So, over the years, the sonnet (the fourteen line poem with ten syllables per line, more fully defined below) has become one of my favorite forms. Though they may take an hour or so to construct, they can be read quickly, and if they are well crafted, can reveal layers of meaning with multiple readings. In our era of short attention spans, they seem ideal for a creative writer seeking readership, and for a reader seeking a well-penned and thoughtful yet brief contemplation in verse.
What I’ll be offering here at The Cuttingsville Times are recently composed English style sonnets. That is to say, using the same rhyme scheme that Shakespeare employed in his amazing bundle of 150 or so sonnets, first published to zero immediate acclaim in 1609.
Of course, though I almost certainly smell better, I readily admit I am no Shakespeare. That said, I’m not ashamed to say I’m no slouch either. I have been actively engaged in the writing of sonnets as a matter of choice for many years. I have even been teased for my adherence to this form, once by the ostensibly noted-poet Diane “waka-waka” Wakowski. (This was back in the early eighties, during my participation in poetry readings that she ran on the campus of Michigan State University in East Lansing at that time.)
“Why do you choose to limit yourself to this kind of rigorously structured, even archaic, format?” I was asked.
I had to laugh. Busted, by the Poetry Cops!
Would it have been worth the breath necessary to have explained that, gasp, I actually enjoyed the challenge of adherence to metrical rigor? Don’t get me wrong, I enjoy writing lyric poetry and free-verse too, but for me, the sonnet seems an ideal form: the confines force a concision, and between end-rhyme and syllable scan, one must sift and seek for the very word to complete any given line. I also enjoy the self-contained debate that occurs within the fourteen lines: the front end of a sonnet presents a narrative, states a proposition, considers a problem, or raises a question. The back end of a sonnet comments on the narrative via an abstract comparison, or it applies the proposition, resolves the problem, or answers the question. In fourteen tight and tidy lines.
I’ve long argued that Twitter has really delivered nothing of real merit, for all its noise and bluster. Sonnets seem to me an infinitely superior form of public communication. Immediacy isn’t always for the best; epiphanies require a moment.
While Shakespeare’s sonnets famously appear to have been directed to a few specific persons, and although metaphysical in tone are for the most part relationship related in subject matter, mine cover a broader terrain. I will offer meditations on the natural world and the world of ideas. My sonnets touch on philosophical ponderings, or the qualities of the very elements themselves, just as often as they consider specific happenings in our current-day-what-in-the-fuck world that we’re all soaking in. Some of my sonnets are serious, even angry. Others might be silly, or playfully disrespectful.
It is believed that Shakespeare wrote the bulk of his sonnets during a time when the theaters were shut down due to the re-emergence of plague in London.
Thus, at the onset of the Covid Pandemic in early 2020, and with the free time I would have on my hands with the closure of my work-place, I resolved to spend my time as Shakespeare had in his own pandemic lockdown: Stay busy, stay positive, keep writing, and try to crank out more sonnets than usual.
Sometimes they seem to fall into place right in front of your eyes, as though they were writing themselves. Other times, like a tough cross-word puzzle, you write yourself into a wall, and have to put the thing down for a few days, and then return to it with the requisite insight and then walk it through to its conclusion. I usually have a half a dozen or so irons in the fire at any given time. Some will emerge complete, others, not making the grade, will stay in shadows. Since I’m able to generate on average two sonnets a month, and now have a healthy backlog of what I feel to be printable work, it is my intention to release a new sonnet every couple of weeks here at thecuttingsvilletimes.com
I hope you will enjoy what you find here, and share them with others. I have spent my life writing, never for money, but because I love it. I seek not acclaim but to share my observations and occasional insights, wittily or whimsically expressed, with anyone else who finds such wordplay-paintings worthwhile or even enjoyable.
At this juncture, I’d like to officially thank my high-school English teacher, the late, great Anthony Sutton (Lumen Christi High School, Jackson, Michigan) for not only showing me how to become an effective teacher myself, but for setting me on my path as a young writer with intellectual proclivities, and introducing me to the writers who would become my greatest influences (Joyce, Hopkins, Blake, Shakespeare, Old English poetry). Though some of these poems will be dedicated to a particular person from time to time, I dedicate this entire enterprise to Sutton – – he’s stompin’ the poetic terra of Valhalla, now.
Sonnet The sonnet was developed in Italy, probably in the 13th century. Petrarch, in the 14th century, raised it to its greatest Italian perfection and gave it, for English readers at least, his name. The form was introduced into England by Thomas Wyatt, who translated Petrarchan sonnets and left over thirty of his own compositions in English. Surrey, an associate, shares with Wyatt the credit for introducing the form to England and is important as an early modifier of the Italian sonnet. Gradually, the Italian sonnet pattern was changed (let’s be blunt – – rhyming in Italian is like falling off of a log), and, because Shakespeare attained fame for the greatest poems of this modified type, his name has often been given to the English form. Among the most famous sonneteers in England have been Sidney, Shakespeare, Milton, Wordsworth, Keats, D. G. Rossetti, E. Barrett-Browning, Hopkins, Meredith, and Auden. Longfellow, E.A. Robinson, Frost, and e.e. cummings are generally credited with writing some of the best sonnets in America.
The sonnet is almost invariably fourteen lines and following one of several set rhyme schemes. The Italian form is distinguished by its division into the octave and the sestet, the octave rhyming abbaabba and the sestet cdecde, cdcdcd, or cdedce. Iambic pentameter is usual. In the English sonnet, four divisions are used: three quatrains (each with a rhyme scheme of its own, usually rhyming alternate lines) and a rhymed concluding couplet. The typical rhyme scheme for the English sonnet is abab cdcd efef gg.
In essence, the thematic pivot occurs in the ninth line, regardless of the octave/sestet or quatrains/couplet nomenclature. This is the point at which the poet begins to answer the question, resolve the problem, draw the conclusion to the matter posed or expressed in the first eight lines.
(This definition, with a few modifications of my own, has been taken from Holman & Harmon’s A Handbook to Literature Sixth Edition, MacMillan Publishing, 1992.)
(For further consideration of the history of sonnets, the possibilities inherent in the form, and Shakespeare’s masterful manipulation thereof, consult Helen Vendler’s very fine The Art of Shakespeare’s Sonnets (Belknap/Harvard University Press, 1999). It is highly recommended.
by James S. Dwyer,
May 29, 2021
(All fotos by James Dwyer. The stone steps are in the Maretllo Tower at Sandycove in Ireland.)
The Cuttingsville Times 