About Sonnets

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Don't forget to read this page of sonnets, which comprise the principle background reading for our discussions of sonnets.

THE SONNET is one of the most highly determined formal structures in western poetry--its meter, line-length, number of lines, and rhyme scheme are all predetermined. This formal structure in turn dictates a rhetorical structure that mirrors its phases. 

In the Italian (or Petrarchan) sonnet, which is the original form, a problem or situation is established in the octave (first 8 lines: rhymed (abbaabba). The poem then "turns" rhetorically, so the sestet (last 6 lines: variously rhymed, most often cdecde or cdcdcd) take a new direction, to resolve the conflict, or complicate the first proposition. The very tight rhyme scheme of the Italian octave lends itself to surety and close connection, the more spread-out rhymes of the sestet lend themselves especially well to that "modern" Renaissance air of mutability, action, and the restless mind. Notice that the tighter form begins the poem, and the somewhat more open form concludes it. The asymmetrical structure (8+6) also contributes to a sense of conclusion or, in some sonnets, to a sense of urgency toward the end.

When the sonnet first came to England (in mid 16th c.) it came with the Italian rhyme scheme, which proved very difficult in English, a rhyme-starved language in comparison to Romance languages. The English (or Shakespearean) sonnet provides an easier rhyme scheme (abab cdcd efef gg) and, therefore, changes the structural possibilities of the content. Instead of a single octave and a sestet, the English scheme divides the poem into three quatrains and a couplet, thus providing 3 possible points in the poem at which to "turn" your argument. Each quatrain can be somewhat autonomous, or the first two can hang together somewhat like the old octave, or the whole 12 lines can address one unified subject, followed by the surprise of the couplet. And, whatever you are doing with content, you have the variety of three quatrains with different rhyme sounds to present to the ear.  Note that the extreme closure of the final couplet contrasts sharply with the closural mood created by the Italian sestet, thus giving us two quite distinct formal moods in the two sonnet schemes.

Even with those changes, however, the sonnet is one of the most difficult and complex forms in western poetry. The number of truly excellent sonnets remains small, the challenge perpetual.  The tradition is so strong that its formal echo can be present in many poems which do not conform to its schemes. It is safe to say that if a poem is 14 lines, it's either a sonnet or it's somehow related to the idea of a sonnet. The "idea of a sonnet" includes, besides the formal and rhetorical features mentioned above, the idea of a highly poised lyric developing quickly in a small space.  The form/content connection is very strong in all sonnets, which tend to have an air of statement rather than of exploration. Even when the poet writes of a discovery or new idea, it has been boiled-down, pared down, shaved to the kernel of wisdom and poised expression. Both forms of sonnet have an extreme degree of closure.

Nuances of form in the Italian sonnet include the hidden existence of a third quatrain, imbedded in the lines of the visible quatrains. abba abba is the surface structure, but if you break out the lines you see ab baab ba, and thus reveal a hidden quatrain. (Italian poets are fond of envelope stanzas of all kinds. "Stanza" is "room" in Italian.") The octave is highly unified by it sound, having only two rhyme sounds, hence also in its ideas. The sestet is more open in sound, more varied in content. The "turn" (volta) opens up from one to the other. Ideally we feel a contrast between tightness of octave and looseness of sestet.

The Shakespearean form has a more open rhyme scheme, more turns, a four-fold structure impressed on the ear, and a "stepped progression" toward the closing couplet. These affects are manipulated by a skilled poet, foregrounded or repressed, as desired. The epigrammatic quality of the couplet is a strong closural device, and in some cases can be so strong it bleeds seriousness from the poem. As someone once said, Shakespeare's sonnets can sound as if Shakespeare wrote the first 12 lines, then handed them to an apprentice and said, "Here, kid. You've got two lines to say what this is all about."

William Carlos Williams (a free verse poet) once said that "all sonnets say the same thing."  What does the sonnet form say to you?

What makes a poet (even now) want to write in closed forms?

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A few more sonnets are discussed here, including poems by William Shakespeare, Edna St. Vincent Millay, Maxine Kumin, & Evan Oakley.

Additional poems below, on this page, are by James Wright, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Ranier Maria Rilke, Jordan Kilgour, & Daryl Finnegan.

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ARCHAIC TORSO OF APOLLO   
--Ranier Maria Rilke, 20th c. German (translated by Stephen Mitchell)

We cannot know his legendary head
with eyes like ripening fruit.  And yet his torso
is still suffused with brilliance from inside,
like a lamp, in which his gaze, now turned to low,

gleams in all its power.  Otherwise
the curved breast could not dazzle you so, nor could
a smile run through the placid hips and thighs
to that dark center where procreation flared.

Otherwise this stone would seem defaced
beneath the translucent cascade of the shoulders
and would not glisten like a wild beast's fur:

would not, from all the borders of itself,
burst like a star: for here there is no place
that does not see you.  You must change your life.

[This famous poem is about art and its mysterious impact on us.  Here is another sonnet written in response.]


OLD, OLD THORAX OF A COCKROACH   
-- Jordan Kilgour, contemporary American

Though the head decays, the antennae, like spring onions,
wither, the bright lacquer thorax, caught as the sun
squints through the ruffling windowshade, throws
a long shadow on the new, hard tile, and fetched
on a hard gust, skitters across the kitchen floor.
Otherwise, what is the fascination of the crispening
abdomen; why, with your microscope focused
into the dark pocket of its genitals, do you stare
as if the million year old form now subtly alters?
Otherwise, why bite your lip, clap your hand
to your head as if even now a new-bred disobedient hoard
bursts from your cupboards?  Oh, flare up
your beasty embers; button your pajamas
against the wind.  You will adapt, somehow.

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WRITING IN FORM: THE SONNET