When I wrote sonnets I followed Milton's template. The Shakespearean
was way too solligistic for my taste: if, if, if, then. It seemed too
easy. But I was at any rate very bad at either.
I used to ask the same question: why call it a sonnet if its only
resemblance to what's traditionaly meant by the word is the number of
lines. I've asked practitioners of the "non-sonnet" sonnet if it was
because of the prestige attached to the form, but apparently not.
Since Ted Berrigan a great many US poets write these fourteeners and
call them sonnets. It still strikes me as strange, but it concerns me
less and less. I don't care what Hal calls his as long as he keeps
writing them.
If he called them villanelles I might be more upset. Though I care
even less about the form.There have been great villanelles, but I
don't think any of them have also been great poems.
About the only time the form of the sonnet becomes an issue for me
these days is in translating, where it creates an interesting
connundrum. In Spanish lines are not measured in metric feet. It's a
simple syllable count, usually eleven to a line because most Spanish
words end in a feminine syllable. They rhyme, of course, but almost
everything in Spanish does because of the relatively few
word-endings, so it's not a matter of much struggle against a
resistant language. Translating rhymed verse of course is difficult
and can lead to distortions for the sake of the rhyme, but everything
about translating is difficult. Here the problem is the meaning
inherent in the form itself. In English a traditional, rhymed sonnet
is seen as in a line of descent from Petrarch by way of Shakespeare
or Milton, and every sonnet comments on its ancestry. In Spanish the
descent is from Petrarch by way of Quevedo. If I translate a Spanish
sonnet into a rhymed, non-metered English the translaton reads as
faulty because it's not iambic. And it also reads as in the line of
descent and commentary from English ancestors. In effect, retaining
the form of the original in the translation is a mistranslation, an
importing of data from our culture into a poem where it doesn't belong.
Mark
At 10:09 AM 10/14/2007, you wrote:
>Janet:
>
>>>I have a book somewhere that claims sonnets should have
>>>a "volta", a twist at about line 9, but I don't see that
>>>in this one.
>
>That's a bit like the sonnet equivalent of the veriform
>appendix. When sonnets were real (written in Italian or French as
>English didn't have sufficient rhyming words) the metrical structure was:
>
> abbaabba cde cde
>
>There, the volta after the eighth line was built-in, virtually
>demanded by the rhyming structure.
>
>When the form became corrupted, not a real sonnet, initiated in this
>variety by Henry Howard Earl of Surrey (except he failed to register
>the tradmark so it became known as the English Sonnet, sometimes the
>Shakespearean Sonnt --
>le vice anglais) the rhyming pattern changed to:
>
> abab cdcd efef gg
>
>Now, you *can (obviously) have a volta after line eight in this
>form, but it's no longer structurally necessary.
>
>Except, of course, Nice People Don't Do Things Like That (write
>sonnets without a volta between the octave and sestet, as bad as not
>putting on a tie while dressing for dinner).
>
>Which leaves the question of the exact status of a fourteen line
>poem based on an octave/sestet structure vs. a rhymed fourteen line
>poem without a volta.
>
>Oo la la!
>
>Rodent
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