The Sonnet (Poetry) is a PowerPoint presentation that briefly talks about what a sonnet is and its different forms/ patterns. This PPP is perfect for your high school class. It is recommendable to use the 2010 version of PowerPoint for a smooth use.

3.  The word comes from the Italian word
sonetto, meaning a little sound or
song,
 Originated in 12thC Italy based on old
folk song stanza
 The first recognizable sonnets are
associated with ‘Courtly Love’

4.  Petrarch 1304-74
 Sir Thomas Wyatt 1502-42
 Henry Howard 1517-47
 William Shakespeare
 Sir Philip Sidney
 Elizabeth Barrett Browning

5.  Religious sonnets: John Donne, George
Herbert, Gerard Manley Hopkins
 Political sonnet – Shelley ‘England in
1819’
 Society – Wordsworth ‘Upon
Westminster Bridge’
 War- Owen ‘Anthem for Doomed Youth’

7.  a poem of 14 lines in iambic pentameter,
usually set out as one stanza, and
following a complex rhyme scheme.
 Iambic pentameter – a line of verse with five
metrical feet, each consisting of one short (or
unstressed) syllable followed by one long (or
stressed) syllable, for example: Two
households, both alike in dignity.

8. THE ITALIAN OR PETRARCHAN SONNET
• Octave A First Quatrain
B
B
A
A Second Quatrain
B
B
A
TURN (‘Volta’)----------------------------------------
• Sestet C C C Variations for sestet
D D D
E C E
C D C
D C E
E D D

9. EXAMPLE OF ITALIAN OR PETRARCHAN
SONNET
‘On First Looking into Chapman’s Homer’ (Keats)
Much have I travelled in the realms of gold, - a
And many goodly states and kingdoms seen; - b
Round many western islands have I been - b
Which bards in fealty to Apollo hold. - a
Oft of one wide expanse had I been told - a
That deep-browed Homer ruled as his demesne; - b
Yet did I never breathe its pure serene - b
Till I heard Chapman speak out loud and bold: - a

10. EXAMPLE OF ITALIAN OR PETRARCHAN
SONNET
‘On First Looking into Chapman’s Homer’ (Keats)
Then felt I like some watcher of the skies - c
When a new planet swims into his ken; - d
Or like stout Cortez when with eagle eyes - c
He stared at the Pacific, and all his men - d
Looked at each other with a wild surmise – - c
Silent, upon a peak in Darien. - d

11. THE SHAKESPEAREAN SONNET
• A First Quatrain
• B
• A
• B
• C Second Quatrain
• D
• C
• D
(TURN-------------------?)
• E Third Quatrain
• F
• E
• F
• G Concluding Couplet
• G

12. EXAMPLE OF SHAKESPEREAN SONNET
SONNET 66 by William Shakespeare
Tired with all these, for restful death I cry, - - a
As to behold desert a beggar born, - b
And needy nothing trimm’d in jollity, - a
And purest faith unhappily forsworn, - b
And gilded honour shamefully misplac’d, - c
And maiden virtue rudely strumpeted, - d
And right perfection wrongfully disgrac’d, - c
And strength by limping sway disabled, - d

13. EXAMPLE OF SHAKESPEREAN SONNET
SONNET 66 by William Shakespeare
And art made tongue-tied by authority, - e
And folly (doctor-like) controlling skill, - f
And simple truth miscall’d simplicity, - e
And captive good attending captain ill: - f
Tired with all these, from these would I be gone,- g
Save that to die I leave my love alone. - g

14. SPENSERIAN SONNET:
ABAB, BCBC, CDCD, EE
One day I wrote her name upon the strand,
But came the waves and washed it away:
Again I wrote it with a second hand,
But came the tide, and made my pains his prey.
Vain man, said she, that dost in vain assay
A mortal thing so to immortalize!
For I myself shall like to this decay,
And eek my name be wiped out likewise.
Not so (quoth I), let baser things devise
To die in dust, but you shall live by fame:
My verse your virtues rare shall eternize,
And in the heavens write your glorious name;
Where, whenas death shall all the world subdue,
Our love shall live, and later life renew. (Spenser, Amoretti 2)Sarah Law Poetic Forms & Genres

15. MEREDITHIAN SONNET: 16 LINES
ABBA, CDDC, EFFE, GHHG
George Meredith, from Modern Love (1862)
By this he knew she wept with waking eyes:
That, at his hand's light quiver by her head,
The strange low sobs that shook their common bed
Were called into her with a sharp surprise,
And strangely mute, like little gasping snakes,
Dreadfully venomous to him. She lay
Stone-still, and the long darkness flowed away
With muffled pulses. Then, as midnight makes
Her giant heart of Memory and Tears
Drink the pale drug of silence, and so beat
Sleep's heavy measure, they from head to feet
Were moveless, looking through their dead black years,
By vain regret scrawled over the blank wall.
Like sculptured effigies they might be seen
Upon their marriage-tomb, the sword between;
Each wishing for the sword that severs all.

16. CURTAL SONNET: LIKE
PETRARCHAN BUT PROPORTION OF
6:4 ½ INSTEAD OF 8:6“Pied Beauty,” Gerard Manly Hopkins (1877)
Glory be to God for dappled things
For skies of couple colour as a brindled cow;
For rosemoles all in stipple upon trout that swim
Fresh firecoal chestnut falls; finches’ wings;
Landscape plotted and pieced
Fold, fallow and trim.
All things counter, original, spare, strange;
Whatever is fickle, freckled (who knows how?)
With swift, slow; sweet, sour; adazzle, dim
He fathers forth whose beauty is past change;
Praise him.

17. ‘THE SONNET-BALLAD’
GWENDOLYN BROOKS (1949)
Oh mother, mother, where is happiness?
They took my lover’s tallness off to war,
Left me lamenting. Now I cannot guess
What I can use an empty heart-cup for.
He won’t be coming back here any more.
Some day the war will end, but, oh, I knew
When he went walking grandly out that door
That my sweet love would have to be untrue.
Would have to be untrue. Would have to court
Coquettish death, whose impudent and strange
Possessive arms and beauty (of a sort)
Can make a hard man hesitate—and change.
And he will be the one to stammer, “Yes.”
Oh mother, mother, where is happiness?
Sarah Law Poetic Forms & Genres

18. OTHER SONNET VARIATIONS
• Caudate (tail) sonnet: a sonnet of any type, followed by an extra couplet
• Chained or linked sonnet: each line starts with last word of previous line
• Continuous or reiterating sonnet: uses only one or two rhymes in the entire sonnet
• Crown of sonnets: a sequence of sonnets, each of which begins with the last line of
the previous sonnet
• Interwoven sonnet: includes both medial (middle of line) and end rhyme
• Miltonic sonnet: an Italian sonnet with little or no break in sense at the volta, creating
a gradual culmination of the idea
• Retrograde sonnet: reads the same backwards as forwards
Sarah Law Poetic Forms & Genres

19. CONTEMPORARY VARIATIONS
INCLUDE:
• Unrhymed metrical sonnets
• Rhymed non-metrical sonnets
• Sonnets of various lengths that keep rhyme and meter
• E.g. American poet Robert Lowell wrote three collections of unrhymed sonnets in
the 1960s and 70s:
Sarah Law Poetic Forms & Genres

20. History, Robert Lowell
History has to live with what was here,
clutching and close to fumbling all we had—
it is so dull and gruesome how we die,
unlike writing, life never finishes.
Abel was finished; death is not remote,
a flash-in-the-pan electrifies the skeptic,
his cows crowding like skulls against high-voltage wire,
his baby crying all night like a new machine.
As in our Bibles, white-faced, predatory,
the beautiful, mist-drunken hunter’s moon ascends—
a child could give it a face: two holes, two holes,
my eyes, my mouth, between them a skull’s no-nose—
O there’s a terrifying innocence in my face
drenched with the silver salvage of the mornfrost.
Sarah Law Poetic Forms & Genres