University of California Press

Petrarch considered poetry and theology to be one and the same. After all, he once wrote, the Bible is but a collection of metaphors revealing God's wisdom. Poets owe Petrarch a debt of thanks for developing the Italian sonnet which bears his name.

Aristocratic English poets took pains to learn the language and many traveled there. The sonnet was one of the souvenirs they brought home.

But they didn't just keep it in a case and admire it. They worked it over; revising and revamping until the complicated rhyme scheme better suited English. The sonnet became a proving ground for young poets. Many bad ones were produced and a few good ones. A good sonnet should make it seem that each word is both entirely unexpected and exactly appropriate.

Spencer, Shakespeare, Milton, Donne, Wordsworth, Keats, Hopkins, and more recently the American poet John Berryman have all left their mark on the form. Why not try it yourself?

Here are the three rules of the game for the Petrarchan (or Italian) sonnet, which is the first we'll try.

1. There must be two stanzas. The first must be an octave (eight lines), and the second a sestet (six lines).

2. The rhyme scheme must go like this: abbaabba and cdecde, where a letter stands for lines that rhyme with each other. That is, in the 1st, the 1st line (a) rhymes with the 4th, 5th, and 8th lines, while the 2nd line (b) rhymes with the 3rd, 6th, and 7th. And — this is the hard part — it should make sense.

3. Finally, there should be a "turn" between the two stanzas. This could be a shift in mood, an answer to a question, or an if/but scenario. You can think of the sestet as a restatement of the octave, or a comment upon it. Lots of writers had a hard time with this last rule and some ignored it. When Milton ignored it, rather than call it a mistake, critics called it "A Miltonic Sonnet."

   William Shakespeare mastered the sonnet form, writing 154 of them in all.

The Shakespearean (or English) sonnet also has fourteen lines. Here are its rules

1. There must be three stanzas, all quatrains (four lines), followed by a couplet (two lines).

2. The rhymes must go like this: abab, cdcd, efef, and gg, where like letters stand for rhyme schemes. So, in each stanza except the short last one, the first line would rhyme with the third, and the second line with the fourth. But the 1st line in the 1st stanza must not rhyme with the 1st line of any other stanza. Got it?

   How do I love thee? Sonnets from the Portuguese was Elizabeth Barrett Browning's book of love sonnets dedicated to her husband, Robert Browning.

Why confine your strongest feelings to 14 rhymed lines, as so many great poets have done? First, because they have done it, and so given the form prestige and laid down a challenge for followers. Plus, poets found that the discipline of the form pushed them to make leaps in meaning they might not otherwise have made.

"For me," wrote William Wordsworth, "'twas pastime to be bound / Within the Sonnet's scanty plot of ground." Too much liberty, he says, can be a weight, for the writer.

Think of the sonnet as a channel that can direct the torrent of your ideas and inspiration. Without a structure and rhyme scheme to follow, they might otherwise spill out unbounded, leaving a shallow puddle.

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