Although my lifelong writing love is the novel, I’m exploring other forms in my dotage. Like my love for Pecha Kucha, where you write and recite a story that takes exactly 6:40 seconds to tell, using 20 slides that each stay on the screen for 20 seconds. Three times I’ve performed that dog and pony show in front of live audiences, and had fun every time.
I’ve also dabbled in shorter fiction, just for fun, publishing only here (Reservations, There are Six of Us, Rainmaking Rumors, Get What You Want).
Now, I’ve taken an interest in the sonnet.
High school refresher: a sonnet is a 14-line poem that follows a specific rhyme scheme and meter. The most common type of sonnet is the Shakespearean (or English) sonnet. Its structure consists of three four-line verses called quatrains, followed by a rhyming two-line section called a couplet.
Shakespearean sonnets contain a rhyme scheme of ABAB CDCD EFEF GG. They are typically written in iambic pentameter with ten syllables per line, alternating stressed and unstressed syllables. Sonnets often explore themes of love, time, beauty, or nature, but any subject is fair game.
Perhaps the most beloved and well-known sonnet of all is Shakespeare’s Sonnet 18, with its famous opening line and the universal appeal of its theme:
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 dimmed;
And every fair from fair sometime declines,
By chance or nature's changing course untrimmed;
But thy eternal summer shall not fade
Nor lose possession of that fair thou owest;
Nor shall Death brag thou wanderest 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.
Romantic and timeless—is it not?
Naturally, I had to give sonnet writing a go.
When working within clear guidelines and rules regarding form, you might think creative choices are limited. In fact, they’re endless, within the boundaries of the playing field. It’s always that way. For example, if you write a feature film, you have to keep in mind the plus or minus two-hour run time, and often work within a three-act structure. Yet within that framework, we have seen an enormous range of original and captivating movies.
In writing a sonnet, I’ve discovered the daunting challenge of getting a few words just right, how you have to compose with rhyme in mind, and how rhyme possibilities can alter the poem’s course. Counting stressed syllables can confound, and you can wander away in search of creative answers.
I think we’d all agree Shakespeare was a talented guy. He wrote 154 sonnets, and if my calculations are correct, it might take me writing ten thousand or so to start rounding into form.
But there is only one place to start—Sonnet 1:
A bluebird in our yard has lost its voice
At sunrise we no longer hear her song
I’m curious to know is this by choice
Or perhaps it’s we who’ve committed wrong
The maple we planted strives undaunted
Battling blight, drought and roots that girdle
Stands tall and defiant, yet still haunted
Its life an obstacle, then a hurdle
Chimes out the window have taken the stage
At conductor is a ferocious wind
The tune chaotic, warning and enraged
Pipes first, glass follows, bamboo bass comes in
Nature has endless ways of conveying
Dire directives we keep disobeying
