"Form Poetry: The Sonnet"

[SterlingPeony]

~Hello Emerging Poets~

Please join us at our

*Friday Night Social*

Friday, June 25th at 9 PM (EST)

Please introduce yourself and tell us:

Have you ever written a sonnet?
If so, what was your experience?

What advice would you give to fellow poets attempting this classic poetic format?

[SterlingPeony]

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 dimm'd;
And every fair from fair sometime declines,
By chance, or nature's changing course untrimm'd;
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 man can breath, or eyes can see,
So long lives this, and this gives life to thee.

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A sonnet is a lyric poem with a prescribed form.

A sonnet has 14 lines, and the lines are always iambic pentameter, that is, they consist normally of ten syllables with every second syllable accented.

The rhyme scheme for an English sonnet is abab, cdcd, efef, and gg.

We indicate rhyme schemes in poetry by assigning a letter of the alphabet to each rhyme sound.

An English sonnet has three quatrains (stanzas of four lines) followed by a couplet (two lines in iambic pentameter ended with the same sound).

In each quatrain, normally a question will be raised, and the couplet usually draws a conclusion or presents a solution to the problems outlined earlier in the poem

[Vasile]

Hello everyone! My name is Vasile Baghiu, 38 years, and I am from Romania. I am sorry I could not be in time at the discussion, but the Internet connection made me problems… I have been writing poetry for almost 20 years, and when I say this I suddenly feel myself as old as the sonnet is. This is just my little contribution to your discussion. I find this evening’s topic very interesting and I will try to say something upon it. Though the sonnet may be considered as the poetry’s soul, at a time when many poets write in blank verse and free verse, going back to sonnet might seem unfashionable. Actually, in my opinion, writing sonnets is a reverence that we can do for the tradition. I will not tell you how lovely and mysteriously some sonnets of the well-known poetry’s masters sounds. Neither I would tell you how brilliant this form is, especially when is accompanied by a powerful vision and a special sensitivity. I will not tell you anything about these things that we can find out in books and dictionaries. What might be interesting for this particular discussion is maybe what is my own experience regarding sonnet. It is this what you expect, in fact. I always felt sonnet as a challenge. Thus, I tried once, during one entire year, to write only sonnets. I succeeded to write a book, but I could not be content with it, since sonnet was then considered old fashioned in the literary mediums. I published only very few of them in a magazine, maybe I also read one at a lecture with a strange impact, and that was all. Since then, my poor sonnets have been ling in a box among other manuscripts meant to posterity. That was anyway a very strong experience, because I could see how the liberty of the words is able to work within a precise form. And really it works, but only after a great effort. Now, I like only to read sonnets, and Shakespeare is by far my favorite. There is also an amazing Romanian poet, Mihai Eminescu, who lived in the 19th century and who calls me back to sonnet time to time. As a bracket, maybe I will show you sometimes one of his sonnets in an acceptable translation. Therefore, now, I do not write sonnet any more. I do not, unfortunately, but if I go back to its beauty, to its patina, then I will know that I will never must write sonnets in that classical way, unless I want to be considered as an imitator. Writing sonnets today means to combine the classic form with a modern substance, and that is not easy at all. You all know this, as I have noticed that some of you have tried it, and sometimes quite successfully, as much as I could notice, of course, from outside the English language. Putting a new and modern stuff in an old pattern is one of the hardiest attempts for a poet. What might prevent him or her to succeed is the contrast itself, since this contrast can make us laugh. The humor effect of this combination is the main risk. It is as if someone wearing smoking would speak, for instance, in a very serious and affected manner about how the rolls is used by nowadays teenagers. I think we must be careful with this matter and also with many others. On the other hand, writing and reading sonnets is a suited way both to learn to write and to read poems in free verse style. It is my personal experience from which I have learned this. We will never be able to value the free verses if we do not have any knowledge or experience in sonnet. I could say that for me sonnet is a perpetual lesson, one very precious. Thank you to all for giving the chance to be part of this poetical emotion.