Francis V. O'Connor

SONNET FORMS
Comments and Examples by Francis V. O’Connor

INTRODUCTION
Over the years of writing sonnets I invented my own sonnet form, and more recently, I have invented a few alternative forms for fourteen line poems. I thought it would be of use for crossword puzzle, computer game, and trivial pursuit addicts who wanted to escape their fix, and for anyone interested in writing poetry, to have some fundamental information about writing sonnets.

For those influenced by postmodernist discourse to reject any formalism in poetry, I will only say that for me a poem is an artifact -- an object of craft -- that employs language to say simultaneously what prose can only manage sequentially. Formal devices, especially rhyme, also act as filtering devices, prompting free association to edit the primary process, unconscious effluvia that afflicts so many “workshop” poems these days.

One of the great lacks in most contemporary workshop poems is any specific references to history, science, or spirituality. They are ego-driven to such an extent that they are often either embarrassing or plain unreadable. It is boring to have to read the same poem over and over in discrete columns of words that lack any discernible structure, voice, verbal character or metaphoric surprises.

Finally, making a poem is not a semi-mystical, romantic experience whispered into the ear by a presiding muse. It is a craft that produces artifacts made out of words, and a poem’s first draft will require an editing process that will produce a number of succeeding drafts. Over the years you will accumulate the needed skills, but you will never escape the practicalities of editing your work -- which is as much part of the creative process as the initial inspiration.

THE TRADITIONAL FORMS:
A typical sonnet is fourteen lines long divided into a pattern of stanzas and rhymes. It is written in iambic pentameter (i.e. five beats to the line: _ /​ _ /​ _ /​ _ /​ _ /​ -- the slashes being the stressed syllables). It can also be written in four, three or two beats (as the poem’s subject or tone ordains). Where appropriate (as in mournful elegies) six beats to the line (i.e. hexameters) may be used. The sonnet was ostensibly invented by the Italian poet, Francesco Petrarch (1304-74 AD), whose sonnets used the following rhyme scheme:

Octet
a b b a – a b b a
art brain main part – heart sane gain dart
Sestet
c d – c d – c d OR c d e – c d e OR c d e d c e
cold dread – fold red – old – bread OR cold dread full – fold red pull etc.

Example:
GOD’S GRANDEUR AND THE FELL OF DARK
for the shade of Gerard Manley Hopkins

Eros is both grandiose and dark.
Depression tells of Nature’s snobbish dearth.
A blossom’s glory: self-created mirth.
Both energize--if we are on the mark.

Nothing is here. Go create its cause
the better to enjoy our part of earth.
All then is splendor--by reflected worth.
In either case--insight makes us pause.

Fifty million years from now: Oh God!
A dwarf encircled at a cinder’s lope,
our stuff reallocated, our love’s bled
of fate--unless a wish’s tale led
to a space escape with an archival hope
that all remains if we remain shod.

Note in the above example that the sestet is a variant, like the “mirror-image” form described below.

In England, the sonnet developed into the form William Shakespeare (1564-1616) made famous. It had fourteen rhymed lines consisting of three four line stanzas (quatrains) and one two line stanza (couplet) -- normally written without a break.

THE ENGLISH — ELIZABETHAN — SHAKESPEARIAN SONNET

Rhyme Scheme:
Three Quatrains:
a b a b – c d c d – e f e f
art brain part main – cold dread fold red – pull yell full tell
Couplet:
g g
strong long

Example:
APOLLO
After hearing Stravinsky’s ballet music
for Apollo (1928; revised 1947).

I listen in his universal peace
as if disembodied--without care--
even beyond feeling; just pure release
from wary senses ever prone to wear.

Three forces journey on pursuing truth:
the story, the melody, the moving through--
all tamed by an imperious, golden youth
who forms the fusion of three loves as true.

Far before memory, the cosmic cause
for any change was dark, immortal force.
How else did Nature’s cycles never pause,
bestowing rhythm on the daily course?

The godly cadence of his subtle sway
enlightened night as well as Sun the day.

ALTERNATIVE SONNET FORMS
The Petrarchan and Shakespearean sonnet forms are the traditional standard. But poets, once they have learned these, tend to vary the forms while keeping within the fourteen rhymed lines. Some years ago I invented a form I found more convenient to the way people talk and to my own voice. This I shall modestly call the O’Connorian Sonnet. It follows the Petrarchan octave and sestet format, but the rhyme scheme is initiated by all possible variations of partial rhymes in a way that builds up to identical rhymes. This can have the effect of hiding the rhymes while setting up all sorts of pleasing under- and overtones that grow in emphasis.

In the following, the prime [ ’ ] mark indicates a variant on a perfect rhyme:

THE O'CONNORIAN SONNET

Rhyme Scheme:
Octave
a a’ b b’ – a’ a b’ b
art curt brain sign – hurt heart vine sane
Sestet
c c’ a b c’ c
crowd wood start vain stood cloud

Example:
THE INNER LARK
As a lark singing, the sudden poem appears
on the mind’s horizon, banishing all cares
until its words are found, shaped akin
to form, its tropes tuned, its music spun
across the inner arc of rhythm’s airs,
and there on the page--despite retreats, fears,
compromises, rhyme’s epiphenomenon--
it voices the whispering of wings within.

Remaining in place yet being everywhere
is the poet’s privileged fate--like the sun’s car
that only seems to move within our spheres.
Each poem becomes another deft win
if left to happen as it’s heard afar
and caught and copied on a swooping dare.

I have also invented several other rhyme schemes for fourteen line poems which are not sonnets per se, but provide opportunities to write a short poem that strays at the start from any of those described above. It is always best to allow a poem to find its own form, and some poems just forget about rhyme and put themselves into free verse. Let the emerging poem lead. But there is also the advantage to have a few freer forms available to give your verbal artifact a bit of aural definition -- the way composers have used variations on the sonata form over the centuries. Thus:

THE MIRROR-IMAGE SONNET

Rhyme Scheme:
a b c d e f g – g f e d c b a
mind art dread design curt full brain – vain pull hurt vine red heart kind

Example:
SHRINK-WRAPPED BOATS
After traveling on Amtrak’s Acella between
New York and Boston, early March, 2007.

Along the eastern edge of the continent,
near a brown and gray, iced-over cove,
was a jumble of brilliant white, winterized boats
plastic-wrapped until Spring in dry dock
like icebergs huddled against climate change,
dabs of whipped cream upon a dessert,
or a sealed book about to transport a mind.

Smooth, graceful sculptured forms, designed
to thwart the ravages of ice, they assert
the type of boat beneath, its potential range
and power, while somehow managing to mock
every other entity that floats
in sheer beauty--except those that grow to rove
from chrysalis or spore in their season to be spent.

This form can also be rhymed a x x x x x b – b x x x x x a -- with the first and last lines rhyming and a couplet at the break -- with free verse between.

THE COUPLET SONNET

Rhyme Scheme:
a a – b b – c c – d d – e e – f f – g g
art heart – brain vain – curt hurt – dread red – evil weevil – full pull – ground round.

Example:
THE WRITER OF POEMS IN WARTIME
Pens are scarce--paper and ink too.
It’s hard to find anything very new
to say when opportunities have ground
down to subsistence and the eerie sound
of sirens crying--not with words luring
others to protest against the abject abjuring
of revolt--but the need to fear the radiation.

With such emergencies, what use creation?
We know wars now are mutually lost;
the leaders in cahoots at our future’s cost.
The regional geiger-counters order us
to labor toward a survival we all guess
is a very unpoetic myth of state--
busy work to mask the withering wait.

THE SANDWICH SONNET

Rhyme Scheme:
a b c d e – f g g f – e d c b a

Example:
THUNDERSTORM
A storm crossed the city west to east:
twenty opaque minutes of flashing noise
echoed in the weather report’s static.
The sunset suddenly brightened the haze
implying a rainbow visible out of sight.

The storm took shape in imagination’s eye
as a galaxy far away beyond our thought.
Its relative tenure overhead was short;
its edge of clouds revealed blue sky.

What is the meaning of such a passing might?
Nature’s menace? A odd subjunctive phrase,
vague in the mind, boding something vatic?
A challenge to our commonplace poise
that nervously brooks this blatant arriviste?

END