Some thoughts about the sonnet
Last month, I wrote about the unfairness (and sometimes ignorance) some editors demonstrate toward formal poetry. Last week, I had an experience that dramatically emphasized this unfortunate reality. An editor rejected one of my sonnets because, "it isn't a sonnet because it doesn't follow the rhyme schemes of a Petrarchan/Shakespearean sonnet."
I took a few deep breaths (I was about to start a yoga class, so the timing was good), and replied that yes, it is indeed a sonnet--a blank verse, "modern" sonnet. There's some irony here because--while a lot of the sonnets written these days are written in blank verse (and some 14-line poems are called sonnets when they have neither rhyme nor meter--those are not sonnets)--I usually do write traditional sonnets.
This editor, it turns out, had no knowledge of the existence of blank verse sonnets. (I'm going to leave that here without comment.)
She would probably have also been undone had I submitted an Australian sonnet, a form I really like, but which I rarely see. Only a few weeks ago, I saw an Australian sonnet in a literary journal, and it was the only one I can recall seeing other than those that I have written.
I tend to think (poetically) in blank verse, though my blank verse poems (outside of sonnets) are few. I like to write Shakespearean and Australian sonnets because I find them easier to write than Petrarchan sonnets, but I do like to occasionally write a Petrarchan sonnet. I have yet to write a Spenserian sonnet, but I intend to some day.
A couple of years ago, I wrote my first crown of sonnets, which exhausted me mentally. I included two Shakespearean, two Australian, one Petrarchan, and two blank verse sonnets. I look forward to writing another one.
I'm not sure why writing sonnets is so satisfying for me, but I find myself writing them again and again. Reading them is a pleasure; a writer can say so much in fourteen carefully crafted lines.
I took a few deep breaths (I was about to start a yoga class, so the timing was good), and replied that yes, it is indeed a sonnet--a blank verse, "modern" sonnet. There's some irony here because--while a lot of the sonnets written these days are written in blank verse (and some 14-line poems are called sonnets when they have neither rhyme nor meter--those are not sonnets)--I usually do write traditional sonnets.
This editor, it turns out, had no knowledge of the existence of blank verse sonnets. (I'm going to leave that here without comment.)
She would probably have also been undone had I submitted an Australian sonnet, a form I really like, but which I rarely see. Only a few weeks ago, I saw an Australian sonnet in a literary journal, and it was the only one I can recall seeing other than those that I have written.
I tend to think (poetically) in blank verse, though my blank verse poems (outside of sonnets) are few. I like to write Shakespearean and Australian sonnets because I find them easier to write than Petrarchan sonnets, but I do like to occasionally write a Petrarchan sonnet. I have yet to write a Spenserian sonnet, but I intend to some day.
A couple of years ago, I wrote my first crown of sonnets, which exhausted me mentally. I included two Shakespearean, two Australian, one Petrarchan, and two blank verse sonnets. I look forward to writing another one.
I'm not sure why writing sonnets is so satisfying for me, but I find myself writing them again and again. Reading them is a pleasure; a writer can say so much in fourteen carefully crafted lines.
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