Hearting the Love Sonnet

 

Haiku has been my go-to form of poetry for so long, I’ve seldom given thought to the lasting value and versatility of the sonnet. Then recently, a poet-friend said she planned to focus on studying and writing sonnets, which turned my attention to the subject too. (Thank you, April.)

Shakespeare immediately comes to mind, of course, and also John Milton, John Donne, George Herbert, and numerous other poets who wrote in a variety of poetic forms but with a romantic aside to sonnets. To provide you with some study-worthy examples of this timeless form, most often written in iambic pentameter, I’ve selected sonnets where love poems between two people have elevated into love poems to the Lord.

 

Leave Me, O Love, Which Reachest but to Dust

Sir Philip Sidney (1554-1586)

 

Leave me, O Love, which reachest but to dust,

And thou my mind aspire to higher things:

Grow rich in that which never taketh rust:

Whatever fades, but fading pleasure brings.

 

Draw in thy beams, and humble all thy might,

To that sweet yoke, where lasting freedoms be:

Which breaks the clouds and opens forth the light,

That doth both shine and give us sight to see.

 

O take fast hold, let that light be thy guide,

In this small course which birth draws out to death,

And think how evil becometh him to slide,

Who seeketh heaven, and comes of heavenly breath.

Then farewell world, thy uttermost I see,

Eternal Love, maintain thy life in me.

…

 

Easter

by Edmund Spencer (1552-1599)

 

Most glorious Lord of Life, that on this day 

Didst make Thy triumph over death and sin;

And having harrowed hell didst bring away

Captivity thence captive us to win:

This joyous day dear Lord with joy begin;

And grant that we for whom thou didst die 

Being with Thy dear blood clean washed from sin 

May live forever in felicity!

 

And that Thy love we weighing worthily 

May likewise love Thee for the same again;

And for Thy sake that all like deare didst buy 

With love may one another entertain.

So let us love, dear Love, like as we ought. 

Love is the lesson which the Lord us taught.

…

 

Earth has not anything to show more fair

William Wordsworth (1770-1850)

 

Earth has not anything to show more fair:

Dull would he be of soul who could pass by

A sight so touching in its majesty:

This City now doth like a garment wear

The beauty of the morning; silent, bare,

Ships, towers, domes, theatres, and temples lie

Open unto the fields, and to the sky;

All bright and glittering in the smokeless air.

Never did sun more beautifully steep

In his first splendour valley, rock, or hill;

Ne'er saw I, never felt, a calm so deep!

The river glideth at his own sweet will:

Dear God! the very houses seem asleep;

And all that mighty heart is lying still!

..

 

God's Grandeur

Gerard Manley Hopkins (1841-1889)

 

The world is charged with the grandeur of God.

    It will flame out, like shining from shook foil;

    It gathers to a greatness, like the ooze of oil

Crushed. Why do men then now not reck his rod?

Generations have trod, have trod, have trod;

    And all is seared with trade; bleared, smeared with toil;

    And wears man's smudge and shares man's smell: the soil

Is bare now, nor can foot feel, being shod.

 

And for all this, nature is never spent;

    There lives the dearest freshness deep down things;

And though the last lights off the black West went

    Oh, morning, at the brown brink eastward, springs —

Because the Holy Ghost over the bent

    World broods with warm breast and with ah! bright wings.

…

 

As you can see, each sonnet includes the standard 14 lines with a volta or turning point, usually on the eighth line or the twelfth.  

For additional discussions on the form, visit this previous post. Also, you’ll find below a contemporary (as in, written last week) example of a sonnet in tetrameter with four beats per line instead of five and four rhyming sounds (a personal challenge since I’m a rhyming-minimalist.)

 

Sonnet Awakened at 3 a.m.

Mary Harwell Sayler  

 

If independence boasts its reward,

when will we dare depend on the Lord?

And if God’s Word calls for accord,

why do we wield it like a sword?

 

Let us, as One, world’s ways despise,

but see each person as God’s prize

and look for Love through Spirit eyes.

Such love will heal us and surprise.

 

Begone, you selfish, sightless core!

If need be, grope for Jesus’ door.

Unlatch your tethered thoughts. Explore

the words of Christ Whom you adore.

 

God’s Own Spirit bids us, “Come!

Live Christ’s Love. Be Whole. Be One.

…

Every poem doesn’t have to rhyme!

When I first began writing poems, they inevitably rhymed and bounced to their own rhythm. Most poets can probably say the same, and that’s fine! Rhythmic and rhyming lines work wonderfully well for humorous verse, nursery rhymes, and greeting card verse.

If, however, you want your poems to have a literary tone or quality, you and your rhymes may need to break up for a while! You won’t be saying goodbye forever, but when you return to rhyming, you’ll have a purpose and appropriate form.

Since haiku has been perennially popular for centuries, it makes a good place to start weaning yourself from rhymes. The brevity of its three lines and picturesque scenes from nature provide an excellent exercise in areas far more important to poetry than rhyme, for example:

• Being concise (aka “writing tight.”)

• Being highly observant (i.e., noticing – really noticing what you see and sense.)

• Using fresh comparisons of This with That (to SHOW, rather than TELL.)

To make a clean break with rhyme, consider writing prose poems, which focus on insights, thoughts, feelings, or even a mini-story, rather than rhyme.

Also, consider writing free verse, which relies heavily on the way in which you arrange and rearrange your line breaks.

As long as your free verse stays FREE of any pattern, including a rhyme scheme), the poems might scatter rhymes internally, rather than end-line, but they’re more apt to use sound echoes – word pairs that echo off of one another, creating audial interest.

Once you’ve spent some time with these alternatives to rhyme, learn how to scan a poem, which is much easier than it sounded in high school! (You can do it!)

Then, you have the tools you need to write rhyming poetry in such traditional patterns as the sonnet and villanelle. Writing in these classical forms not only gives you a strong sense of satisfaction in your work, it can elevate your level of poetry-writing into literary realms. There, you’ll be more apt to find poetry journals and anthologies waiting for your poems to fill their hungry pages.


Mary Harwell Sayler, ©2017, poet-author of Living in the Nature Poem, Outside Eden, Beach Songs & Wood Chimes (for children), Faces in a Crowd, PRAISE! and Kindle e-books on poetry

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Writing a ghazal

GHAZAL (OR GHASEL):

No matter how you spell it, the ghazal (often pronounced ghuzzle) brings an interesting pattern of rhyme and repetition in its traditional form of poetry from seventh century Arabia.

Set in five to twelve couplets, the opening pair establishes a refrain that recurs throughout the poem. This echoing sound may come by repeating syllables or a phrase as shown in the poem below.

Besides the repetition of the phrase, "new moon rising,” each couplet contains either a slant rhyme or a true rhyme with sounds, such as ear/ ir/ eer/ ier, about mid-way in the line. The first couplet establishes a refrain of repeated word(s) and rhymes in both lines, then places them in the second line for the remainder of the poem.

Often, a ghazal hinges on thoughts that come in free association of a repeated word or phrase. Otherwise, little, if any, connection of thought exists from one phrase to the next.

Finally, the last couplet ties the poet's name into the refrain as in the example shown where the words, Mary, hare, well, sailor sign my "autograph" to the poem.

Reflecting On The Moon

I could not hear the new moon, rising –
white fist of fear, the new moon rising.

Oh, come! Let's make a man of snow.
Its face will appear like a new moon rising.

On the Chesapeake Bay, hound dogs bay
any time of year at the new moon rising.

Animal-vegetable-mineral-person-
place-thing-mir-or the new moon rising.

The Law carves a heart of pumpkin stone.
Jack-O-Lanterns jeer at the new moon rising.

The Witch of Endor has no broom
nor king to steer the new moon rising.

Hark! Whose star is this, upon
a midnight clear and new moon rising?

Unclean! Unclean! Life touches death
beside the bier – anew! Moon rising....

Welcome wagon, sailor, hare. By
Mary's well draw near the new moon rising.

by Mary Harwell Sayler from the e-book Christian Poet' Guide to Writing Poetry based on the poetry correspondence course Mary wrote and used for years with other poets and poetry students

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Christian Poet's Guide to Writing Poetry, e-book on Kindle



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Writing Metrical Poetry

If you have studied poetry in school or taken my poetry course and/or read its e-book version, you have a sweeping view of poetry that has most likely helped you to improve your poems and enjoy the works of other poets on a richer level. You probably have an idea of scansion, too, and know that scanning a poem can help you to write metered poetry and better appreciate traditional, metrical forms.

But what if you want more? What if you want to teach a class or workshop on traditional English poets and poetry? Or, what if you want to study and learn from classical and contemporary poets whose poems continue to be welcomed by poetry students, poetry lovers, and poets like you and me? Or, what if you want to be able to identify the forms you find scattered in e-zines or journals, such as Measure, that feature traditional poems?

Reading Measure: A Review of Formal Poetry led me to discover their online book catalog where I saw Writing Metrical Poetry by William Baer, a professor at the University of Evansville in Indiana, a prize-winning poet in his own right, and former editor of the journal, The Formalist, which, unfortunately, is no longer being published. Obviously, Professor Baer knows his stuff! More importantly, he knows how to present what can seem like complicated information in a clear, highly readable way. With that in mind, I wrote the editor of Measure, Rob Griffith to request a review copy, which he kindly had sent to me.

As the Preface to Writing Metrical Poetry explains, “All poets… wish to be artists, but all art begins with craft, and this book is about the craft of writing poetry in the great tradition of English-language poetry, which extends from Geoffrey Chaucer to Larkin and Richard Wilbur.” That brings us, the readers, from the earliest poets who wrote in English, developing language along the way, to poets of our lifetimes. What we can easily see from either extreme is that poetry has a long history with a huge variety of poetic forms in usage for centuries – and now!

Like a well-made antique, traditional literary forms seldom go out of style. And, as with furniture, you can mix these vintage literary forms with your contemporary interests and timeless, universal needs, arranging lively, eclectic lines that include your readers yet express the true you.

But here’s the real beauty! By becoming familiar with time-tested patterns, we can experiment with new usages, say, for writing a screenplay in blank verse or writing a book-length series of sonnets to address controversial issues, presenting both sides intelligently and poetically before drawing conclusions in the final couplets or quatrains.

In case you fear you’ve forgotten everything you knew about forms and meter, don’t worry! Professor Baer leads readers through, beginning with the Introduction, which not only refreshes memory but helps us to understand the effects meter can bring to our poems.

For example, the subtitle “What Distinguishes Poetry From Prose?” lists and clearly describes these three important differences:

• Emphasis on the line
• Emphasis on rhythm
• Emphasis on compression

The chapter on “Meter” lists and defines the primary feet (iamb, trochee, etc.) used to measure metered poetry, but, more, it opens with causatives that help us to understand the thinking behind the poetic measurements established by each country. As the text explains:

“The fundamental nature of every language determines its meter (the underlying rhythmic structure of its poetry) and the study of meter is called prosody. Different languages use different methods to create their sonic patterns; for example, accent is used in German, duration in Latin, and syllable-counting in Japanese.”

As soon as we can call on the basics of meter, we’re ready to follow the poet-author’s lead into studying patterns based on line count – quatrain (4), couplet (2), tercet (3) – and/or based on line length (meter) and rhyme schemes (sonnet, villanelle) and/or type of foot used (iambic, trochaic, anapestic, etc.)

It sounds like a lot! But the truth is, you mainly need to become familiar with only five foot-measurements (the iamb, trochee, anapest, dactyl, and spondee) and the rest is as easy as 1, 2, 3! Honest! It’s like cooking. Just learn the difference between a tablespoon (T) and teaspoon (tsp.) and the rest is in the recipe book.

While I highly recommend that every poet who wants to write traditional poems reads this book straight through, doing assignments along the way or after, I also want to emphasize that you do not need to know or remember these forms and patterns! Professor Baer knows them, presents them well, and provides you with a well-indexed book where you can look up a rondeau or clerihew or triolet when you’re ready to write one and need a trusted recipe.

What a difference this makes in the outcome! What new doors open! For, when your traditional poems are done, you’ll have delicious results much easier to predict than when you freely throw together ingredients and hope everything turns out to your liking and the tastes of your readers.


© 2014, Mary Harwell Sayler


Writing Metrical Poetry, Writer’s Digest Books




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