Creating Meaning
Creating Sound
Alliteration, Assonance, and Consonance
Using Form
- Sonnet
- Sestina
The sonnet is a poem with a very set structure. This form is often associated with poets like Shakespeare and Elizabeth Barrett Browning. There are two variations of the sonnet, the Shakespearean sonnet and the Petrachan, or Italian, sonnet. Although they share most of the same patterns, there are very slight differences between the two.
Read the following two poems. The first is a Shakespearean sonnet; the second, Petrachan. Then, write down as much about the patterns of organization as you can. Go slowly over the poem - there might be more to them than you think!
Sonnet 18
William Shakespeare
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 the fair thou ow'st,
Nor shall Death brag thou wand'rest in his shade,
When in eternal lines to time thou grow'st.
So long as men can breathe or eyes can see,
So long lives this, and this gives life to thee.
"My Ship is Sailing, Full of Mindless Woe"
Francesco Petrarch
My ship is sailing, full of mindless woe,
Through the rough sea, in winter-midnight drear,
Between Scylla and Charybdis; there to steer
Stands my master, or rather stands my foe.
At each oar sits a rapid wicked thought
Which seems to scoff at storms and at their end;
The sail, by wet eternal winds distraught,
With hopes, desires, and sighs is made to rend.
A rain of tears, a fog of scornful lines,
Washes and tugs at the too sluggish cords
Which by error with ignorance are wound.
Vanished are my two beloved signs,
Dead in the waves are all the reason and words,
And I despair ever to reach the ground.
To help you find the established patterns, you may want to print this page and mark the poems. You can also search for more sonnets to compare to these to help you. Bring your findings to class tomorrow.
