The sonnet

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POETIC FORMS & GENRES The Sonnet & Other Fixed Forms Sarah Law Poetic Forms & Genres

description

Introduction to the sonnet and other fixed forms of poetry.

Transcript of The sonnet

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POETIC FORMS & GENRES

The Sonnet & Other Fixed Forms

Sarah Law Poetic Forms & Genres

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FIXED FORMS A poem in fixed form is controlled

as to its length; and it may have other restrictions as well, such as particular rhyme or metrical schemes, or line-lengths, or the repetition of lines.

Fixed Forms include the limerick and the haiku

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HAIKU A 17 syllable poem divided into 3 lines,

the first consisting of 5 syllables, the second of 7, and the third of 5. Modern example:

Rain turns creatorall the dandelions explodelike supernovae(Michael Hartnett)

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ON TO THE SONNET• The word comes from the Italian word sonetto,

meaning a little sound or song,• Originated in 12thC Italy based on old folk

song stanza• First recognisable sonnets associated with

‘Courtly Love’• Petrarch 1304-74• Sir Thomas Wyatt 1502-42, Henry Howard

1517-47• Shakespeare, Spenser, Sir Philip Sidney:

Elizabethan Sonnet

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OTHER SONNET THEMES Religious sonnets: John Donne, George

Herbert, Gerard Manley Hopkins Political sonnet – Shelley ‘England in

1819’ Society – Wordsworth ‘Upon

Westminster Bridge’ War- Owen ‘Anthem for Doomed Youth’ Sonnets popular in most eras but NOT

the Neoclassical era

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SONNET PATTERNS a poem of 14 lines in iambic

pentameter, usually set out as one stanza, and following a complex rhyme scheme

‘the sonnet is the ultimate stanza, an enclosed place of words alive with currents of energy and places to rest.’ (Annie Finch)

‘a small square poem...a box for your dreams’. (Don Patterson)

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THE ITALIAN OR PETRARCHAN SONNET• Octave A First Quatrain

BBAA Second QuatrainBBA

TURN (‘Volta’)----------------------------------------

Sestet C C C Variations for sestetD D DE C EC D CD C EE D D

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‘On First Looking into Chapman’s Homer’ (Keats) Much have I travelled 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-browed 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 eyesHe stared at the Pacific, and all his men Looked at each other with a wild surmise – Silent, upon a peak in Darien.

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Unholy Sonnet Mark Jarman   After the praying, after the hymn-singing, After the sermon’s trenchant commentary On the world’s ills, which make ours secondary, After communion, after the hand wringing, And after peace descends upon us, bringing Our eyes up to regard the sanctuary And how the light swords through it, and how, scary In their sheer numbers, motes of dust ride, clinging

There is, as doctors say about some pain, Discomfort knowing that despite your prayers, Your listening and rejoicing, your small part In this communal stab at coming clean, There is one stubborn remnant of your cares Intact. There is still murder in your heart. 

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THE VOLTA

Some critics connect the Volta with general tendencies in art, nature and maths e.g.

Fibonacci sequence and Golden Ratio (8:13) A change of mood or tone about two thirds

into a poem, piece of music or painting?

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PETRARCHAN VARIATIONS –E.G. DIFFERENT RHYME SCHEMES FOR THE TWO QUATRAINS:

Gwendolyn Brooks’s ‘The Rites for Cousin Vit’: Carried her unprotesting out the doorKicked back the casket-stand. But it can’t hold her,That stuff and satin aiming to enfold her,The lid’s contrition nor the bolts before.Oh oh. Too much. Too much. Even now, surmise,She rises in sunshine. There she goesBack to the bars she knew and the reposeIn love-rooms and the things in people’s eyes.Too vital and too squeaking. Must emerge.Even now, she does the snake-hips with a hiss,Slaps the bad wine across her shantung, talksOf pregnancy, guitars and bridgework, walksIn parks or alleys, comes haply on the vergeOf happiness, haply hysterics. Is.

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THE SHAKESPERIAN SONNET• A First Quatrain• B• A• B• C Second Quatrain• D• C• D• (TURN-------------------?)• E Third Quatrain• F• E• F• G Concluding Couplet • G

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E.G. SHAKESPEARE SONNET 66Tired with all these, for restful death I cry, -As to behold desert a beggar born,And needy nothing trimm’d in jollity,And purest faith unhappily forsworn,And gilded honour shamefully misplac’d,And maiden virtue rudely strumpeted,And right perfection wrongfully disgrac’d,And strength by limping sway disabled,And art made tongue-tied by authority,And folly (doctor-like) controlling skill,And simple truth miscall’d simplicity,And captive good attending captain ill: Tired with all these, from these would I be gone, Save that to die I leave my love alone.

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SHAKESPEARE SONNET 18Shall 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 dimm'd;And every fair from fair sometime declines,By chance or nature's changing course untrimm'd;But thy eternal summer shall not fadeNor 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.

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SPENSERIAN SONNET: ABAB, BCBC, CDCD, EE

One day I wrote her name upon the strand, But came the waves and washed 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 eek my name be wiped out likewise. Not so (quoth I), let baser things devise To die in dust, but you shall live by fame: My verse your virtues 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. (Spenser,

Amoretti 2)Sarah Law Poetic Forms & Genres

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MEREDITHIAN SONNET: 16 LINESABBA, CDDC, EFFE, GHHG

George Meredith, from Modern Love (1862)By this he knew she wept with waking eyes: That, at his hand's light quiver by her head, The strange low sobs that shook their common bed Were called into her with a sharp surprise, And strangely mute, like little gasping snakes, Dreadfully venomous to him. She lay Stone-still, and the long darkness flowed away With muffled pulses. Then, as midnight makes Her giant heart of Memory and Tears Drink the pale drug of silence, and so beat Sleep's heavy measure, they from head to feet Were moveless, looking through their dead black years, By vain regret scrawled over the blank wall. Like sculptured effigies they might be seen Upon their marriage-tomb, the sword between; Each wishing for the sword that severs all. Sarah Law Poetic Forms & Genres

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CURTAL SONNET: LIKE PETRARCHAN BUT PROPORTION OF 6:4 ½ INSTEAD OF 8:6

 “Pied Beauty,” Gerard Manly Hopkins (1877)

 

 Glory be to God for dappled things

 For skies of couple colour as a brindled cow;

 For rosemoles all in stipple upon trout that swim

 Fresh firecoal chestnut falls; finches’ wings;

 Landscape plotted and pieced

 Fold, fallow and trim.

 All things counter, original, spare, strange;

 Whatever is fickle, freckled (who knows how?)

 With swift, slow; sweet, sour; adazzle, dim

 He fathers forth whose beauty is past change;

 Praise him.  Sarah Law Poetic Forms & Genres

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‘THE SONNET-BALLAD’GWENDOLYN BROOKS (1949)Oh mother, mother, where is happiness? They took my lover’s tallness off to war, Left me lamenting. Now I cannot guess What I can use an empty heart-cup for. He won’t be coming back here any more. Some day the war will end, but, oh, I knew When he went walking grandly out that door That my sweet love would have to be untrue. Would have to be untrue. Would have to court Coquettish death, whose impudent and strange Possessive arms and beauty (of a sort) Can make a hard man hesitate—and change. And he will be the one to stammer, “Yes.” Oh mother, mother, where is happiness? 

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OTHER SONNET VARIATIONS• Caudate (tail) sonnet:  a sonnet of any type,

followed by an extra couplet • Chained or linked sonnet:  each line starts with

last word of previous line • Continuous or reiterating sonnet: uses only one

or two rhymes in the entire sonnet • Crown of sonnets:  a sequence of sonnets, each of

which begins with the last line of the previous sonnet • Interwoven sonnet:  includes both medial (middle

of line) and end rhyme • Miltonic sonnet:  an Italian sonnet with little or no

break in sense at the volta, creating a gradual culmination of the idea

• Retrograde sonnet: reads the same backwards as forwards

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CONTEMPORARY VARIATIONS INCLUDE: Unrhymed metrical sonnets Rhymed non-metrical sonnets Sonnets of various lengths that keep

rhyme and meter E.g. American poet Robert Lowell wrote

three collections of unrhymed sonnets in the 1960s and 70s:

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History, Robert Lowell   History has to live with what was here, clutching and close to fumbling all we had— it is so dull and gruesome how we die, unlike writing, life never finishes. Abel was finished; death is not remote, a flash-in-the-pan electrifies the skeptic, his cows crowding like skulls against high-voltage wire, his baby crying all night like a new machine. As in our Bibles, white-faced, predatory, the beautiful, mist-drunken hunter’s moon ascends— a child could give it a face: two holes, two holes, my eyes, my mouth, between them a skull’s no-nose— O there’s a terrifying innocence in my face drenched with the silver salvage of the mornfrost. 

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OTHER FIXED FORMS: THE VILLANELLEDo not go gentle into that good night,

Old age should burn and rave at close of day;

Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

 

Though wise men at their end know dark is right,

Because their words had forked no lightning they

Do not go gentle into that good night.

 

Good men, the last wave by, crying how bright

Their frail deeds might have danced in a green bay,

Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

 

Wild men who caught and sang the sun in flight,

And learn, too late, they grieved it on its way,

Do not go gentle into that good night.

 

Grave men, near death, who see with blinding sight

Blind eyes could blaze like meteors and be gay,

Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

 

And you, my father, there on the sad height,

Curse, bless, me now with your fierce tears, I pray.

Do not go gentle into that good night.

Rage, rage against the dying of the light. (Dylan Thomas) Sarah Law Poetic Forms & Genres

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FIXED AND SEMI-FIXED FORMS Fixed Forms include : Haiku, Limerick,

Sonnet, Villanelle, Sestina Semi-Fixed Forms (no prescribed length)

include: Pantoum, Terza Rima Further investigation in the Norton

Book of Poetic Forms edited by Strand & Boland.

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