Writing Poetry: Sonnet

Welcome back to Writing Poetry! Today we’re talking about sonnets. I’ve chosen two major types of sonnets to talk about and write to you guys today.

A sonnet is a fourteen-line poem broken into two sections, traditionally about powerful emotions like love and pain. A classic Shakespearean sonnet is a section of twelve lines followed by a two-line heroic rhyming couplet. The second type of sonnet we’ll be talking about is the Petrarchan sonnet. A Petrarchan sonnet is an octave and a sestet. Let’s add those definitions to our list, and then expand the list below.

Shakespearean Sonnet: Fourteen-line poem ending with a heroic/rhyming couplet. The rhyme scheme of ABAB CDCD EFEF GG.

Petrarchan Sonnet: Fourteen-line poem comprising an octave and a contrasting sestet. The octave has a rhyme scheme of ABBAABBA, and the sestet has a rhyme scheme of CDCDCD or CDECDE.

Heroic/Rhyming Couplet: Two lines of the same length that rhyme and complete a thought. The last words of both lines must rhyme out loud, but do not need to have the same end spelling.

Octave: Eight-line stanza with any rhyme scheme.

Sestet: Six-line stanza with any rhyme scheme.

Iambic: An unstressed syllable followed by a stressed syllabic that makes up a foot.

Pentameter: A line made up of five feet or beats.

Iambic Pentameter: Five pairs (or feet) of unstressed and stressed syllables. Normally found in sonnets. 

It’s a good idea to start with the Shakespearean sonnet, as it’s familiar to most people. I don’t have an example of one I’ve previously written, so I’m going to share with you one that was written by Shakespeare himself.

Sonnet 18

Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?

Thou art more lovely and more temperate:

Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May,

And summer’s lease hath all too short a date;

Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines,

And often is his gold complexion dimmed;

And ever fair from fair sometime declines,

By chance or nature’s changing course untrimmed.

But thy eternal summer shall not fade,

Nor lose possession of that fair thou ow’st;

Nor shall death brag thou wander’st in his shade,

When in eternal lines to time thou grow’st:

So long as men can breathe or eyes can see,

So long lives this, and this gives life to thee.

So, the important rules to follow when writing a Shakespearean sonnet are a rhyme scheme of ABAB CDCD EFEF GG, fourteen lines, and iambic pentameter. A different way of explaining iambic pentameter is by saying that there need to be 10 syllables in each line, with the even-numbered syllables being stressed and the odd numbers being unstressed. This equals the 5 pairs of unstressed/stressed syllables defined above.

There are a few things to keep in mind with the Petrarchan sonnet. Even though it’s still fourteen lines, the rhyme scheme is ABBAABBA in the octave and either CDECDE or CDCDCD in the sestet. I believe it’s also meant to be in iambic pentameter, as that’s the only meter I’ve used for Petrarchan sonnets. I have a Petrarchan sonnet that I wrote, and I think it’ll work well as an example.

Strength

It starts deep in my chest, a twinge of pain

It makes me scratch lines down my arms and neck

My vision blurs my view of the room next

The pain rises, echoing the rain

Teary heartbeat becomes a bloody strain

The scratch marks burn my skin up to my neck

My squeezing chest provides a disconnect

Screams split my head, the never-ending pain.

My mother’s arms bring slower heartbeats and

Her soothing voice stops tears and dries my cheeks

I calm my breath in gasps and curl to her

In moments, her strong arms help me to stand

Hugging me tight, my forehead on her cheek

She whispers all her strength into my ear.

I fell in love with the Petrarchan sonnet as soon as I wrote this one. I loved the flow that came from the combination of the octave and the sestet. It felt a lot more accessible to write than the Shakespearean sonnet. This sonnet drew me to the caesura that occurs between the octave and the sestet as well. It felt so much more natural than waiting twelve lines for a shift. I wrote this poem above about my anxiety attacks. It worked so well with the form of the poem. 

That’s all I’ve got for you on sonnets for today! Let me know if this post helped you at all or if you’ve written a sonnet, I’d love to read it. These posts inspire me to return to the roots of why I do this: to share my passion for reading and writing creatively with all of you. Thank you to everyone who reads this for stopping by. Happy writing, poets!

Sources:

Shakespeare, William. “Sonnet 18”. The Norton Anthology of English Literature: Major Authors, edited by Julia Reidhead, W. W. Norton & Company, 2013, pp. 549-550.

Definitions:

Allegory: A poem or story that can be interpreted to have a secondary or alternate meaning.

Allusion: An indirect reference to something. 

Alliteration: Close repetition of consonant sounds, usually at the beginning of words.

Assonance: Close repetition of vowel sounds.

Consonance: Close repetition of consonant sounds anywhere in the words.

Couplet: Two-line stanza, usually a rhyming pair.

Dissonance: A disruption of the harmony of sounds within the poem or line.

Foot: A unit of measurement in a line of poetry.

Line: A unit of measurement. Made up of feet. 

Meter: The rhythmic measure of a line. Ex. Pentameter. 

Metaphor: Comparing one thing to another without using “like” or “as”. Direct comparison.

Repetition: Repeating specific words or phrases within a poem.

Rhyme: The repetition of similar-sounding words, usually at the ends of lines. There are many kinds of rhymes.

Rhythm: Rhythm comes from the patterns of short, long, stressed, and unstressed syllables in a line, stanza, or poem.

Refrain: The repetition of a line with a poem. 

Stanza: A group of lines that together make up a unit of measurement in a poem. Similar to a paragraph in prose writing and usually separated by a space.

Haiku: A three-line poem with a syllable count of 5-7-5.

Caesura: A word that shows a turn in a poem. Kireji in haikus.

Shakespearean Sonnet: Fourteen-line poem ending with a heroic/rhyming couplet. The rhyme scheme of ABAB CDCD EFEF GG.

Petrarchan Sonnet: Fourteen-line poem comprising an octave and a contrasting sestet. The octave has a rhyme scheme of ABBAABBA, and the sestet has a rhyme scheme of CDCDCD or CDECDE.

Heroic/Rhyming Couplet: Two lines of the same length that rhyme and complete a thought. The last words of both lines must rhyme out loud, but do not need to have the same end spelling.

Octave: Eight-line stanza with any rhyme scheme.

Sestet: Six-line stanza with any rhyme scheme.

Iambic: An unstressed syllable followed by a stressed syllabic that makes up a foot.

Pentameter: A line made up of five feet or beats.

Iambic Pentameter: Five pairs (or feet) of unstressed and stressed syllables. Normally found in sonnets.