Sonnets

Sonnets, in my mind, are one of the most difficult types of poems to write. this is because you have to follow a specific set of rules when creating one. These rules are have a poem that is fourteen lines long, and follow a certain rhyme scheme. This rhyme scheme depends on the type of sonnet. If you are going to write a Shakespearean sonnet then you have to follow the iambic pentameter and the abab cdcd efef gg type rhyme scheme, though if you replicate another sonnet type such as a Petrarchan sonnet which has a rhyme scheme of abbaabba cddcece. Although these types of sonnet styles may be different, they were influenced by the culture of where they originate. Shakespearean in England, and the Petrarchan in Italy

A sonnet that I have read lately was a sonnet titled “Sonnet”. This sonnet is by Billy Collins. In this sonnet Collins takes all of the basics of the sonnet, and makes a sort of joke out of writing these sonnets. At first he mentions the fourteen line necessity then he goes off to say how the rhythm might go in some of the other sonnet types such as iambic pentameter. Collins also puts in a line about how Petrarch needs to put down his pen and go to bed. This line tells me without knowing too much about Petrarch that he needed to calm down on his poem writing because he was writing too much and go to bed. This is what I have seen in this poem, and here it is:

Sonnet

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 while 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.

Billy Collins (b. 1942)