Defining the Sonnet

These days, any 14 line poem could be considered a sonnet. As with all poetry, the rules of form are mere suggestions. Some great sonnets are 12 or 15 or 18 lines, defined instead by meter and rhyme. Once a poetic pattern gets recognized by critics, it gets old quick.

The sonnet grew out of Latin and Italian iambic pentameter verse. In English, Shakespeare wrote such famous sonnets that one of the two oldest branches of the sonnet is named for him. His sonnets use a rotating rhyme scheme: abab, cdcd, efef, gg. The Shakespearean sonnet is generally printed as a single stanza, condensing three quatrains (four line stanzas) and a couplet into a single verse. While rhyme scheme is negotiable, Shakespearian Sonnets end with couplets. And that’s not always true.

The sonnet is named for the Italian poet Petrarch, originally introduced to England by Thomas Wyatt in the 16th century. Translations of Petrarch’s verses into the relatively rhyme deficit English language by Henry Howard evolved the Shakespearean sonnet’s rhyme scheme.

The Petrarchan Sonnet established the 14 line sonnet structure with its sing song rhyme: abba, abba, cdecde or cdcdcd. These sonnets are often divided into two stanzas, 8 and 6 lines each.

One of my favorite modern books of sonnets is Habeas Corpus by Jill McDonough. It explores the history of the death penalty in America by describing 50 executions.

One of my favorite sonnets is Ozymandias by 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.”

Explore the Origins of English Poetry through the Heroic Couplet

Rhymes (especially rhymes at the ends of lines) are a trademark of traditional English poetry. When two consecutive lines in a poem rhyme, that’s a couplet. The heroic couplet adds a steady beat. Take for example this line from “Couplets on Wit” by a master of the form, Alexander Pope:

Now wits gain praise by copying other wits
As one Hog lives on what another shits.

Heroic couplets use the “iambic pentameter” rhythm, meaning each line has five measures (called feet), with two beats (syllables) per measure. The beats are in iambic order, which is generally considered to be a normal speaking cadence. The second syllable is always stressed, while the first hangs on lightly before (now WITS gain PRAISE by COPYing OTHer WITS).

Figuring out the rhythm for a poem is more difficult than seeing the rhyme. Generally I’ll write whatever comes in my head naturally and then revise it. I read back over and change words to make them more precise and metered. This process is a little like molding clay. To really understand meter and rhythm, find a better explanation at the Poetry Foundation (or wherever) and read poetry.

In print, Chaucer pioneered the heroic couplet with his epic Canterbury Tales, but it probably existed before him. The couplet appears in other poetic forms, like the sonnet, and it is one of the oldest poetic devices to appear in printed Romantic languages.

If you want to better understand the form, here are a couple of good places to start:

Dryden established the Heroic Couplet in the late 17th century: http://www.bartleby.com/218/0912.html

Alexander Pope perfected the form in the early 18th century, and it’s never gotten better than this: https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/44899/an-essay-on-man-epistle-i

Pope's poetry can get difficult, but he often wrote to destroy Enlightenment era elitism: http://poetry.eserver.org/rape-of-the-lock.html