Day 13 Sonnet

The sonnet is a wonderfully complicated poetic form that allows a poet to demonstrate his skill with the technical matters of traditional regular verse. A true gem is Billy Collins sonnet about writing a sonnet: Examine this handout on the sonnet and the specific requirements of the form.

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10		 Sonnet by Billy Collins

All we need is fourteen lines, well, thirteen now,
And after this next one just a dozen
To launch a little ship on love's storm-tossed seas,
then only ten more left like rows of beans.
How easily it goes unless you get Elizabethan
and insist the iambic bongos must be played
and rhymes positioned at the ends of lines,
one for every station of the cross.
But hang on here while we make the turn
into the final six where all will be resolved,
where longing and heartache will find an end,
where Laura will tell Petrarch to put down his pen,
take off those crazy medieval tights,
blow out the lights, and come at last to bed.		  
     

Here, we can clearly see the self-reflective tendencies, in which the poet discusses how many more lines he needs to finish a traditional sonnet (lines 1-4), he directly comments on the traditional subject-matter of the sonnet, the rejected love of the speaker (alluded to in line 3), he adds an amusing allusion to the normal requirements of rhyme, meter and iambic pentameter, which the poet rejects (lines 5-8), and he adds a direct reference to the turn or volta, in the exact moment when the volta is required in an Italian sonnet. Finally the poet alludes to Laura (the woman to whom Petrarch dedicated his sonnets) and to Petrarch, the inventor of the sonnnet-structure that Collins mimics and alters simultaneously. The subject-matter of this sonnet is the conventional sonnet itself; thus, it is metapoetry. (Notes from Dr. K. Wheeler’s website.)

Your Turn: You knew this was coming, right? In small groups, use the worksheet for writing a sonnet to write a sonnet. Subject, your choice.

Listen to Collins read this poem.

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Updated 15 January 2023.