite regular, but the middle six lines are kind of chaotically rhymed. The view shifts in the poem from the narrator's setting the scene, to the description of the ruins and the king's triumphant proclamation on the pedestal, to the ending where we are returned to the narrator's viewpoint--sanity to disruption back to sanity.

Or something like that. This is one of my favorite sonnets for these reasons.

Now you are getting to the heart of what interests me about the intentional use of meter in poems (as opposed to like when I do it...). To me a trochee sounds pleading or maybe demanding, so for them to appear most notably in this sonnet at the point where Ozymandias is saying nothing lasts, the rhythm works to underscore the meaning. As does that caesura, which forces the reader to stop and consider the implications of nothing having lasted for this great king.

Iambic pentameter doesn't really excite me. It makes for neat and pretty lines and certainly it is speech-like, but the constant regularity of unstressed/stressed is kind of like a boring conversation to me. Don't get me wrong: I know some of the world's greatest poetry is written in iambic pentameter. But to write or talk that way now sounds archaic to me--not without interest, but predictable. When you start introducing elements that aren't words but add to meaning--that is very exciting to me. It is potentially another tool in my poetry toolkit. Maybe I could learn how to do that in alleged free verse.

 

[AlwaysHungry]

The advantage of a form is that it gives you something to deviate from, and the deviation acquires significance: it is a form of irony. It is irony because the reader/listener, having discerned a pattern, expects it to continue, and when something unexpected comes along, the natural impulse is to wonder, what does it mean?

I can think of two ways that classical English poets did what I am describing. One is through deviations from the meter, such as tossing in trochees at significant moments as we have discussed in the Keats and Shelley poems. Another is by playing sentence length against line length, creating a sort of tension between the two. As the "control group", consider one of my least favorite poets, Edmund Spenser:

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

Note how with the exception of lines 9-10, each sentence or phrase is exactly one line in length, creating the most annoying "sing-song" effect. Compare that to the Shelley sonnet quoted above by Tzara. The first 8 lines of Shelley are one continuous sentence. It is not until lines 9-11 that we get short sentences that correspond to line length. And then in line 12, there is a short, very dramatic sentence that comes to a screeching halt in mid-line: "Nothing beside remains." Now, that is dramatic. Then the remaining 2 1/2 lines are one long sentence. All of my favorite sonneteers created these kinds of ironies, which I would liken to musical counterpoint, within the sonnet form, Shakespeare especially.

 

[Angeline]

The advantage of a form is that it gives you something to deviate from, and the deviation acquires significance: it is a form of irony. It is irony because the reader/listener, having discerned a pattern, expects it to continue, and when something unexpected comes along, the natural impulse is to wonder, what does it mean?

I can think of two ways that classical English poets did what I am describing. One is through deviations from the meter, such as tossing in trochees at significant moments as we have discussed in the Keats and Shelley poems. Another is by playing sentence length against line length, creating a sort of tension between the two. As the "control group", consider one of my least favorite poets, Edmund Spenser:

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

Note how with the exception of lines 9-10, each sentence or phrase is exactly one line in length, creating the most annoying "sing-song" effect. Compare that to the Shelley sonnet quoted above by Tzara. The first 8 lines of Shelley are one continuous sentence. It is not until lines 9-11 that we get short sentences that correspond to line length. And then in line 12, there is a short, very dramatic sentence that comes to a screeching halt in mid-line: "Nothing beside remains." Now, that is dramatic. Then the remaining 2 1/2 lines are one long sentence. All of my favorite sonneteers created these kinds of ironies, which I would liken to musical counterpoint, within the sonnet form, Shakespeare especially.

Great points. Your insight about line versus sentence length to create an effect helps explain why enjambment can be so powerful.

 

[Tzara]

I can think of two ways that classical English poets did what I am describing. One is through deviations from the meter, such as tossing in trochees at significant moments as we have discussed in the Keats and Shelley poems. Another is by playing sentence length against line length, creating a sort of tension between the two. As the "control group", consider one of my least favorite poets, Edmund Spenser:

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

Note how with the exception of lines 9-10, each sentence or phrase is exactly one line in length, creating the most annoying "sing-song" effect. Compare that to the Shelley sonnet quoted above by Tzara. The first 8 lines of Shelley are one continuous sentence. It is not until lines 9-11 that we get short sentences that correspond to line length. And then in line 12, there is a short, very dramatic sentence that comes to a screeching halt in mid-line: "Nothing beside remains." Now, that is dramatic. Then the remaining 2 1/2 lines are one long sentence. All of my favorite sonneteers created these kinds of ironies, which I would liken to musical counterpoint, within the sonnet form, Shakespeare especially.

Without speaking to Shelley's obviously well-placed short line (which is preceded by a full stop and ends, abruptly, after three words and another full stop), you're being a little unfair comparing the verse of Edmund Spenser (16th century) to that of Keats and Shelley (both well into the 19th century). Their poems are like 250 years apart.

What you really need to do is invoke Shakespeare, whose fluid verse is almost contemporary with Spenser or Marlowe, both of whom he writes rings around, thumbing his nose at them.

Though, as a practical man of the theater, he probably sucked up to them if it would help promote Hamlet or Twelfth Night.

 

[Tzara]

Here's a rather different take on the sonnet--the terza rima sonnet: four tercets (three-line stanzas) and a closing couplet, rhymed in the linked manner of terza rima (aba bcb cdc ded ee). The general expectation is that there is a turn of some kind, in the latter part of the poem.

One of the earliest examples is actually a suite of terza rima sonnets by Percy Bysshe Shelley, in his "Ode to the West Wind." Here's the first sonnet (one of five):

O wild West Wind, thou breath of Autumn's being,
Thou, from whose unseen presence the leaves dead
Are driven, like ghosts from an enchanter fleeing,

Yellow, and black, and pale, and hectic red,
Pestilence-stricken multitudes: O thou,
Who chariotest to their dark wintry bed

The winged seeds, where they lie cold and low,
Each like a corpse within its grave, until
Thine azure sister of the Spring shall blow

Her clarion o'er the dreaming earth, and fill
(Driving sweet buds like flocks to feed in air)
With living hues and odours plain and hill:

Wild Spirit, which art moving everywhere;
Destroyer and preserver; hear, oh hear!​

As I've never been that fond of this poem, Im going to simply point you all at the complete sequence and leave it at that.

A more interesting example, at least to me, is this one by Robert Frost:

Acquainted with the Night

I have been one acquainted with the night.
I have walked out in rain — and back in rain.
I have outwalked the furthest city light.

I have looked down the saddest city lane.
I have passed by the watchman on his beat
And dropped my eyes, unwilling to explain.

I have stood still and stopped the sound of feet
When far away an interrupted cry
Came over houses from another street,

But not to call me back or say good-bye;
And further still at an unearthly height,
One luminary clock against the sky

Proclaimed the time was neither wrong nor right.
I have been one acquainted with the night.​

In a neat flourish, Frost makes the final rhyme the same as the "a" rhyme, and in fact duplicates the first rhyme with the last.

The meter is iambic pentameter, but with some variation, depending on how one reads it. I personally tend to wobble on whether most of the lines begin with iambs or with trochees. In any case, the meter is quite regular.

The turn is at the start of the fourth tercet ("But not to call me back"). So a sonnet, in all essentials.

Here's a more contemporary one, by Carol Ann Duffy, Poet Laureate of the United Kingdom since 2009:

Terza Rima SW19

Over this Common a kestrel treads air
till the earth says mouse or vole. Far below
two lovers walking by the pond seem unaware.

She feeds the ducks. He wants her, tells her so
as she half-smiles and stands slightly apart.
He loves me, loves me not with each deft throw.

It could last a year, she thinks, possibly two
and then crumble like stale bread. The kestrel flies
across the sun as he swears his love is true

and, darling, forever. Suddenly the earth cries
Now and death drops from above like a stone.
A couple turn and see a strange bird rise.

Into the sky the kestrel climbs alone
and later she might write or he might phone.​

The theme is love, which is the classic theme of the sonnet, but there are elements that are not "right" about this poem. The meter is uneven, for example. The rhyme follows the terza rima pattern except "apart" in S2 doesn't lead to "two" and "true" in S3.

Perhaps these variations reflect the topic of the poem, the uncertain relationship between the lovers, that their relationship "could last a year . . . possibly two". The form is imperfect, reflecting the imperfection of the love being described.

Or something like that.

 

[AlwaysHungry]

I always feel a bit dirty when I visit Wikipedia, because I know what goes on behind the scenes there. But this morning I found something genuinely useful:

According to poet-critic Phillis Levin, "We could say that for the sonnet, the volta is the seat of its soul."[7] Additionally, Levin states that "the arrangement of lines into patterns of sound serves a function we could call architectural, for these various acoustical partitions accentuate the element that gives the sonnet its unique force and character: the volta, the ‘turn’ that introduces into the poem a possibility for transformation, like a moment of grace."[8]

 

[Tzara]

As I mentioned before, there are a number of common characteristics of the classic sonnet, regardless of whether the poem is an Italian sonnet, a Shakespearean sonnet, a Spenserian sonnet, etc. One of the qualities I mentioned is that a sonnet is written in a regular meter. I was fudging that comment a bit, though. I think most people would say that a classic sonnet is written in iambic pentameter.

I fudged it for a reason, though. Take this example, from Shakespeare:

Sonnet 145
William Shakespeare

Those lips that Love's own hand did make
Breathed forth the sound that said 'I hate,'
To me that languish'd 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 alter'd with an end,
That follow'd 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.'​

This poem is unusual, even (I think) unique, among Shakespeare's sonnets in that it is written in iambic tetrameter, not pentameter. Other than for that, it fits the standard requirements for an English sonnet: fourteen lines, rhymed ababcdcdefefgg, with exposition in the first twelve lines and a turn in the discussion to a resolution in the closing couplet.

But its employment of tetrameter is so unusual that some commentators argue that this suggests the poem is not, in fact, by Shakespeare at all, or at the very least it is one written when he was extremely young.

It is, admittedly, kind of a clunky poem. With the exception of a couple of trochaic inversions, the poem has (at least to me) a rather singsong feeling that is accentuated by the shorter tetrameter lines. The subject and development also seem rather mundane, as if the Bard were perhaps a bit under the weather when the poem was written. It certainly isn't his best work.

But different, because of the meter. And of interest for the same reason.

 

[greenmountaineer]

"It is, admittedly, kind of a clunky poem. With the exception of a couple of trochaic inversions, the poem has (at least to me) a rather singsong feeling that is accentuated by the shorter tetrameter lines."

This intrigued me, Tzara. I could say a lot more about tetrameter lines because I tend to favor it, although with a lot of variation, but I don't want to highjack the thread which is about sonnets. I would say, however, with poetic devices, it doesn't have to be that way. I agree it is clunky. About the only "yes but" for me is

.....That follow'd it as gentle day/Doth follow night,...

The trochaic inversions didn't appeal to my ear as much as this.

 

[Tzara]

"It is, admittedly, kind of a clunky poem. With the exception of a couple of trochaic inversions, the poem has (at least to me) a rather singsong feeling that is accentuated by the shorter tetrameter lines."

This intrigued me, Tzara. I could say a lot more about tetrameter lines because I tend to favor it, although with a lot of variation, but I don't want to highjack the thread which is about sonnets. I would say, however, with poetic devices, it doesn't have to be that way. I agree it is clunky. About the only "yes but" for me is

.....That follow'd it as gentle day/Doth follow night,...

The trochaic inversions didn't appeal to my ear as much as this.

Hi, gm. Feel free to talk about anything you might find interesting in any of these poems. Part of what I'm interested in is how the poems work as poems, as sonnets. So any comments on tetrameter as opposed to pentameter would be welcome.

My own "natural" line tends to be tetrameter, so I guess I favor it too.

I think the transition you cite is a very nice use of enjambment. It smooths the transition between lines as well as easing the reader rapidly over the line break.

And, yeah, the trochaic substitutions are somewhat awkward. In part why, I think, some people maintain that Shakespeare did not write this poem. (As if great poets could never write bad verse.)

 

[greenmountaineer]

Hi, gm. Feel free to talk about anything you might find interesting in any of these poems. Part of what I'm interested in is how the poems work as poems, as sonnets. So any comments on tetrameter as opposed to pentameter would be welcome.

My own "natural" line tends to be tetrameter, so I guess I favor it too.

I think the transition you cite is a very nice use of enjambment. It smooths the transition between lines as well as easing the reader rapidly over the line break.

And, yeah, the trochaic substitutions are somewhat awkward. In part why, I think, some people maintain that Shakespeare did not write this poem. (As if great poets could never write bad verse.)

For me, if I write a line in pentameter and at the end of it I think I can say the same in tetrameter, the former then sounds superfluous, perhaps not to the reader, but to me because I've heard the two versions in my mind.

One of the more instructive threads on PF&D was Guilty Pleasure's where contributors posted an original and then kept paring it back until it lost the original meaning. It was one of those "aha!" moments for me.

I do like dabbling in blank verse once in a while. Frost's "Death of the Hired Man" is the best I've ever read, but even there he varies the line from time to time.

 

[AlwaysHungry]

I do like dabbling in blank verse once in a while. Frost's "Death of the Hired Man" is the best I've ever read, but even there he varies the line from time to time.

That looks like free verse to me -- I don't see a repeating metrical pattern.

GM, would you say that Frost is an influence on your own writing? I haven't read a lot of his work, but that particular poem reminds me of your story-telling approach.

 

[greenmountaineer]

That looks like free verse to me -- I don't see a repeating metrical pattern.

GM, would you say that Frost is an influence on your own writing? I haven't read a lot of his work, but that particular poem reminds me of your story-telling approach.

She pushed him outward with her through the door
And shut it after her. ‘Be kind,’ she said.
She took the market things from Warren’s arms
And set them on the porch, then drew him down
To sit beside her on the wooden steps.

reads like iambic pentameter, at least to my ear, AH.

Frost certainly has had an influence me, not just because I live in Vermont where he spent last years and is buried. I'm not as "pastoral" as he is. I tend to write more about the melting pot experience, having grown up in New Jersey near NYC.

The narrative is always important to me as I think it is for Frost, and for that reason I write perhaps more in the third person. That isn't to say the lyrical "I" doesn't its own narrative, but it being more personal, the story telling, I think, is more challenging.

 

[Tzara]

That looks like free verse to me -- I don't see a repeating metrical pattern.

It seems to me to be in blank verse with some metrical variation. Here's how I scan the beginning:

Mar·y sat / mus·ing on / the lamp- / flame at / the tab·le
Wait·ing / for War / ren. When / she heard / his step,
She ran / on tip- / toe down / the dark / ened pas·sage
To meet / him in / the door / way with / the news
And put / him on / his guard. / ‘Si·las / is back.’
She pushed / him out / ward with / her through / the door
And shut / it af / ter her. / ‘Be kind,’ / she said.
She took / the mar / ket things / from War / ren’s arms
And set / them on / the porch, / then drew / him down
To sit / be·side / her on / the wood / en steps.​

The first line is a little odd, starting (as I hear it) with two dactyls and having a feminine ending (added unstressed syllable), but it's still pentameter. After that it's pretty regular iambic pentameter, with a couple of trochaic substitutions and one other feminine ending.

The Poetry Foundation page gm cites categorizes the poem as blank verse.

 

[Tzara]

For me, if I write a line in pentameter and at the end of it I think I can say the same in tetrameter, the former then sounds superfluous, perhaps not to the reader, but to me because I've heard the two versions in my mind.

One of the things often said about pentameter is that it approximates the typical "breath" in English, i.e. that it is about the length most people can speak comfortably without pausing for breath. Perhaps I've become short of breath over time, but I find tetrameter generally more comfortable to recite.

Another property I associate with tetrameter is that it generally "reads faster" than a similar poem in pentameter. It's kind of an odd effect, as I would have thought that the additional line breaks would slow the pace down, but they actually seem to speed it up, perhaps because the reader's eye returns more quickly to the start of the next line.

In any case, it's weird.

 

[greenmountaineer]

One of the things often said about pentameter is that it approximates the typical "breath" in English, i.e. that it is about the length most people can speak comfortably without pausing for breath. Perhaps I've become short of breath over time, but I find tetrameter generally more comfortable to recite.

Another property I associate with tetrameter is that it generally "reads faster" than a similar poem in pentameter. It's kind of an odd effect, as I would have thought that the additional line breaks would slow the pace down, but they actually seem to speed it up, perhaps because the reader's eye returns more quickly to the start of the next line.

In any case, it's weird.

I think the caesura, which is fairly comon in iambic pentameter IMO, slows it down, which would contradict the notion that it approximates the typical "breath" in English. (I've read this assertion too, which has always puzzled me.) I don't remember seeing many caesuras in tetrameter (I could wrong here.) unless they're the result of an obvious hard comma, eg, the previously mentioned

That follow'd it as gentle day
Doth follow night, who like a fiend...

 

[AlwaysHungry]

This is probably Donne's most famous sonnet. I'd like to throw it into the mix:

Death be not proud, though some have called thee
Mighty and dreadful, for thou art not so,
For those whom thou think'st thou dost overthrow,
Die not, poor death, nor yet canst thou kill me.
From rest and sleep, which but thy pictures be,
Much pleasure, then from thee, much more must flow,
And soonest our best men with thee do go,
Rest of their bones, and soul's delivery.
Thou art slave to Fate, Chance, kings, and desperate men,
And dost with poison, war, and sickness dwell,
And poppy, or charms can make us sleep as well,
And better than thy stroke; why swell'st thou then?
One short sleep past, we wake eternally,
And death shall be no more; death, thou shalt die.

It has the trochee substitutions as we have seen with other sonneteers. "Thou art" is treated as a single syllable, which seems reasonable, and "called" is a double syllable. The half-rhymes such as "eternally" and "die" are also seen in the other examples from English poets. Donne has certain distinctive features, such as his interest in theological riddles and paradoxes. I find his writing to be very passionate.

 

[Tzara]

Death be not proud, though some have called thee
Mighty and dreadful, for thou art not so,
For those whom thou think'st thou dost overthrow,
Die not, poor death, nor yet canst thou kill me.
From rest and sleep, which but thy pictures be,
Much pleasure, then from thee, much more must flow,
And soonest our best men with thee do go,
Rest of their bones, and soul's delivery.
Thou art slave to Fate, Chance, kings, and desperate men,
And dost with poison, war, and sickness dwell,
And poppy, or charms can make us sleep as well,
And better than thy stroke; why swell'st thou then?
One short sleep past, we wake eternally,
And death shall be no more; death, thou shalt die.

This is a particularly interesting example, AH, because it seems to illustrate what I was going to talk about next--a sonnet without a volta (or with a greatly attenuated volta), sometimes called a "Miltonic Sonnet," as this style variation is characteristic of Milton's sonnets.

Donne's poem has the usual fourteen lines, is roughly iambic pentameter (I find those first two lines particularly hard to scan), and is rhymed abbaabbacddcee, in the kind of quasi-English sonnet pattern you described earlier. But where's the turn?

The opening lines take Death to task, describing how it really is powerless--that there is no "real" death in the Christian sense. There is a slight break at the 8/9 boundary, but no real turn in the argument. Similarly, at the closing couplet, where you would expect something of a turn in an English sonnet, you get merely an explanation as to why Death is so impotent.

This last would be the turn, or summary, I suppose, in the model of the English sonnet, but it seems to me a very slight change of tone in the poem, being essentially referenced through much of the upper part (the "octave," if you want to think of it as an Italian sonnet).

I think most people would say it is still a sonnet, though, despite the (relative?) lack of a volta.

Similarly, here's one of Milton's sonnets that seems (to me, anyway) to be missing a turn in the exposition:

On the Religious Memory of Mrs. Catherine Thomson,
My Christian Friend, Deceased December 16, 1646
John Milton

When Faith and Love, which parted from thee never,
Had ripened thy just soul to dwell with God,
Meekly thou didst resign this earthly load
Of Death, called Life, which us from Life doth sever.
Thy works and alms and all thy good endeavour,
Stayed not behind, nor in the grave were trod;
But as Faith pointed with her golden rod,
Followed thee up to joy and bliss for ever.
Love led them on; and Faith, who knew them best
Thy handmaids, clad them o'er with purple beams
And azure wings, that up they flew so drest,
And spake the truth of thee on glorious themes
Before the Judge; who thenceforth bid thee rest,
And drink thy fill of pure immortal streams.​

Fourteen lines, iambic pentameter (with the usual scattering of substitutions), rhymed abbaabbacdcdcd. Classic Italian form, but where's the volta? It should, per the form, come at the 8/9 boundary, but I don't see anything there that resembles a turn in the theme of the poem.

Again, clearly a sonnet, but one lacking one of the traditional elements of the form.