Is the Sonnet Also an American Art Form? David Bromwich Says Yes

The sonnet form of poetry has been with us since the 14^th century. We’re not sure who may have created it, but it was Petrarch (1300-1374) who made it popular. In the early 1500s, Sir Thomas Wyatt brought the Petrarchan sonnet to England, with his broadly popular translations as well as some of his own.  

But it was William Shakespeare who made the love sonnet a staple of English literature. He adapted the form of the Petrarchan sonnet and gave it a distinctly English cast. John Milton and Edmund Spenser modified Shakespeare’s forms, but it was the sonnets of the bard that we think of today when someone says “sonnet.”

 

David Bromwich, professor of English at Yale University, assembled a volume of sonnets that demonstrate what happened to the poetic form once it jumped the ocean. First published in 2007, the appropriately titled American Sonnetscovers roughly two centuries of composition of sonnets, including some by authors we might not have known were poets.

To continue reading, please see my post today at Tweetspeak Poetry.

Some Tuesday Readings

 

Elegy in September – 4 poems by Kerry O’Connor at Skylover.

 

From Contemplations – poem by Anne Bradstreet at Kingdom Poets (D.S. Martin).

 

Death Musings – poem by Jeff Kemper at Society of Classical Poets.

Malcolm Guite’s “Parable and Paradox”

I find it extremely comforting – a blessed relief – to turn from the viciousness of the commentary about Brexit, the vote by the people of Britain to leave the EU, to poetry based on the sayings of Jesus and related themes. That’s what Parable and Paradox by poet, priest, and musician Malcom Guite is – a blessed relief.

Perhaps it’s the sonnet form Guite uses, a form that’s been around since at least the 1200s if not earlier. The sonnet is a 14-line poem that follows a specific rhyming pattern and structure. William Shakespeare used the form to write some of the most beautiful poems in the English language. So did Elizabeth Barrett Browning.

The sonnet is a favored form by Guite, and he uses it to reflect upon, ponder, question, celebrate, and commemorate. In this poem, he does all five of these:

Pilgrimage

Come dip a scallop shell into the font

For birth and blessings as child of God.

The living water rises from that fount

Whence all things come, that you may bathe and wade

And find the flow, and learn at last to follow

The course of Love upstream toward your home.

The day is done and all the fields lie fallow,

One thing is needful, one voice calls your name.

Take the true compass now, be compassed round

By clouds of witness, chords of love unbound.

Turn to the Son, begin your pilgrimage,

Take time with him to find your true direction.

He travels with you through this darkened age

And wake you every day to resurrection.

Read it aloud. The act of reading such a poem is itself calming and soothing.

Parable and Paradox includes 27 new poems on subjects ranging from Bible study to hospitality; 50 sonnets on the sayings of Jesus; and a concluding series of poems entitled “Seven Whole Days.” Two of the new poems are named for two American poets – Scott Cairns and Luci Shaw.

Malcolm Guite

Guite is a poet, an Anglican priest, chaplain of Girton College at the University of Cambridge, a lecturer and speaker, and a rock band musician part of the Cambridge-based group Mystery Train. He’s published several books, including several poetry collections, such as Sounding the Seasons, The Singing Bowl, and Word in the Wilderness. He’s a lecturer and speaker. And he’s a rock band musician part of the Cambridge-based group Mystery Train. He received his undergraduate and masters degrees from Cambridge, and a Ph.D from Durham University, where his dissertation focused on the poets Lancelot Andrewes and John Donne and their influence on T.S. Eliot.

Read these poems called Parable and Paradox. Find a quiet place to read them aloud. Read them, and calm your spirit.

Related: My review of Word in the Wilderness.

Top photograph by George Hodan via Public Domain Pictures. Used with permission.

The Assassin’s Lament

At TweetSpeak Poetry, we’ve arrived at the last weekly discussion of Kim Addonizio’s Ordinary Genius: A Guide for the Poet Within. Our discussion leader Lyla Lindquist has bravely led us through a veritable forest of counsel, advice and assignments for not only writing poetry, but it writing it better, writing it well, and even applying what we learn to all kinds of writing.

It’s a book that’s well worth your while to read.

This last section is entitled “Toward mastery,” so you know the assignments are going to get really serious. Here were but a few of the possible writing assignments we could undertake (and Addonizio thinks we should do them all):

Write a sonnet (remember that old iambic pentameter your English teacher talked about in high school? Well, it’s time to dust the iambs off.)

Write a deliberately bad sonnet (which, in my case, might not be difficult at all).

Do a close reading of a poem you love.

Perform your poem (as in, stand up in front of a live audience and read your poem and perhaps perform it). (That’s what I want to do – make a spectacle of myself.)

Make a broadside (like a one-page ad or tract or sheet with your poem on it, complete with drawings or art or designs). (I’m almost as bad an artist as I am a designer.)

Collaborate on a poem. (Possible; I’ve actually done something like that with TweetSpeak Poetry. It’s called a Twitter poetry jam, and you should try it sometimes.)

I decide I would write a sonnet. And I developed an idea that I borrowed from some fictional work in progress that just might see the light of day in about four or five weeks. The form is the traditional English sonnet (abab cdcd efef gg) (and those pesky iambs pentametering around the place).

I’ll let you decide if I wrote a sonnet or a deliberately bad sonnet (hint: both answers may be correct).

The Assassin’s Lament

So much of each assignment was a bore,

to wait, to watch, to think a plan straight through;

of all the skills required to do the chore,

to see the time was right was clearest cue.

And so he watched the pair so deep in love:

a golden boy with fame so broad, so far,

a golden girl with face from far above;

he felt regret and rued this bloody war.

The day arrived when he was told to act;

the wait was done, the price was paid to kill;

a plan of vengeance to become a fact,

his role, his fate he knew he must fulfill.

He’d watched too long, he’d seen the love so shared;

His heart of ice did melt, for now he cared.

To see what Lyla is up to and if any other iambs are roaming out there, please visit TweetSpeak Poetry.

Until My Love Is Found

Again I sit in ashes cold and deep,
my heart pierced by his voice, his touch, his eyes,
the gown and shoes I barely miss, yet weep;
ash-smudged, I fear his love will ebb and die.
But dare I hope a seed can grow to reap,
my heart to heal and hope allowed to rise;
may thunder drown my stepsisters’ bold lies,
and may he take me home and there to keep.

She walked into the room a stellar sight.
In fleeting hours she smiled, my heart was bound;
a glow, a radiance lit up my night.
She fled my arms, at twelve the clock did sound,
glass shoe abandoned in her pell-mell flight.
I will not rest until my love is found.

OK, so there’s this sonnet thing L.L. Barkat dreamed up over at TweetSpeak poetry, and she cajoled poet Angela O’Donnell to do a post called “Glass Slipper Sonnets” (you should read Angela’s Saint Sinatra and Other Poems; it’s good). I tried the sestina form of poetry, and survived the experience. I thought I’d give the sonnet form a try.

As it turns out, there are two main sonnet forms – the Shakespearian (English) sonnet (three four-line stanzas followed by a couplet) and the Petrachan (Italian) sonnet, with an eight-line stanza and a six-line stanza (Angela has all the details in her post). I decided to try the Italian form.

And, yes, it’s all about Cinderella.

Photograph: Cinderella by Alexandra Lilit.