HOW TO WRITE POETRY, BY OLAN L. SMITH

Part 6: Becoming a Sonneteer

Becoming a Sonneteer

(Submitted to Poet's Pub, J.L. Moore for publication)

©2017, Olan L. Smith

The mysterious sonnet seems daunting to tackle, or it was for me, but I knew I had to try and write one, and those were my thoughts back in 1984, a full year before I would publish my first poem in a small chapbook titled Alura. But I tried to write my Sonnet No. That year, I flopped. I had no idea what I was doing; I couldn't hear the meter and didn't understand the wholeness of the sonnet or the story it told. I didn't understand small things like the volta (turn or twist) or the enjambment (breakup of a phrase that carried over to the next line), and I thought there was only one type of sonnet: the Shakespearean or English sonnet. My favorite sonnet was written by Elizabeth Barrett Browning. You know the one, "How do I love thee...?" and it is an Italian-style sonnet, but at that time I had no idea what the difference was. I would not complete a Sonnet I until about 2010 (granted, I was not writing poetry all those intervening years, but it took at least a full year of attempts before I even halfway got it right once I resumed writing poetry).

Let's start with the major styles of sonnets before we start to understand how to write an English (Shakespearean) sonnet. First, the lore of the first sonnet. The lore is that students from an Italian school, School Number XIV, created the first sonnet, so they decided the poem should have 14 lines named after their school. That rule of the sonnet cannot be altered, but the rest is played with because different cultures have put their signature on the sonnet. Petrarchan was the first to put his mark on the sonnet by giving it a rhyme scheme of an octet of abbaabba and a sestet (six-line stanza) rhyming either cdecde or cdcdcd. You might wonder what an octet and sestet have to do with a sonnet. Well, it is an Italian sonnet and not a Shakespearean sonnet. We think of English sonnets mostly as three quatrains and a couplet, but that will go into English sonnets in a minute. Italian sonnets were not written with an iambic pentameter beat, but you can use it if you want. Chaucer would not have invented the iambic meter until later, simply because he was not born yet. If you want to get away from the mundane rhythm of dah DAH, dah DAH, then this sonnet is where you can do it and still be called a sonneteer. Someone will surely tell you that you have to use iambic pentameter in the Italian sonnet, but they are wrong.

Here is Sonnet 43, by Elizabeth Barrett Browning:

"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,