Memoir & Other Writing
Poetry Exercise #2: Sonnet
What is a Sonnet? "Sonnets in English are usually fourteen-line poems of iambic
pentameter with a rhyme scheme that follows or varies in some recognizable way any of
several traditional patterns. There are usually two discernible parts of the poem. A
problem or experience is set up in the first eight lines (called the octave), and there is a
response to it, or resolution, in the last six lines (called the setset)."
--Judson Jerome, The Poet's Handbook
Rhyme schemes of three particular sonnet forms:
Shakespearean (14 lines): abab, cdcd, efef, gg
Italian (Petrarchan): abba, abba, cde, cde
Spenserian: abab, bcbc, cdcd, ee
(see other side for Sonnet examples)
Assignment: Write a Sonnet on a topic of your choice, adhering as closely as possible to
the structure of the Shakespearean form, including setting up the experience and
resolving it as described above. Use the grid to work through your rhyme scheme and
meter.
Due: Friday, February 6, with assessment and all drafts attached
Assessment:
Final product : Please place a √+ (exemplary); √ (proficient); or √- (needs development)
next to each of the following categories. Include any particular comments you have below.
____________ Fully demonstrates the Shakespearean sonnet through adherence to rhyme
scheme, meter (iambic pentameter), and a traditional problem/resolution progression (see
Jerome, above).
____________ The sonnet displays careful attention to word choice, imagery, and other
elements of poetic expression.
_____________ Final copy is error- free and includes drafts that demonstrate full engagement
with assignment as evidenced by multiple considerations, revisions, and edits by both self
and peers.
Comments:
SONNET 116
Let me not to the marriage of true minds
Admit impediments. Love is not love
Which alters when it alteration finds,
Or bends with the remover to remove:
O no; it is an ever-fixed mark,
That looks on tempests, and is never shaken;
It is the star to every wandering bark,
Whose worth's unknown, although his height be taken.
Love's not Time's fool, though rosy lips and cheeks
Within his bending sickle's compass come;
Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks,
But bears it out even to the edge of doom.
If this be error and upon me proved,
I never writ, nor no man ever loved.
William Shakespeare
How Do I Love Thee? (Sonnet 43)
How do I love thee? Let me count the ways.
I love thee to the depth and breadth and height
My soul can reach, when feeling out of sight
For the ends of being and ideal grace.
I love thee to the level of every day’s
Most quiet need, by sun and candle-light.
I love thee freely, as men strive for right.
I love thee purely, as they turn from praise.
I love thee with the passion put to use
In my old griefs, and with my childhood’s faith.
I love thee with a love I seemed to lose
With my lost saints. I love thee with the breath,
Smiles, tears, of all my life; and, if God choose,
I shall but love thee better after death.
Elizabeth Barrett Browning
Sonnet All we need is fourteen lines, well, thirteen now, and after this one just a dozen
to launch a little ship on love's storm-tossed seas, then only ten more left like rows of beans.
How easily it goes unless you get Elizabethan
and insist the iambic bongos must be played
and rhymes positioned at the ends of lines,
one for every station of the cross.
But hang on here while we make the turn
into the final six where all will be resolved,
where longing and heartache will find an end, where Laura will tell Petrarch to put down his pen,
take off those crazy medieval tights,
blow out the lights, and come at last to bed.
Billy Collins