Poems at the Poetry Free-for-all - 14 lined poems written in iambic pentameter with a rhyme scheme

Julie

11-30-2001, 09:49 PM

Andrea, dear one, I have nearly gnawed my way through a desk thinking about these sorts of questions.

Here's essentially what I've come up with:

Sonnets have 14 lines, IP, rhyme, and a volta, except when they don't.

The problem with defining something like a sonnet is that there is always a bleeding edge on all sides of the definition.

14 lines
IP
rhyme scheme
sonnet structure

Those are the four main components of sonnets, I think. If you have all four, you definitely have a sonnet. If you lose any one of the three, you can still have a sonnet (in my opinion). Only two? Probably not. Only one? What's the point?

The most significant feature? Erm... well... ask me tomorrow, though I think I would argue for rhyme. I could definitely understand the argument for meter. 14 lines? Weaker. Rhetorical structure? No, I don't think so.

Julie

Note: I'm just using IP as shorthand for regularized meter.

[This message has been edited by Julie (edited 11-30-2001).]

Andrea345

11-30-2001, 09:59 PM

oh, Julie,
I like the way you think. I was coming over here with a warning that NOBODY had better post any pieces "published" on the net. I wanted dead people behind this one.

But now, now, you've made it all so much better. My desk has only been gnawed on for a week.

Howard & Dunc & gecian were having so much fun, Julie. They were tormenting me for pleasure. I'm sure of it. I won't make you read my first drafts but they're going through Revision Month with me, starting with the rough drafts.

Thank you.

-a
ahhhhh

[This message has been edited by Andrea345 (edited 11-30-2001).]

Julie

11-30-2001, 11:24 PM

Originally posted by Andrea345:
oh, Julie,
I like the way you think. I was coming over here with a warning that NOBODY had better post any pieces "published" on the net. I wanted dead people behind this one.

The only bad thing about that is if you disagree with the thing being called a sonnet, you can't ask the person who wrote it if they consider it a sonnet and, if so, why.

That's a great question. It's a difficult question to answer (and I've been asked). But it's a great one.

Julie

gecian

12-01-2001, 01:02 AM

Here I am again. In my view (there are MANY unrhymed sonnets), the basic requirement (a MUST-HAVE) is metre: a sonnet is NOT free verse. The metre could be traditional (accentual-syllabic), syllabic or stress-based.

Second, to be called a SONNET (with no prefix or suffix attached), it should be fourteen lines long. Any poem that meets these requirements is, in my view, a sonnet.

To be called a TRADITIONAL sonnet, it should have fourteen lines, a volta and a Petrarchan/Shax/Spenserian rhyme scheme.

To be called a sonnet VARIANT, it should have some clear link with some sort of fourteen-line sonnet. The variants noted in the previous thread were:

The Curtal Sonnet, which is ten lines and a half long. It's connected to the original sonnet like this: if you start with a Petrarchan sonnet and take two lines out of the octet, to keep the sestet from getting as large as the octet you must take a few lines out. Two lines out of eight is one-fourth; so is one and a half lines out of six. What you end up with is a sonnet with a six-line part and a four-and-a-half line part. This is a proper variant because it looks like a sonnet & is shaped like one.

Audenesque 21-line sonnets. Similar principle. Four lines added to octet, three lines added to sestet, for symmetry. I'd call these mathematical variants of sonnet form.

15-line sonnets, 12-line sonnets. Sonnets to which the author has tacked on an additional line, or removed a line, for some purpose, but which still look like sonnets. A 15-line sonnet (15 full lines, not Leda) is probably quite easy to recognise. A 12-line sonnet is one that has no final couplet, and it ought to end indecisively. Larkin's The Importance of Elsewhere, though twelve lines long, is not a sonnet.

"Heraclitean Fire" & other far-off variants. These have some feature REMINISCENT of a sonnet, for instance, abbaabba octets, which one finds (in English verse) almost exclusively in sonnets. In these cases, a volta is essential.

In my view, the further off a sonnet-variant is from the standard patterns, the more important it is for the sonnet to have a volta. I don't think the "volta" is an essential part of a 14-line sonnet: it's too subjective.

Of course, the volta doesn't make a sonnet. Many famous poems that no one has ever called a sonnet have features that would, in sonnets, be called voltas. Keats's Ode to a Nightingale has a sharp turn in the last stanza; his Ode to a Grecian Urn has one in the "heifers" stanza. Marvell's To His Coy Mistress has one at "But at my back I always hear". Eliot's The Hippopotamus turns at "I saw the 'potamus take wing".

Another poem that might be taken for a sonnet is Auden's Musee des Beaux-Arts, which is divided in the usual Italian manner and has a volta at the division. I would argue that it isn't, on the grounds that it is unmetrical.

Another rule: If anything appears in a sonnet sequence, whatever it looks like, it's probably a sonnet. As Julie said, you can't usually ask the person who wrote it why he thought it a sonnet, but if he did, you should take his word for it. (Important poets, of course)

Ultimately, does it matter very much if sth is a sonnet?

Andrea345

12-01-2001, 01:15 AM

that is if you disagree with the thing being called a sonnet, you can't ask the person who wrote it if they consider it a sonnet and, if so, why.

I'd ask that of Espaillat or Hacker or you. But I've had people call my blank verse "sonnets." They have 14 lines and they're iambic. One piece had a volta I was working on but I still considered it blank verse b/c there was no rhyme pattern.

I've seen plenty of 14 lined pieces with a rhyming pattern, but I never considered their work "sonnets" as well. I thought of them as rhymed poems working within a traditional line limit. Mostly, I think I don't think of them as sonnets because there was no "humph," no "whoompa," and they didn't use the rhetorical opportunity provided by the couplet or the anticipated volta.

The form presents an opportunity. When that opportunity isn't used, it's not a disappointment to the form itself. It can be something different and beautiful, but it's not the form. For me, that structure leads the reader to expect something. It's as though a pattern is broken without the rhetorical twist.

Ida Know... I'll call other people's work "sonnets" b/c it really does make sense that technically 3 out of 4 hits could be called a "sonnet." But I doubt I'll ever call my blank verse a "sonnet" even if it has 14 lines, IP and the volta at line 9. I was writing to 14 lines to try and work containing my idea within that restriction. Rhyme kicks my hiney but the rhyme is a part of the "song."

It's a rubber band form. Yeats' Leda twists and turns, he worked with all the elements and then bent them to his idea. Too cool.

What about you, Julie? You've written a lot within the form. You seem to call your piece a sonnet only in reference to another person's call. What do you call your 14 line pieces? How do you look at them?

gecian - we were cross-posting! I've come back to edit. For me, yes it does matter whether or not I can recognize a piece as a sonnet or not. I get the basic forms but I'm trying to learn how to recognize if a piece fits a form.

It seems to me that the word "sonnet" is tossed around like salad. Without explanations Auden's 21 liner would have never made sense to me as a sonnet. Which is why I'm so grateful for all the typing you've done.

But in a way, I find it vaguely outrageous that I'd be going around calling every 14 lined piece with a rhyme scheme & semblance of meter a "sonnet." I can't disagree that that's what the form can manage but I had no idea how fluid the structure was. I can get used to calling these pieces "sonnets", of course. I just hate giving something a name when I have no idea what it really means.

Thanks again, guys. And I am still way open to any pieces where the author didn't call their 14 lined, IP & rhyme scheme based piece a sonnet. Dead or Alive (heh. These two put me in a much better mood.)

-a

[This message has been edited by Andrea345 (edited 12-01-2001).]

Harry Rutherford

12-01-2001, 11:04 AM

Originally posted by gecian:
The Curtal Sonnet, which is ten lines and a half long. It's connected to the original sonnet like this: if you start with a Petrarchan sonnet and take two lines out of the octet, to keep the sestet from getting as large as the octet you must take a few lines out. Two lines out of eight is one-fourth; so is one and a half lines out of six. What you end up with is a sonnet with a six-line part and a four-and-a-half line part. This is a proper variant because it looks like a sonnet & is shaped like one.

i.e. a 3/4 length sonnet

Audenesque 21-line sonnets. Similar principle. Four lines added to octet, three lines added to sestet, for symmetry.

i.e. a 1 1/2 length sonnet

Andrea, I think that you're making too much of this. You know what a traditional sonnet looks like; which of the variants you refer to as sonnets and which you don't is a matter of convenience. So for example, I would never have referred to Auden's 21-line version as a sonnet if it wasn't in a sonnet sequence.
But it is.

If I was defining a sonnet I would actually come up with something much stricter than most of the attempts above, making specific reference to iambic pentameter and the Petrarchan and Shakespearian rhyme-schemes. But I would tack a comment on the end to the effect that

"Many poets have written variant 'sonnets' which make use of different rhyme-schemes, metres and even sometimes a different number of lines."

Harry
(for what it's worth, I only associate the volta with the Italian sonnet's octet/sestet break; not particularly with Shakespearian sonnets)

Julie

12-01-2001, 11:54 AM

Originally posted by Andrea345:
I'd ask that of Espaillat or Hacker or you. But I've had people call my blank verse "sonnets." They have 14 lines and they're iambic. One piece had a volta I was working on but I still considered it blank verse b/c there was no rhyme pattern.

This tends to be where I fall, not because of anything scientific, but because the rhyme is a signal to the reader that the writer had a particular purpose, and is writing within a particular tradition.

That's why the rhyme is the most important identifier to me. Does that mean rhyme is necessary? Nope.

I've seen plenty of 14 lined pieces with a rhyming pattern, but I never considered their work "sonnets" as well. I thought of them as rhymed poems working within a traditional line limit. Mostly, I think I don't think of them as sonnets because there was no "humph," no "whoompa," and they didn't use the rhetorical opportunity provided by the couplet or the anticipated volta.

Well, then you start maybe going down the slippery slope of calling bad sonnet-like things non-sonnets because they are bad. If you have a 14 lined rhymed poem, you're going to fall into certain patterns of rhyming. We naturally seem to go for quatrains of some sort, but four doesn't divide evenly into fourteen, so there's an extra couple of lines. It's easy to tack a couplet on to the end, as an epilogue.

The form presents an opportunity. When that opportunity isn't used, it's not a disappointment to the form itself. It can be something different and beautiful, but it's not the form. For me, that structure leads the reader to expect something. It's as though a pattern is broken without the rhetorical twist.

That's a perfectly valid way of looking at it. For me, the musicality of the meter combined with rhyme gives the poem momentum, a sort of mnemonic device for the reader, while the fourteen lines work to constrain the piece into a memorable form and force it to expand on a pithy couplet or quatrain. Everything about a traditional sonnet works together to make sonnets one of the most satisfying of forms, especially for memorization. Short enough to remember, long enough to say something, rhymed to give it punch, and meter to give it a beat.

What about you, Julie? You've written a lot within the form. You seem to call your piece a sonnet only in reference to another person's call. What do you call your 14 line pieces? How do you look at them?

I tend to tell people that I work at poetry, and only if they ask me to be specific do I say I work at formal poetry, and only if they ask me to be specific do I say I work at sonnets.

I don't know that I'd argue that what I generally write are sonnets, though I think most people would tend to categorize them that way. (You can find a volta in nearly anything, if you try hard enough.)

So, I don't sit down and say, "I want to write a sonnet," though I do sit down and say, "I want this thing to be of a certain length," and sometimes it is. Sometimes, it's shorter. I don't know that I've ever written anything longer than fourteen lines in meter, aside from one villanelle. I have written a few shorter pieces that others have labeled sonnets, but that's not a label I'm eager for, since not only does it make *me* look like I'm stuck in a rut (which I am, of course), but it also invites controversy when I'm not the one making the claim.

I dislike people labeling their own poems "sonnets" when I can't see any justification for the label. This is like getting annoyed if you order a "red" sweater from a catalogue, and it turns out to be pink. It isn't that there's anything wrong with pink, it's that the person who called it red seems either ignorant of its pinkness or deliberately misleading.

Which is a pretty long-winded way of saying that I care about the labels in the negative. I care if I feel something is mislabeled a sonnet, but I don't care if something I think is a sonnet isn't called one.

Julie

Andrea345

12-01-2001, 12:14 PM

Ah, Harry,
Your confidence in your knowledge is showing. It's nice to see that the context of a "sonnet sequence" would place the description of a piece. Until these threads I wasn't even aware of sonnet sequences. I'm still not clear on what they are but I'll go look them up. And I think you've clearly stated another item of info I was mushing together with all the rest, about the volta and the Shakespearian sonnet.

I appreciate your keyboard time as well. I can promise you that my little bit of knowledge was more confusing that what I'm learning here. Remember, I was afraid to call "Leda" a sonnet b/c it broke form. Not only that, but what I've learned through these threads is that there's a HUGE discussion of sonnets I was unaware of.

Harry, thank you for your patience and your time.

-a

Tony Smith

12-02-2001, 08:39 PM

My two cents.

"Sonnet" is derived from the Latin word "sonus," or sound. I think any definition of the form should encompass this aspect. Sound = meter + rhyme.

I don't necessarily believe IP is critical (nor did the Italians) just as I don't believe the scheme or pattern pattern should be strict. Forteen lines are important.

Tony

Clive2

12-05-2001, 01:54 AM

Andrea, hon - there are things called fourteeners as well, you know: poems of 14 lines that aren't sonnets. Tell me, what would the difference be?

*evil cackle*

Clive
who just wants to see Andrea gnaw her desk some more.

weatheringdaleson

12-05-2001, 03:51 AM

Originally posted by Tony Smith:
"Sonnet" is derived from the Latin word "sonus," or sound. I think any definition of the form should encompass this aspect. Sound = meter + rhyme.
TonyThis is true. And more directly, "sonnet" is derived from the Italian sonetto meaning "little song" (son = "song"). So, one should always be aware of a particular piece's musicality.

And Clive, I think I read somewhere (my slightly-more-than-cursory perusal of Steele, perhaps -- gotta check that book out again) that a "fourteener" was a poem composed of lines with 14 syllables, (iambic heptameter?). I could be way wrong, though.

And Andrea, I get a great deal out of reading these threads. Thanks for starting them.

Brian

Harry Rutherford

12-05-2001, 07:27 AM

I just thought I'd mention- there's a Faber and Faber book '101 Sonnets', with 101 sonnets by 101 different poets.
I browsed through it in the bookshop the other day; it seemed quite good.

And while I'm here, my all time favourite unorthodox sonnet, by Gerard Manley Hopkins-

The Windhover
To Christ our Lord

I CAUGHT this morning morning’s minion, king-
dom of daylight’s dauphin, dapple-dawn-drawn Falcon, in his riding
Of the rolling level underneath him steady air, and striding
High there, how he rung upon the rein of a wimpling wing
In his ecstasy! then off, off forth on swing,
As a skate’s heel sweeps smooth on a bow-bend: the hurl and gliding
Rebuffed the big wind. My heart in hiding
Stirred for a bird,—the achieve of; the mastery of the thing!

Brute beauty and valour and act, oh, air, pride, plume, here
Buckle! AND the fire that breaks from thee then, a billion
Times told lovelier, more dangerous, O my chevalier!

No wonder of it: shéer plód makes plough down sillion
Shine, and blue-bleak embers, ah my dear,
Fall, gall themselves, and gash gold-vermillion.

Andrea345

12-05-2001, 09:08 AM

oh Brian, I'm glad you found it helpful too. Yes, Steele's definition of the fourteener is:
rhyming iambic heptameter couplets. Common in the Renaissance, the form appears less frequently thereafter, though some metrists regard ballad-stanza poems as being fourteeners, on the grounds that a a quatrain arranged in a 4/3/4/3 pattern of iambic feet is simply a differently lineated version of the old form. p.318 glossary
But Steele's definition of a sonnet was just as confusing. He refers to only two types, ignores the Spenserian, and then talks about a piece written in tetrameter with ten "valedictory" triplets." This last instance he refers to as "another meaning of 'sonnet' is 'a short poem or piece of verse; in early use esp. one of a lyrical and amatory character.'" But Clive was being thoroughly wicked.

Clive, and to think I held back any pert remarks after your binge in Gripes. oooo - next time you go around scaring Howard and garyg like that I'll be on that thread in a hot second.

Tony, Your two cents add up very nicely in my piggy bank. I'm sorry, I have a cold and am about as bright as a stone these days. But, got a question, if you think meter but not necessarily IP is important, could you have fourteen lines of dactyls with a rhyme scheme abababababababab (whatever... my eyes hurt = 14 lines of couplets) and still have a sonnet?

Julie - "while the fourteen lines work to constrain the piece into a memorable form and force it to expand on a pithy couplet or quatrain." I noticed this even in my blank verse. I keep "finishing" the idea at 12 and adding a punch line on the last two. Fourteen lines is a nice structure on which to hang an idea.

Harry - Thanks for the book recommendation. The Hopkins piece, no way would I have called it a sonnet before these patient threads. While its metrical, not every line has the same number of feet. It does have a rhyme scheme abba abba cdc dcd. That octet is interesting for its mixture of masculine and feminine rhymes. Thank heavens, it has fourteen lines. I think the mixture of the feet would have really made me hesitate calling it a sonnet before. (*please note I am no longer referring to the volta*) Now when I look at it, I can see how it is called a sonnet. What a variation!

Thanks
-a

[This message has been edited by Andrea345 (edited 12-05-2001).]

Harry Rutherford

12-05-2001, 01:29 PM

Originally posted by Andrea345:

Harry - Thanks for the book recommendation.
That's alright- I should warn you I only flicked through it, but it seemed pretty sound

The Hopkins piece, no way would I have called it a sonnet before these patient threads. While its metrical, not every line has the same number of feet. It does have a rhyme scheme abba abba cdc dcd. That octet is interesting for its mixture of masculine and feminine rhymes. Thank heavens, it has fourteen lines. I think the mixture of the feet would have really made me hesitate calling it a sonnet before. (*please note I am no longer referring to the volta*) Now when I look at it, I can see how it is called a sonnet. What a variation!

I actually think it's an excellent example, not just of how a poet might vary the sonnet form, but also why.
Hopkins had some particular pet theories about the 'natural' metre of English verse ('sprung rhythm'- basically it boils down to counting stresses, not syllables). So he wrote what is in all the other essentials a textbook Italian sonnet- 14 lines, abbaabba cdc dcd, a volta- but in 5-stress lines of sprung rhythm.
Which strikes me as an excellent case of a poet varying the form, not just for the sake of it, but for reasons of real intellectual and poetic integrity.

Harry
and it's just a wonderful poem