Name: ______________________
Honors English 10--Simko
Create Your Own Sonnet (due Friday, October 9th)
A sonnet is a type of poem that follows a very strict metrical format and rhyme scheme. A sonnet has 14
lines. There are many different types of sonnets, including the Petrarchan, Miltonic, Spenserian, and,
most popularly-known, Shakespearian.
Sonnets usually have romantic themes (love/appreciation for a significant other, child, mother, father,
friend, nature, etc.); keep this in mind as you compose your sonnet.
Assignment
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Write a Shakespearian or Petrarchan sonnet: Your sonnet should be in modern English, but do
your best to capture the essence of Romanticism and Transcendentalism.
You will hand-write your sonnet on computer paper or construction paper. You must write legibly
and be creative—you can add pictures, designs, etc.
Your sonnet MUST follow the following format:
1.
2.
14 lines
Rhyme scheme must equal =
a-b-a-b, c-d-c-d, e-f-e-f, g-g (Shakespearean) OR
a-b-b-a-a-b-b-a, c-d-c-d-c-d (or one of the other Petrarchan sestet schemes)
3.
Try your best to write at least two lines in iambic pentameter: Mark these lines accordingly.
Example:
Let me not to the marriage of true minds (a)
Admit impediments, love is not love (b)
Which alters when it alteration finds, (a)
Or bends with the remover to remove. (b)
O no, it is an ever fixèd mark (c)
That looks on tempests and is never shaken; (d)
It is the star to every wand'ring bark, (c)
Whose worth's unknown although his height be taken. (d)
Love's not time's fool, though rosy lips and cheeks (e)
Within his bending sickle's compass come, (f)
Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks, (e)
But bears it out even to the edge of doom: (f)
If this be error and upon me proved, (g)
I never writ, nor no man ever loved. (g)