If It’s Square, It’s a Sonnet (no kidding!)

History of the Sonnet

SONNET XVIII (18) Mark the rhyme scheme Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day? Thou art more lovely and more temperate: Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May, And summer’s lease hath all too short a date: Sometimes too hot the eye of heaven shines, And often is his gold complexion dimmed, And every fair from fair sometime declines, By chance, or nature’s changing course untrimmed: But thy eternal summer shall not fade, Nor lose possession of that fair thou ow’st, Nor shall death brag thou wander’st in his shade, When in eternal lines to time thou grow’st, So long as men can breathe, or eyes can see, So long lives this, and this gives life to thee.

Form: The English sonnet embodies four divisions: three quatrains (each with a rhyme-scheme of its own) and a rhymed couplet. A sonnet needs to have ten beats per line and the rhyme-scheme is abab cdcd efef gg. The couplet usually closes out the theme of the poem (like a conclusion).

THE VOLTA * a change from one rhyme group to another signifies a change in subject matter. This change occurs at the beginning of line 9 in the Italian sonnet and is called the volta, or "turn"; the turn is an essential element of the sonnet form, perhaps the essential element. It is at the volta that the second BIG idea is introduced.

The English (or Shakespearian) Sonnet (This is the third of three main kinds) Named after the English poet William Shakespeare A B1 A Three QUATRAINS with three similar ideas B C D2 C D E F3 E F GVOLTA happens at the line 9 or the COUPLET G

This is what it looks like… SONNET 29 BY SHAKESPEARE When in disgrace with Fortune and men's eyes, I all alone beweep my outcast state, And trouble deaf heaven with my bootless cries, And look upon myself and curse my fate, Wishing me like to one more rich in hope, Featured like him, like him with friends possess'd, Desiring this man's art, and that man's scope, With what I most enjoy contented least. Yet in these thoughts myself almost despising, Haply I think on thee, and then my state, Like to the lark at break of day arising From sullen earth, sings hymns at heaven's gate; For thy sweet love remembered such wealth brings That then I scorn to change my state with kings.

This is what it sounds like…

Sonnet By Billy Collins 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 wile 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.

Homework Create your own sonnet. The handout/rubric is on the table for you. Also – Romeo & Juliet Vocab Quiz #2 on Friday. Know this list!