killtime sonnet #24

but the common features of those forms I know of include: fourteen lines, usually of ten syllables, but one form (some Russian inwented it) requires only eight syllable lines. Straiter constraints are applied as the poet selects. The Petrarchan sonnet, for instance, demands iambic pentameter and an intricate rhyme scheme. I approximate that form using a routine rhyme sceme: abba cddc effe gg. This form also insists on being in two parts: the octet and the sestet; the octet corresponds roughly to the set-up; the sestet to the punch line. The Shakespearean sonnet is another form demanding iambic pentameter--but Shakespeare doesn't seem to have flogged himself much over deviations from that requirement. His syllable count is fairly reliably ten to the line. The rhyme scheme there is almost always abab cdcd efef gg. The sonnet can be taken as a whole, but is usually (in Shakespeare's sonnets) the two part presentation, the wind-up and the pitch. That other sonnet form, the one with the eight syllable line requirement, is really easy to write--but I don't use it. Doesn't seem roomy enough for me. This does not exhaust the definitions of 'sonnet.' But it does exhaust what I know about it. I'm not a scholar; I'm an ex-files-clerk who finds that some standard poetic forms are useful scaffolding when I write a poem; the sonnet more useful than most other forms, for my needs, it shows up more often in my work. Betcha Wikipedia has REAMS on the matter. I fear to look there. Perry