A Sonnet on How to Write an English Sonnet
Who'd want to write a gods-damn sonnet
With ten iambic syllables a line?
'Cos besides the fucking scansion I bet
You'll more than hate the gods-damned fucking rhyme
The English sonnet holds ABAB
CDCD it's torture pure and plain
So who'd want to write a bloody sonnet
Corsetting words like this is such a pain
But there is a beauty in the torture
As the ninth line cuts right across your thought
EFEF - The capricious volta -
Turns hate. Now you love the English Sonnet -
The goddamned rhyme for thee's a,b,a,b,
C,d,c,d,e,f,e,f,g,g
Okay - that was tortuous barbarism - and I bet you hated every second of it - but there you go - I had a ball. And that's (more or less) the form of a sonnet, with just a few liberties taken. And I only mostly hate it, because there's something about the volta cutting across everything like a crescendo in a library, that's such fun.
Still, all I can say is thank goodness there are other forms of poetry. Writing a sonnet is like wearing a corset, it's all very well to show off with, but mostly they're much better to look at, than to wear.
Have a great week, everybody,
A.J.
P.S. If you want to see the poetically incorrect haiku, on how to write a haiku - it's right here
If you like sonnets, I have written a few, including some that are slightly modified in terms of layout, or in one case, it's deliberately deconstructed for reasons that should become obvious. A Sonnet to the Muse, This Year of Fire , Running away with a Christmas Sonnet And of course the award winning, Ahi Kā by A.J. Ponder and Eileen Mueller - which is a short story and sonnet intertwined.