1. SONNETS: UNDERSTANDING THE FORM

2. Background Information: -Sonnets were developed in Italy during the 14 th century -There are two main kinds: Petrarch and Shakespearean -The sonnet was introduced in England in the 16 th century, where accommodations to the rhyme scheme where made to fit the English language

3. A Shakespearean sonnet is a poetic form that: - 14 lines -An abab, cdcd, efef, gg rhyme scheme -features four-line stanzas and a couplet which sums up the poet’s conclusion -Often features iambic pentameter

4. Learning to Write a Sonnet The sonnet form is old and full of dust And yet I want to learn to write one well. To learn new forms and grow is quite a must, But I will learn it quickly, I can tell. And so I sit, today, with pen in hand, Composing three new quatrains with a rhyme. The rhythm flows like wind at my command. The A-B-A-B form consumes my time. But I’m not done until there’s fourteen lines. One ending couplet, after three quatrains. I’ve tried to write this new form several times. The effort’s huge; I have to rack my brain. But I persist, my fourteen lines now done. I wrote my poem; my sonnet work is won. -Denise Rodgers

5. If We Must Die If we must die, let it not be like hogs Hunted and penned in an inglorious spot, While round us bark the mad and hungry dogs, Making their mock at our accursed lot. If we must die, O let us nobly die So that our precious blood may not be shed In vain; then even the monsters we defy Shall be constrained to honor us though dead! O kinsmen! We must meet the common foe! Though far outnumbered let us show us brave, And for their thousand blows deal one death blow! What though before us lies the open grave? Like men we’ll face the murderous, cowardly pack, Pressed to the wall, dying, but fighting back! Claude McKay, “If We Must Die,” in Harlem Shadows: The Poems of Claude McKay (New York: Harcourt, Brace and Co., 1922).

6. There are two main parts to a sonnet: the octave and the sestet. The octave, found in the first eight lines, typically present a problem or a question that the setset, the final six lines, answers. In Shakespearean sonnets, the final four lines and the ending couplet provide a conclusion to the situation from the first six lines. The shift from the octave to the setset, when poet goes from asking a question to providing the answer, is called a “volta”, or sometimes just ‘the turn’. These are common features, but not all sonnets, even Shakespearean ones, include them.

7. Sonnet 18 by William Shakespeare 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: Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines, And often is his gold complexion dimm'd; And every fair from fair sometime declines, By chance or nature's changing course untrimm'd; But thy eternal summer shall not fade Nor lose possession of that fair thou owest; Nor shall Death brag thou wander'st in his shade, When in eternal lines to time thou growest: So long as men can breathe or eyes can see, So long lives this and this gives life to thee.

8. SONNET 29 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 remember'd such wealth brings That then I scorn to change my state with kings.

9. SONNET 20 A woman's face with Nature's own hand painted Hast thou, the master-mistress of my passion; A woman's gentle heart, but not acquainted With shifting change, as is false women's fashion; An eye more bright than theirs, less false in rolling, Gilding the object whereupon it gazeth; A man in hue, all 'hues' in his controlling, Much steals men's eyes and women's souls amazeth. And for a woman wert thou first created; Till Nature, as she wrought thee, fell a-doting, And by addition me of thee defeated, By adding one thing to my purpose nothing. But since she prick'd thee out for women's pleasure, Mine be thy love and thy love's use their treasure.