From the Archives — February 2024 Edition

What better way to woo that person you have your eyes on,
or to enflame the passion of your current relationship
than expressing your feelings with some good ol’ fashioned poetry?

Take the following, Sonnet 116 by William Shakespeare, for example:

Let me not to the marriage of true minds
Admit impediments; love is not love
Which alters when it alteration finds,
Or bends with the remover to remove.
O no, it is an ever-fixèd mark
That looks on tempests and is never shaken;
It is the star to every wand’ring bark
Whose worth’s unknown, although his height be taken.
Love’s not time’s fool, though rosy lips and cheeks
Within his bending sickle’s compass come.
Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks,
But bears it out even to the edge of doom:
If this be error and upon me proved,
I never writ, nor no man ever loved.

William Shakespeare (written 1592-1598, published 1609)

How to write a sonnet

The sonnet is a 14-line poem that follows a strict rhyme scheme and structure, which became the “choice mode of expressing romantic love” during the Renaissance. While the example I wrote below naturally ended up more morose than I had hoped, Shakespeare’s Sonnet 116 above may be better to emulate when writing your own!

Rhyming schemes:

• Shakespearean: ABAB CDCD EFEF * GG
• Petrarchan: ABBA ABBA * CDECDE or
  ABBA ABBA * CD CD CD

It is also crucially important for a sonnet to include a volta (turn) or a shift in thought or tone in a poem, often marked with words like “But,” “Yet”, etc… (marked by an asterisk above).

In Shakespearean volta occurs within the Shakespearean sonnet structure before the last two lines (known as the couplet), presenting a conclusion to the previous sets of four lines (quatrains).
Ex: ABAB CDCD EFEF (Volta) GG

In Petrarchan sonnets, the turn comes when the structure shifts from the first part of the poem (ABBA ABBA) to the second sestet, or six lines in varying rhyming patterns (CDECDE or CD CD CD).

Iambic Pentameter:

English rhythm measure consisting of exactly five “iambic feet” per line. Each iambic foot includes:

• One unstressed (da) and
• One stressed (dum) syllable (in bold).
• Example: “When I do count the block that tells the time” or
  “To well the gourd, and plump the hazel shells.” (To Autumn – John Keats)

Bring it together:

A: A pair of gloves, once warm, and now a-lone
B: One left be-hind, at earl-y dawn’s de-part.
A: Win-ter’s dry cold. Shi-ver-ing hands a-tone
B: Frost bit fin-gers mis-sing their coun-ter parts
C: As time pass-es us by, me-mo-ry fades
D: The days we laid in bed, and those a-part
C: All swept to sea, or spread on bon-fires smoke
D: Se-pa-ra-tion does not ease ache of heart
E: Lea-ther and wool. To flesh and bone a break
F: A left be-hind ar-tic-le that lie worse
E: Un-til the loss, of next lo-vers a-wake
F: Two gloves, a-cast to cor-ner’s curse
*
G: Yet then for-got, now found by each o-ther
G: Mis-matched, and loved, by these hands to smo-ther.