I write some poetry from time to time,
And gravitate to forms, I must confess.
I crave some meter and a bit of rhyme.
Free verse can be illusory progress.
The sonnet with its prescribed fourteen lines
Presents a special challenge to be met,
A game that Frost, my hero, thus defines:
No point in playing tennis with no net.
Ah, freedom! It’s a lofty modern goal.
And rules? Meant to be broken, don’t you see?
Let’s shed the last vestiges of stiff control
And revel in a life and art that’s free!
But rules are guides, not just constraints or chains.
Throw all out, and mere anarchy remains.
For those of you not familiar with what it’s like to try to write a sonnet (and I’d guess most of you aren’t), please take my word for it when I say that it is really a very demanding form of poetry.
But fun, like a game with rules. If you like to solve double-crostics or crossword puzzles you might have a taste of what I’m talking about.
The form I follow in the above sonnet is the basic Shakespearean or Elizabethan one. Fourteen lines of iambic pentameter (five pairs of stressed/unstressed syllables per line), rhyme scheme abab cdcd efef gg. The convention of this type of sonnet also involves setting up a theme in the first eight lines, moving in a slightly different direction for the next six, including sort of summing-up or even reversal in the final couplet.
That’s a lot of rules, to be sure. That’s why Frost’s likening the writing of formal poetry to a sport such as tennis is apropos: the point is to do it well despite the constraints, and to make of it something beautiful and free. Having no rules would spoil the game.
My sonnet here is not one of the greatest examples of the art, to be sure. I wrote it in about fifteen minutes, if that’s any excuse.
Some of the finest examples are to be found in Shakespeare, as one might expect from someone who gave his name to a popular subset of the form. More recent (although not all that recent) famous sonnet-crafters have been Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Edna St. Vincent Millay and Gerard Manley Hopkins (what’s up with all these lengthy poet names, anyway?).
The sonnet is experiencing a small modern revival after a period of being way out of fashion. The New Formalists (the neocons of the poetry world?) have led the movement.
Some of my favorite sonnets are the subtle ones in which you barely notice the form is being used, and yet all the rules have been followed. Here’s an example from Archibald Macleish (first published in 1928):
THE END OF THE WORLD
Quite unexpectedly, as Vasserot
The armless ambidextrian was lighting
A match between his great and second toe,
And Ralph the lion was engaged in biting
The neck of Madame Sossman while the drum
Pointed, and Teeny was about to cough
In waltz-time swinging Jocko by the thumb
Quite unexpectedly the top blew off:
And there, there overhead, there, there hung over
Those thousands of white faces, those dazed eyes,
There in the starless dark, the poise, the hover,
There with vast wings across the cancelled skies,
There in the sudden blackness the black pall
Of nothing, nothing, nothing—nothing at all.
Previously a lifelong Democrat, born in New York and living in New England, surrounded by liberals on all sides, I've found myself slowly but surely 
February 13th, 2008 at 2:56 pm
NYC Psychologist Killed In Meat Cleaver Attack
NEW YORK (CBS) ― Residents on the Upper East Side were in shock Tuesday night after 56-year-old psychologist Kathryn Faughey was hacked to death with a meat cleaver inside an office building on E. 79th Street and York Avenue shortly after 9 p.m., police said.
Neo — I hope this wasn’t one of your colleagues that you knew.
February 13th, 2008 at 2:56 pm
I recall reading a book – Wrinkle in Time? – that put forth the sonnet to demonstrate a societal ideal. The structure is a rigid one, but the words are your own.
February 13th, 2008 at 3:13 pm
No nyomythus, there are a lot of therapists in NY and I know very few of them.
That said, it’s a dreadful thing. Fortunately this sort of horrible incident is very rare. But it is always a possibility when a person works with extremely disturbed people.
February 13th, 2008 at 3:14 pm
Bard: I like that. Interesting thought.
February 13th, 2008 at 3:43 pm
simple poetry;
ideas conveyed in rhyme—
haiku is preferred.
February 13th, 2008 at 4:01 pm
Neo,
That’s very fine.
Another virtue — of the sonnet especially, but of verse in general — is that a fixed structure facilitates memory. Our local, sadly deceased, Thom Gunn famously defined poetry as “memorable speech…”
With that in mind, here’s one I wrote for my wife’s father when he was dying:
Mowing the Field, I Spare Convolvulus
Not only for those lovely other names,
Bindweed and Morning Glory, but the fact
Of its appearing yearly in the same
Small patch of dry hardscrabble, and its tact,
As shown by a refusal to expand,
So far, beyond its present small domain,
To cultivated corners of my land,
Pleasant white bells and wildly looping green
Stems choking other growth. Attar of rose
Is sweeter than this green scent, and lilies
Bloom lovelier but, dust filling my nose,
Sweat stinging my eyes, I’m charmed, quietly.
Why mourning? Glory, spreading like a weed,
Covers the hills, kills thought, scatters its seed.
Jamie Irons
February 13th, 2008 at 4:05 pm
Sorry, the comment field made it difficult to get the line breaks right, and there doesn’t seem to be a preview function.
;-(
The first line ends with “names,” and the second line starts with “Bindweed and ends with “fact.”
Jamie Irons
February 13th, 2008 at 4:06 pm
Let’s give it a final, college try:
…and the second line starts with “Bindweed and ends with “fact.”
Jamie Irons
February 13th, 2008 at 4:11 pm
Jamie: Since it’s my blog, I have the power to fix the line breaks in your beautiful sonnet. Which I’ve done.
February 13th, 2008 at 4:17 pm
Jamie: I wonder if you’re familiar with the British singing duo Flanders and Swann, who had some records and shows and even a Broadway stint back in the 50s and 60s. I was raised on that sort of thing, and remember their song “Misalliance.” I reproduce it here because it is a song (although comic, in this case) about the very same plants you reference in your sonnet.
Plus, as you’ll see, the lyrics are very apropos to this blog.
The fragrant honeysuckle spirals clockwise to the sun,
And many other creepers do the same.
But some climb anti-clockwise, the bindweed does, for one,
Or Convolvulus, to give her proper name.
Rooted on either side a door, one of each species grew,
And raced towards the window-ledge above.
Each corkscrewed to the lintel in the only way it knew,
Where they stopped, touched tendrils, smiled, and fell in love.
Said the right-handed honeysuckle to the left-handed bindweed,
“Oh, let us get married, if our parents don’t mind, we’d
Be loving and inseparable, inextricably entwined, we’d
Live happily ever after” said the honeysuckle to the bindweed.
To the honeysuckle’s parents it came as a shock.
“The bindweeds,” they cried, “are inferior stock!
They’re uncultivated, of breeding bereft,
We twine to the right and they twine to the left.”
Said the anti-clockwise bindweed to the clockwise honeysuckle,
“We’d better start saving, many a mickle macks a muckle,
Then run away for a honeymoon and hope that our luck’ll
Take a turn for the better” said the bindweed to the honeysuckle.
A bee who was passing remarked to them then,
“I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again,
Consider your offshoots, if offshoots there be,
They’ll never receive any blessing from me”.
“Poor little sucker, how will it learn,
When it is climbing, which way to turn?
Right, left, what a disgrace,
Or it may go straight up and fall flat on its face!”
Said the right-hand-thread honeysuckle to the left-hand-thread bindweed,
“It seems they’re against us, all fate has combined.
Oh my darling, oh my darling, oh my darling Colombine,
Thou art lost and gone forever, we shall never intertwine”.
Together, they found them, the very next day,
They had pulled up their roots and just shrivelled away.
Deprived of that freedom for which we must fight,
To veer to the left or to veer to the right!
February 13th, 2008 at 4:31 pm
FORNEO:
The lady doth protest too much, it’s hard;
We read so much about the traveled world
Yet troubled, sleep with banners tightly furled
Afraid to venture far beyond the yard
In foreign lands of blue and red are found
Such creatures who would recreate the earth
In twisted mirrored image lacking mirth
Where empty suits and cackled hags abound
What then is right for voters left to do?
When politics aside shall make men mad
And children rise to join the flavored fad
Obamanation settles into view
Some cry for ‘magined party purity
My lone ideal: border security!
-cp
Many MANY years ago, I wrote around 45-50 sonnets during a 3 month period. During the latter part of the binge and for several weeks thereafter, my friends remarked that I continued to speak in iambicpentameter.
BTW, doesn’t Forneo sound like a wonderfully decadent place to visit? If only it wasn’t just the politicians screwing you. -cp
February 13th, 2008 at 7:13 pm
Neo,
Thanks for fixing that problem!
No, I was unaware of the group (and now I want to know all about them!), but what a wonderful song! Supremely, democratically (small “d”), and pluripotentially right on, baby!
It calls out diversity, ambidextrously speaking.
Our Convolvulus arvensis, our local wild bindweed, is considered a troublesome weed by vintners and others, and is unfairly characterized as a “noxious” weed (these things always depend on one’s point of view, I suppose) but it’s hard not to like it.
Actually, in the west we are blest by numerous troublesome, lovely and fascinating weeds!
Jamie Irons
February 13th, 2008 at 7:26 pm
Jamie Irons, what a lovely poem.
February 13th, 2008 at 7:51 pm
Neo,
You wrote:
This line evokes one of Frost later (and under-appreciated) sonnets, entitled Etherealizing. You can find it here.
February 13th, 2008 at 8:14 pm
Thank you, mrs whatsit, you are very generous.
Jamie Irons
February 13th, 2008 at 11:13 pm
Roses are red
Violets are blue,
There’s no doubts
Now about who,
The dims’l be
running in 2008,
The Manchurian Candidate!
February 14th, 2008 at 12:40 am
Nice poem. I am fascinated by the added layer of hyperlinks in the body of the poem. Even before following them to see where they led, the mere knowledge of another hidden message or reference built interest. Perhaps ‘internet poetry’ could be a whole new branch of work.
The freedom that structure brings is a fascinating topic. Structure begets new ideas and surprises, anarchy begets anarchy. We are creatures of response and reaction. Our world pushes stimuli on us and we push back with action. It is life itself. The pure ‘freedom’ of anarchy is death itself.
February 14th, 2008 at 12:49 am
Bird Dog sent me a link to this very funny sort-of-sonnet by Billy Collins.
February 14th, 2008 at 2:15 am
The Modern Sonnet
The 21st century has seen a strong resurgence of the sonnet form, as there are many sonnets now appearing in print and on the Internet. Richard Vallance publishes the Canadian quarterly journal Sonnetto Poesia (ISSN 1705-452) which is dedicated to the sonnet, villanelle, and quatrain forms, as well as the monthly Vallance Review on historical and contemporary sonneteers. Michael R. Burch publishes The HyperTexts and there are sonnets from well-known poets on his site. Phillis Levin edited The Penguin Book of the Sonnet in 2001, including historical as well as contemporary exemplars. William Baer has also recently published 150 Contemporary Sonnets (University of Evansville Press 2005).
Vikram Seth’s 1986 novel The Golden Gate is written in 690 14-line stanzas, similar to sonnets, but in actuality an adaptation of the stanza invented by the Russian poet Alexander Pushkin for his novel in verse “Eugene Onegin.” Marilyn Hacker’s Love, Death, and the Changing of the Seasons is a novel in true sonnets (with villanelles and roundels thrown in for good measure) that came out in the same year.
February 14th, 2008 at 2:20 am
Once upon a time there was a man who would make a rhyme,
but now knows a rhyme alone is just a sign
of thinking overtime to sound sublime,
now neo-neocon has taught us the sonnet is a sign
of such greater depth and sum, that less might only be inept, though fun….
February 14th, 2008 at 8:20 am
It’s lovely to start my day unexpectedly reading poetry instead of mere prosaic commentary. Hats off to Neo, Jamie Irons and Cold Pizza!
February 14th, 2008 at 11:53 am
There’s a lot of talent here on neo-neocon’s wonderful website.
February 14th, 2008 at 1:40 pm
Some people say that the rules restrict creativity. I just point to the sonnets of Shakespeare and the fugues of Bach.
Jamie makes a good point about “facilitating memory”. Not too long ago, schoolkids were given lots of poems to memorize. More than a few still stick with me (“T’was brillig…”, “Into the valley of death/rode the six hundred”, Kilmer’s “Tree”, some of Kipling…
I’ve always remembered [most of] G. M. Hopkins’ “The Grandeur of God”. The imagery is remarkable.
Long about the 1960s or so, we discovered that schoolkids could remember many lines of then-popular songs – but not much else.
Maybe it’s the structure that makes poetry easiesr to remember, but I think it’s also the imagery – the poetic part.
February 14th, 2008 at 1:57 pm
ZZMike: About memorizing poetry—I wrote a post on that a while back.
February 14th, 2008 at 2:57 pm
Bravo! For both the original post and the responses! Expertise in language is invaluable, not just for communication but also for simple thoughts. The greater the mastery of language, the more profound your thoughts may be.
Unfortunately, I didn’t realize this until well after my school years, so all my English classes were dismissed as a waste of time. “If only I knew then what I know now” sums things up nicely.
February 14th, 2008 at 3:17 pm
Frost?
zzzzzzzzzzzz
February 14th, 2008 at 3:45 pm
Frosting my English course:
Some say this class will end in “A”s
Some say in “C”s
From what I test on other days
I’d like to think that I’d make “A”s
But if it brought me to my knees
I think I know enough of school
To say that for my passing, “C”s
Are also cool
And I’d be pleased -cp
February 14th, 2008 at 7:10 pm
cold pizza: I like your style.
February 16th, 2008 at 2:05 pm
The sonnet is the sudoku of words.