THE SONNET — and other poetic forms

[PGS]

THE SONNET — out of fashion?

I started to write sonnets, mainly in German, in January 2006.
Limerick-Queen opened a new site for them recently:
http://www.omnipoesie.de/sonett.htm
Within less than one month about a dozen authors submitted more than 90 sonnets (in German).

See also: A Sonnet for You, the OEDILFIAN WEs
under Happy Anniversary. http://bbs.oedilf.com/bbs/viewtopic.php?t=834

Here's the one in English I wrote as a companion to a German Rezept für Dichter:

How to write a sonnet

Two pairs of rhymes you need in each quartet.
Take three, and add a couplet now, a pair;
Five iambs, fitting fine as feet, will set
In soil your budding little shoot. Take care

To nourish, trim, and polish, what you've got,
So that it comes to blossom, bright and clear.
It might take longer than you thought—so what?
Your readers will enjoy it, have no fear!

It helps to organize the thoughts in brains
To follow strictly all the formal rules,
A perfect exercise to forge such chains
Of metric feet—improving poets' tools.

It will impress your friends—rely upon it—
And next time when you write, just try a sonnet.


This is an example of the rhyme scheme and verse
arrangement used in the English sonnet. In this form
it has been used by some English authors especially
so in the 154 sonnets written by William Shakespeare.

[jojo]

My life would surely somber be if not
For certain friends and fam'ly I hold dear.
They offer comfort when a cold I've caught
And make me smile when time seems long and drear.

My brothers three, true friends, are always there
To give attention when I feel alone.
My sisters, though much younger, help me bear
Those little nuisances that make me moan.

Together, they give love and comfort sweet
That fills my daily hours with smiles and cheer.
They gladly greet me when with weary feet
I homeward come and crave a patient ear.

With fam'ly--call them friends--I'm surely blessed.
You see, they all are cats, and that is best.

[jojo]

I just read your sonnet in the Anniversary thread. It still amazes me how anyone can write poetry in a language that isn't their native tongue. You are a real inspiration to us, PGS.

[PGS]

TY, jojo, for this last post and for your reply to my direct message in the DB.

It's good to know that you found it surprisingly simple to write a sonnet. I made the same experience, when I tried it the first time a few weeks ago. And a number of German lim friends found it similarly easy!

The shorter iambic feet obviously walk more easily than the anapests do

But we'll try to write good lims for OEDILF, not just sonnets!

[sheilab]

I began writing sonnets before OEDILF, and have a large number of them, some serious, some not. Here's a humorous one:

J. C. (THE FIRST)
August 1, 2003

Gaius Julius Caesar he is born,
Becomes a Roman general, conquers Gaul
Then turns and conquers Italy, Rome and all,
And treats her nervous Senators with scorn.
He has himself made first dictator for life,
Beds Cleopatra and a lot of others,
Leaves bastard sons and disappointed mothers
Which greatly annoys Calpurnia, his wife —
And several Senators (who strategize
With patriotic motives) even more so —
They plunge their bloody daggers in his torso
Surprised, he cries Et tu Brute, and dies.

He lives today in movie, play and ballad,
Obstetrical procedures, and a salad.

[David Schildkret]

Cute, Sheila. If you were putting that into the OEDILF (OEDISF?), you'd need an AN explaining that the Caesar of the salad is not Julius Caesar, but a Mexican restauranteur named Caesar Cardini.

[PGS]

Great sonnet, Sheila!

I love it!

I've one on J. C. too (in German, however) on the limerick-queen site:

http://www.omnipoesie.de/sonettspass.htm

Florian Ruppel recently translated a German sonnet written by Renate Golpon (the Limerick-Queen) into Latin. I tried an English translation (not yet on the site).

In the meantime it is on http://www.omnipoesie.de/dichtersprache.htm

[sheilab]

Glad you liked the sonnet.


David: I have been told that the obstetrical procedure derives from the Late Latin: "cisorium," a cutting instrument. O tempora! O mores!


PGS: I'll try to puzzle out the German, but I really have very little of the language to work with - one of the many lacunae in my education.

Sheila

[hugh t.]

Wordsworth advised "Scorn not the sonnet..." (see the complete poem at http://www.bartleby.com/145/ww725.html).

But I prefer another view:

“SCORN not the sonnet,” though its strength be sapped,
Nor say malignant its inventor blundered;
The corpse that here in fourteen lines is wrapped
Had otherwise been covered with a hundred.

(Russell Hillard Loines, "On a Magazine Sonnet)

In the same spirit (and dedicated to PGS):

Though the limerick has frequently been
Coarse, boring, absurd or obscene;
For one virtue let’s hymn it:
Five lines are the limit,
While a sonnet would run to fourteen.

[Judah]

[PGS]

Thank hugh!

Our EiC will be so pleased
'Bout the lim, that hugh t. just released!
"PGS is distracting--
OEDILF's aims counteracting--
Our best writers, anapest-squeezed!"

[hugh t.]

Well now, if we're branching out into other verse-forms, what about the ballade?

To remind you: in strict form, only two rhymes allowed, for three 8-line stanzas (ABABBABA) and a four-line coda (BABA), the last line of each being the same. (Another form permits three rhymes (ABABCBCB).)

So here is the

<b>Ballade of the OEDILFer </b>

The other night, while sleepless in my bed,
Disturbed by owls and feline caterwaul,
(My wife beside me, sleeping like one dead),
I thought, “How strange: when night extends its pall
In cataleptic trance we promptly fall,
With limbs, and eyelids, weighing down like lead;
And yet tonight I cannot sleep at all.
I think I’ll write a limerick instead.

I took myself in hand; no sooner said
Than done: though like the “Dying Gaul”,
My limbs across the couch were widely spread,
My thoughts were ordered – not allowed to sprawl.
I sat up, wrapped an ancient shawl
Around my shoulders, coughed, and scratched my head.
“A sonnet, maybe? No that’s more long-haul:
I think I’ll write a limerick instead.”

Why should I write for hire, to earn my bread?
A vision strikes me, like a second Saul:
No more the presses’ deadlines shall I dread,
Procrastinate, prevaricate, and stall.
That article I promised you last fall,
Get someone else to write it – some egghead!
A poet now, you’ll note that I walk tall:
I think I’ll write a limerick instead.

Prince, what’s this note you’ve passed me? Hideous scrawl:
Yet I decipher: “Where’s your copy? Ed.”
The presses roll: in vain your urgent call;
I think I’ll write a limerick instead.


PGS: is the ballade form used in German?

[PGS]

I'm greatly impressed, hugh!! I didn't know, that "ballade" in English means a fixed form of poetry. In German the word Ballade is not used in such a sense, it is used for rather different poems, usually having three or more Strophen (=stanzas) consisting of 3 up to 10 (or even more) lines. Many German poems are termed Balladen by there authors. On the Limerick-Queen Website there's a sub-site: Limerick-Balladen, containing "stories" written in usually 3 to 12 lims. Your example of a so-called strict ballade was of course a big challenge for me. I tried to write a piece in that style:

How to write a ballade

In principle you'd need a fourteenfold –
That is – a rather common, simple rhyme;
At least so, strictly speaking, I've been told,
For all the B-rhymes, every second time!
Eleven A-rhymes (as a number prime)
Suffice, because one line, the last, (how bold),
Repeats itself: "refrain" it's called, and I'm
Convinced ballades are poetry in gold.

It's pleasant if you listen and behold
A poet reading verse, see him as mime!
Dramatically a story gets unrolled
Of life the universe, of sex and crime.
A hero often steeply has to climb
A mountain range by using smallest hold
It's history sometimes, fiction most, but I'm
Convinced ballades are poetry in gold.

Not always strictly fixed in form or mold,
In letters clearly carved in stone of lime,
A lot of forms are on the market sold,
Which show much more than just a double rhyme:
"Ballades" they're labeled, though they're rather slime,
Yet gold pretending, hundredfold retold.
They may be sung, accompanied, though I’m
Convinced ballades are poetry in gold.

Restraints as handcuffs may be felt, but I’me
A fan of forms well fixed – for others old.
The strict one shows a beauty so sublime:
A double sonnet – poetry in gold!


...open for your WSing!

[hugh t.]

Congratulations, PGS: I knew you would rise to the challenge (or couldn't resist the temptation)! I certainly wish I could write as well in German.

There is one rule, or rather convention, for a ballade, that I should have mentioned: the last 4-line stanza (l'envoi) was originally addressed to the poet's patron, and it is now customary to put it in the second person addressed to an unspecified "Prince".

Ideally no rhyme-word should be repeated: I nearly managed it, and would argue that "head/egghead" and "fall" as a verb and as a noun, are not identical! You gave hostages to fortune by adopting a refrain which virtually demanded "I'm" at the end of the previous line. But altogether yours is an impressive performance.

In Rostand's play (in French) <i>Cyrano de Bergerac</i>, the hero fights a duel with rapiers while at the same time composing a ballade aloud, with the refrain "At the close of the poem, I'll hit!" (which he does). The UK novelist Anthony Burgess managed the feat of translating it into English, while retaining the ballade form!

[PGS]

Hi, hugh, what about this alternative envoi, addressed to Limerick-Queen (who recently opened a new site for sonnets):

Queen, would you open a new site, since I’me
A fan of forms well fixed – for others old?
The strict ballade shows beauty so sublime:
A double sonnet – poetry in gold!


By starting my refrain at the end of L7 already, I avoided to have to find 14 different rhymes on rhyme, indeed. The repetition of rhyme, in the first and the third stanza might be "excused" by looking at the "simple rhyme"-"double rhyme" context. (I might have reformulated as well, to make one of the "rhyme"s a verb, as you used as an excuse for repeating "fall").

BTW: Do you know, why this strict form of the ballade has exactly the properties of a double sonnet? I read that 7-line stanzas had been used earlier, while the 8-line form dominated later. Were the poets writing 8-line-3.5 stanza-ballades already influenzed by the sonnet?