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Poetry Prompt 10 – Italian Sonnet Let's Write an Italian-style Sonnet! Italian Sonnets are more lyrical than their English cousins. They have built-in music via the nature of 'kissing rhymes,' and a forced pivot point that cannot be changed. The beauty and flexibility of the Sonnet as a form really took off in the skilled hands of Tuscan poets. Francesco Petrarca (also known as Petrach in English) had his Rerum vulgarium fragmenta (Fragments of Ordinary Things) published posthumously in 1374, and it changed the world of poetry substantially.[1] Before his death, he had used the Sonnet in a forty-year exploration of the forbidden love he felt for a person later scholars wanted to believe was a woman, but for whom the internal evidence of the Sonnets points to as a young man. Because of the lyric quality of this form, Romantic poets embraced the challenge of writing Italian-style sonnets, and preferred it to the narrative nature of the English form. The Italian Sonnet is made up of three parts: two quatrains, rhymed a-b-b-a, a-b-b-a; and a sestet, rhymed c-d-c-d-c-d.[2] The lines maintain 10 syllables throughout. Because of this structure, the pivot point is automatically built in at the break from the quatrains to the sestet. Let's look at a full example: Much have I travelled in the realms of gold, And many goodly states and kingdoms seen; Round many western islands have I been Which bards in fealty to Apollo hold. Oft of one wide expanse had I been told That deep-browed Homer ruled as his demesne; Yet did I never breathe its pure serene Till I heard Chapman speak out loud and bold: Then felt I like some watcher of the skies When a new planet swims into his ken; Or like stout Cortez when with eagle eyes He stared at the Pacific—and all his men Looked at each other with a wild surmise Silent, upon a peak in Darien. John Keats, On First Looking into Chapman's Homer Here you can immediately see why this form is more challenging than the English Sonnet. But we can tackle this, for the 'kissing rhymes' (seen, been; hold, told) are constructed exactly like the Elegy form we've already studied. Think of the quatrains here like four pair of divided couplets, and that will make it much easier to tackle. As for the pivot point, you can see it naturally occurs when the poem shifts to alternating rhymes of c-d-c-d-c-d. It's almost like a sigh of relief when it settles into this smooth flow. In its way, there is something fundamentally unromantic about this poetic form in the English language. Perhaps it's because the English Sonnet is ideal for expressions of love and deep emotions, the Italian Sonnet becomes reserved for abstract concepts. Here is an example whose opening lines inspired the film Dead Poets Society: O ye dead Poets, who are living still Immortal in your verse, though life be fled, And ye, O living Poets, who are dead Though ye are living, if neglect can kill, Tell me if in the darkest hours of ill, With drops of anguish falling fast and red From the sharp crown of thorns upon your head, Ye were not glad your errand to fulfill? Yes; for the gift and ministry of Song Have something in them so divinely sweet, It can assuage the bitterness of wrong; Not in the clamor of the crowded street, Not in the shouts and plaudits of the throng, But in ourselves, are triumph and defeat. Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, The Poets Here's another example whose lines you may find surprisingly familiar: Not like the brazen giant of Greek fame, With conquering limbs astride from land to land; Here at our sea-washed, sunset gates shall stand A mighty woman with a torch, whose flame Is the imprisoned lightning, and her name Mother of Exiles. From her beacon-hand Glows world-wide welcome; her mild eyes command The air-bridged harbor that twin cities frame. "Keep, ancient lands, your storied pomp!" cries she With silent lips. "Give me your tired, your poor, Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, The wretched refuse of your teeming shore. Send these, the homeless, tempest-tossed to me; I lift my lamp beside the golden door!" Emma Lazarus, The New Colossus The prompt: write one Italian Sonnet about a recent dream. Use the quatrains to paint the sights, sounds, and other senses of the dream in an unsentimental way. With the sestet, introduce the emotions of how the dream made you feel. Keep consistent 10-syllable lines, and use the rhyme pattern of: a-b-b-a; a-b-b-a; c-d-c-d-c-d. [1] See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Il_Canzoniere [2] There is much variation on how to construct the concluding sestet, but for our study, we shall stay orthodox.