Post sonnet examples here

[Ros]

Any sonnets you particularly like, feel are clever etc, put them on this thread.

[Ros]

http://www.14by14.com/Issue6/NeanderthalBoneFlute.html

With some useful words by Rose Kelleher underneath.

[Jackie]

Thank you for those "useful words," Ros. Important comments.

I also think something different about a sonnet is that it starts with a problem, and to write the sonnet, the poet has to solve the problem, or at least deal with it in some way. In this case, the poet was intrigued with the problem of whether the bone was a flute.

Jackie

[k-j]

I also think something different about a sonnet is that it starts with a problem, and to write the sonnet, the poet has to solve the problem, or at least deal with it in some way.

Why do you think that?

[Antcliff]

Hi Jackie ,

I also think something different about a sonnet is that it starts with a problem, and to write the sonnet, the poet has to solve the problem, or at least deal with it in some way

As K-J asks. I think you are right in that there is often a problem to be considered..e.g. an old school favourite:

http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poem/173660


But I am not sure whether it is a good idea to inflate this into a defining feature of the sonnet. My favourite sonnet is John Masefield's "The Waggoner"...sadly not on-line. There is no problem in it.



Seth

[Jackie]

I agree, I'm not thinking of it as a defining criterion. But it's hard to have a turn if there's nothing to turn.

Jackie

[Antcliff]

Well, the "turn" or shift need not amount to much.

e.g. I am fond of this one...

http://www.archive.org/stream/leafburne ... 6/mode/2up

[Jackie]

Ok, Antcliff, but I put it to you, what if the sonnet began with the turn? What if it started with the positive, and ended with the fearsome? How would this change the poet's solution to the problem of how to define a navvy?

Jackie
P.S. I had to look up the word navvy!

[Antcliff]

Hi Jackie,
yes, ha! "Navvy" is a rather old word now.

I'm not sure I see that the poet is taking on a problem in that Ernest Rhys poem....unless you say that any attempt to describe a thing is an attempt to consider " a problem of defining it". (And I wonder if that would rather trivialise the view that a sonnet should ideally address a problem? )

Anyway..here is another of my favourites. And I have to apologise in advance...don't worry, almost everybody needs a translation. I certainly did.

[RCJames]

deleted

[Antcliff]

Meter hounds are pro’ly gonna tear this apart.
Syllable count’s ok, but spondees, pyrrhics,
and those pesky trochees might not be in line.
But, big But, even the greats let some things slide
for the over-all musicality and rhythm – so –
that said, I’m open for suggestions and tweaks - RC

Romeo/Juliet Redux

Their families at war with each other,
rabid dogs at the heels of a stranger,
one angry son to a feuding brother.
In their own measure, away from danger,
they intertwined hands, welcoming desire,
and gifted each other unwonted bliss.
As the clans’ rivalry spun in a gyre,
the two became aware of their abyss,
a deceptive potion would remedy
the dark mire, albeit a desperate cure.
Deadly, morbid, ill-advised, the recipe
effected a demise of hearts still pure.

In full wedding night posture, unavowed,
forever’s dusky form served as their shroud.

Greetings, RC

Can I suggest that if you are asking for workshopping suggestions...as you are...that this be posted in either of the workshops? You are far more likely to get a response to a workshop request if you put it in a workshop. It is what they are for.

Best wishes, Seth

[RCJames]

OK - I'm certifiably lost now - I'll look around for the proper workshop now. - RC

[David]

This is the right workshop, RC - just the wrong corner of it. You just need to post in your preferred place - either here viewforum.php?f=20 or here viewforum.php?f=3. As you will. And as you have been doing already, I see.

Anyway, I'll post a favourite sonnet of mine - for that is the idea, you see - here.

Cheers

David

[David]

If there were, O! an Hellespont of cream
Between us, milk-white Mistress, I would swim
To you, to show to both my love’s extreme,
Leander-like, — yea, dive from brim to brim.
But met I with a butter’d pippin-pie
Floating upon’t, that would I make my boat,
To waft me to you without jeopardy:
Though sea-sick I might be while it did float.
Yet if a storm should rise, by night or day,
Of sugar snows or hail of care-aways,
Then if I found a pancake in my way,
It like a plank should bear me to your quays,
Which having found, if they tobacco kept,
The smoke should dry me well before I slept.

— John Davies of Hereford, 1598

[Jim]

This is Robert Burns's imitation of Lopez de Vega's sonnet on sonnets.

Fourteen, a sonneteer thy praises sings;
What magic myst’ries in that number lie!
Your hen hath fourteen eggs beneath her wings
That fourteen chickens to the roost may fly.
Fourteen full pounds the jockey’s stone must be;
His age fourteen — a horse’s prime is past.
Fourteen long hours too oft the Bard must fast;
Fourteen bright bumpers — bliss he ne’er must see!
Before fourteen, a dozen yields the strife;
Before fourteen — e’en thirteen’s strength is vain.
Fourteen good years — a woman gives us life;
Fourteen good men — we lose that life again.
What lucubrations can be more upon it?
Fourteen good measur’d verses make a sonnet.




.

[Jim]

Still Life

Through the open French window, the warm sun
lights up the polished breakfast table, laid
round a bowl of crimson roses, for one --
a service of Worcester porcelain, arrayed
near it a melon, peaches, figs, small hot
rolls in a napkin, fairy rack of toast,
butter in ice, high silver coffee pot,
and, heaped on a salver, the morning's post.
She comes over the lawn, the young heiress,
from her early walk in the garden-wood,
feeling that life's a table set to bless
her delicate desires with all that's good,
that even the unopened future lies
like a love-letter, full of sweet surprise.

Elizabeth Daryrush

[Jim]

The world is woven all of dream and error
And but one sureness in our truth may lie--
That when we hold to aught our thinking's mirror
We know it not by knowing it thereby.
For but one side of things the mirror knows,
And knows it colder from its solidness.
A double lie its truth is; what it shows
For true shows false and nowhere a true face.
Thought clouds our life's day-sense with strangeness, yet
Never from strangeness more than that it's strange
Know we our perplexed thinking, for we get
But the words' sense from words--knowledge, truth, change.
We know the world is false, not what is true,
Yet we think on, knowing we cannot know.

Fernando Pessoa

[Lia]

Hi Jim,

fascinating sonnets here. I particularly like Robert Burns's response to Lopez de Vega. I prefer it, in fact. The sonnet by John Davies of Hereford, 1598, that David put up, is staggering.

I'll have a look for a few favourite sonnets.

Lia

[Lia]

Sonnet to J.M.K. (John Mitchell Kemble)

by Alfred, Lord Tennyson - published 1830

My hope and heart is with thee — thou wilt be
A latter Luther, and a soldier-priest
To scare church-harpies from the master's feast;
Our dusted velvets have much need of thee:
Thou art no Sabbath-drawler of old saws,
Distill'd from some worm-canker'd homily;
But spurr'd at heart with fieriest energy
To embattail and to wall about thy cause
With iron-worded proof, hating to hark
The humming of the drowsy pulpit-drone
Half God's good sabbath, while the worn-out clerk
Brow-beats his desk below. Thou from a throne
Mounted in heaven wilt shoot into the dark
Arrows of lightnings. I will stand and mark.

[Jim]

I don't think Tennyson is at his best in his sonnets. I like him more in the Mariana poems and "In Memoriam".

Meeting and Passing

As I went down the hill along the wall
There was a gate I had leaned at for the view
And had just turned from when I first saw you
As you came up the hill. We met. But all
We did that day was mingle great and small
Footprints in summer dust as if we drew
The figure of our being less than two
But more than one as yet. Your parasol
Pointed the decimal off with one deep thrust.
And all the time we talked you seemed to see
Something down there to smile at in the dust.
(Oh, it was without prejudice to me!)
Afterward I went past what you had passed
Before we met and you what I had passed.

Robert Frost

The Sorrow of True Love

The sorrow of true love is a great sorrow
And true love parting blackens a bright morrow.
Yet almost they equal joys, since their despair
Is but hope blinded by its tears, and clear
Above the storm the heavens wait to be seen.
But greater sorrow from less love has been
That can mistake lack of despair for hope
And knows not tempest nor the perfect scope
Of summer, but a frozen drizzle perpetual
Of drops that from remorse and pity fall
And cannot ever shine in the sun or thaw,
Removed eternally from the sun’s law.

Edward Thomas

[Lia]

That's certainly true, Jim. Several of Tennyson's sonnets fall short, but now and then one such as JMK appears. I find it fascinating and the volta perfectly placed.

A clever play from Frost. I haven't read the curious one from Thomas before. Why did he lose two lines, I wonder?

[Jim]

I don't know. It's the last poem Thomas wrote. Edna Longley calls it a 'near sonnet'.

[Lia]

Hmm I wonder if it was simply unfinished, Jim?

Ok so I thought I'd bring a bit of Sylvia Plath today, which is "Sonnet : To Eva."

Phil's reminded me of its age (forgot about that completely) so here's the link;

https://www.poemhunter.com/poem/sonnet-to-eva/

[Lia]

Now, I'm pretty certain this is in the public domain.

I still have a tiny pocket book of Wordsworth that I used to carry around when I was a little kid so here's a nod to him;


The World Is Too Much With Us
by William Wordsworth

The world is too much with us; late and soon,
Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers;—
Little we see in Nature that is ours;
We have given our hearts away, a sordid boon!
This Sea that bares her bosom to the moon;
The winds that will be howling at all hours,
And are up-gathered now like sleeping flowers;
For this, for everything, we are out of tune;
It moves us not. Great God! I’d rather be
A Pagan suckled in a creed outworn;
So might I, standing on this pleasant lea,
Have glimpses that would make me less forlorn;
Have sight of Proteus rising from the sea;
Or hear old Triton blow his wreathèd horn.

[Lia]

"Bright star, would I were stedfast as thou art"
by John Keats

Bright star, would I were stedfast as thou art—

Not in lone splendour hung aloft the night

And watching, with eternal lids apart,

Like nature's patient, sleepless Eremite,

The moving waters at their priestlike task

Of pure ablution round earth's human shores,

Or gazing on the new soft-fallen mask

Of snow upon the mountains and the moors—

No—yet still stedfast, still unchangeable,

Pillow'd upon my fair love's ripening breast,

To feel for ever its soft fall and swell,

Awake for ever in a sweet unrest,

Still, still to hear her tender-taken breath,
And so live ever—or else swoon to death.