At its core, poetry is an arrangement of words and sounds into forms. The main difference between poetry and fiction is that a poem is not just words describing a happening but a complex composition of words and sounds in which the position of the sounds, their repetition, and the way they appear on the page have a meaning of their own.
We poets can choose how "to pack" our words into poems. There are who choose to rhyme, and there are who don't; There are who decide to write long, unbroken poems, and there are who prefer to break them into stanzas; There are who choose to punctuate their poems, and there are don't punctuate at all; etc. Every poem is packed differently, and every poet has their own unique style.
Nevertheless, there are common "packages" that poets across history chose to use again and again. These forms are so elegant and impressive that many poets felt the need to write using them to become part of their movement.
One of those forms is the sonnet.
What's A Sonnet?
A sonnet is a form of poetry with 14 lines, a rigid rhyming scheme, a fixed meter, and a turn at the end (also called a volta). Let's break down this definition.
14 Lines
A sonnet is composed of 14 lines, where, in most cases, these lines are all the same length.
The length of a line is not measured by the space it takes on the page or the number of letters composing it but by its number of syllables. For example, the words House and Drumkit have different numbers of letters (5 and 7) but the same number of syllables (2). From our perspective, they are of the same length.
The number of syllables in a line is usually equivalent to how long it would take to read it out loud. Having all lines of the same length ensures that all lines are read steadily.
Rigid Rhyming Scheme
The rhyming lines in a sonnet are predetermined, meaning we can know in advance which lines will rhyme and which are not.
However, over the years, there have been four common rhyming schemes that poets used:
Petrarchean Sonnet (also known as Italian Sonnet): Named after the Italian poet of the 14th century Francesco Petrarca (anglicized as Petrarch). Petrarch wrote his sonnets in the abba abba cde cde rhyming scheme, meaning that the first, fourth, fifth, and eighth lines are all rhyming with each other, and the second, third, fifth, and sixth lines are also all rhyming with each other. The last six lines, also called sestet, rhyme in pairs, but the order of the rhyming can change. Therefore, the sestet might have rhyming schemes such as cde cde, ccd dee, cdc ede, etc. Modern poets who use the Italian sonnet tend to flex the rhyming scheme by allowing themselves to use different rhymes in the second stanza. In that way, the rhyming scheme comes abba cddc def def.
Spenserian Sonnet: The Spenserian Sonnet is named after the 16th-century English poet Edmund Spenser. Spenser's rhyming scheme was abab bcbc cdcd ee. The last two lines are called a couplet or volta; we will discuss them later in this article. Note that this rhyming scheme is more rigid than Petrarch's since it has two sets of four rhyming lines, and the other three lines don't have the freedom of moment that Petrarch's sestet had.
Shakespearean sonnet (also known as English Sonnet): The Shakespearean sonnet is named after the famous 16th-century English poet and playwright William Shakespeare. Shakespeare's rhyming scheme is abab cdcd efef gg. On the one hand, it is similar to Spenser's sonnet, including the couplet at its end. On the other hand, there is a relaxation of the rhyming scheme (the rhyming is between pairs of lines instead of sets of four lines)
Pushkinean sonnet: Named after 19th-century poet Alexander Pushkin, one of the greatest Russian poets. The Pushkinean sonnet's rhyming scheme is abab ccdd effe gg, which Pushkin used in his well-known book Eugene Onegin, a fictional story told as a series of sonnets. Here, there is also a couplet at the end of the sonnet.
Fixed Meter
I can say many things about meter, and I'll probably write a few blog posts about it, but generally, a meter is a fixed form of stresses in a line. Here is an example of a metered line:
Today, I went to see my mother's house.
As you can see, I marked the stressed syllables in bold above. You can see that there is one unstressed syllable between every two stressed syllables. The meter in this line is stress, unstress, stress, unstress, stress, unstress, stress, unstress, stress, unstress — five stressed syllables and five unstressed syllables, 10 in total. This particular meter is called an Iambic Pentameter. Remember this term because we will use it in our next blog post!
By the way, here is an unmetered line:
Today, I went to visit my mother’s house.
You can see that the line starts with a meter (one unstressed syllable followed by one stress syllable), but there is an additional unstressed syllable that sneaks into it. Even though these two examples say the same thing, the first is metered, and the second is not. That means that using a meter is a choice made by the poet. It doesn't happen by itself spontaneously.
A turn
Remember the volta, the last two lines of the Spenserian, Shakespearean, and Puskinean sonnets? Usually, there is a turn in those two lines, meaning that something happens in the sonnet that flips the meaning of the poem or gives it a different perspective.
A turn can also occur in the Italian sonnet in its sestet, but this is almost mandatory in the English sonnet, especially in Shakespeare's sonnets. Shakespeare forced himself to add this turn to each of his 154 sonnets.
Give a chance to the sonnet
So many rules, so many limitations, why do I need it? Can't I just write "normal" poems?
I'll let Wordsworth answer, how surprising, in the sonnet form:
Scorn not the Sonnet; Critic, you have frowned,
Mindless of its just honours; with this key
Shakespeare unlocked his heart; the melody
Of this small lute gave ease to Petrarch's wound;
A thousand times this pipe did Tasso sound;
With it Camöens soothed an exile's grief;
The sonnet glittered a gay myrtle leaf
Amid the cypress with which Dante crowned
His visionary brow: a glow-worm lamp,
It cheered mild Spenser, called from Faery-land
To struggle through dark ways; and, when a damp
Fell round the path of Milton, in his hand
The Thing became a trumpet; whence he blew
Soul-animating strains—alas, too few!
(Scorn not the sonnet, 1827)
The sonnet is a fascinating form of poetry. Its reduction, gentleness, and the preciseness of its line building all create a sense of elevation. There is something divine about a well-crafted sonnet that cannot be explained. When you choose to write a poem in the sonnet form, you are participating in a 700-year tradition in which thousands of poets have taken part. Among the most well-known poets of this family are William Shakespeare, William Wordsworth, John Berryman, John Milton, Sylvia Plath, and many more. From the lesser-known poets who wrote sonnets, you can find the author of these lines.
The world of poetry is full and rich, and there is so much to learn! Every day that I read poetry, I learn something new about it.
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