Missive to a Young Bard: Sonnets

By Master Hector of the Black Height, 2003

Edited by THLaird Colyne Stewart, January AS 49 (2015)

This article is based on an email that Master Hector sent to me when I first began to wade into the bardic arts. At the time I was particularly struggling with a sonnet.

When you talk about wrestling with sonnets and when I read your work, I see two specific and disparate areas on which you need to focus.

The first is rhythm. You are trying to write in iambic pentameter but you seem to have problems sticking to the rhythm.

Let’s talk about the basics.

An iamb is a two-syllable block of rhythm within a line, with the heavier beat on the second syllable:

ba-DUM.

This is, among other things, the rhythm of your heartbeat and we’ll touch on that later.

The line you’re using is a ten syllable line, so there are five iambs of two syllables each in the line; thus the line is called iambic pentameter (as opposed to trochaic pentameter, which would be five trochees to the line, but I digress). Iambic pentameter: ba-DUM ba-DUM ba-DUM ba-DUM ba-DUM. Above all else it’s regular. If it’s not, it isn’t really iambic pentameter.

When we look at the rhythm of the line, let’s also remember to look at what’s NOT written. The line reads

ba-DUM ba-DUM ba-DUM ba-DUM ba-DUM

but when you cobble it together with other lines, it really doesn’t read

ba-DUM ba-DUM ba-DUM ba-DUM ba-DUM
ba-DUM ba-DUM ba-DUM ba-DUM ba-DUM

It doesn’t read that way. Honestly it doesn’t.

It actually reads

ba-DUM ba-DUM ba-DUM ba-DUM ba-DUM (pause)
ba-DUM ba-DUM ba-DUM ba-DUM ba-DUM (pause)

and so on. The pause is for breath usually. It’s the natural hesitation that says to the listener (remember, poetry is an aural art), “Attention please, the line is ending right about… here.”

Even when we enjamb a line and run the sentence into the next line (poetry being this wonderful, complex amalgam of the mechanics of language -- sentences, clauses, even phrases  -- and the building blocks of poetry -- the beat, the line, the stanza) there needs to be sensitivity to the fact that the poetic line is over, even if the sentence grinds on. The reader needs to know when a line ends, even when the line enjambs with the next, so the reader and/or listener can savour the line as a whole, complete thing unto itself, as well as the line’s part in the sentence (and the last word’s part in the rhyme scheme). That is why reading poetry aloud is itself an art, one we can and should discuss at another time.

Let’s look at a specimen line of iambic pentameter, plucked at random from amongst the creakings of the windmills of my mind:

With all my worldly goods I thee endow

That’s ten syllables. The natural rhythm of these words fits the iambic pentameter line like a glove.

with ALL my WORLDly GOODS i THEE enDOW.

As the Bard Himself would have said, the words flow trippingly from the tongue. That’s what’s supposed to happen. There is no fight with the rhythm, you can go with the flow.

Here’s another line:

The windmills of my mind, how loud they creak!

Same rhythm scheme:

the WINDmills OF my MIND, how LOUD they CREAK

There is a theory that iambic pentameter is in fact the natural metre of the English language (complete with the pause of approximately one rhythmic beat at the end of the line, so you can breathe), which is why it has become so popular within the vernacular English poetry and prose communities over the past four centuries or more, at least until Ezra Pound decided it was tyrannical. Then again Pound was a pretty unrepentant fascist so what did he know about tyranny and the lack thereof? But I digress.

Remember I commented that an iamb is the rhythm of your heartbeat? Some theories include this as one of the instinctive criteria that draws us as people to iambic verse. This is what being alive sounds like, in a primal sense. It just plain fits us, the same way we count in base 10 because of our fingers.

Don’t worry about the whys and wherefores, just acknowledge that iambs are iambs and iambic pentameter is a fundamental rhythm scheme in English verse. The trick is to fit the words to the rhythm scheme you’ve selected for use, and in this case that’s your challenge.

Do you read your verse aloud as you write? That’s the only reliable way to tell if the words fit the rhyme scheme. Declaim your verse aloud and then you’ll see (did you notice “Declaim your verse aloud and then you’ll see” itself is a line of iambic pentameter?) if it flows trippingly from the tongue. If it flows evenly and smoothly from your lips, you’re where you want to be. If something feels forced, if the words come out awkwardly or to make the line work you have to place undue emPHAsis on the wrong sylLABle, then you have to re-work the words (different word sequence, perhaps different word selection entirely. I can write iambic pentameter with little or no conscious thought; a side effect of this seems to be that in day-to-day use I split infinitives like a butcher) to restore the regularity of your rhythm. Anything looks good on paper and the silent voice between your ears doesn’t necessarily give you a fair depiction of the actual sound of the words. Sound and its production are mechanical processes; you must speak each line, each iamb, aloud to see if it really works.

A solid grasp of this rhythm scheme should come with practice and lots of declaiming, probably in the acoustically perfect little poet’s room in your home. Just don’t flush while reading, it overloads the acoustics.

Please note you can break these and other rhythmic rules when writing; I have done so from time to time, deliberately (or at least consciously). Breaking the rules can force the reader to focus on a specific word or syllable, it can force the reader to slow down the reading and pay more attention, sort of an aural speed bump. However, those are exceptions; first you need to learn the rules before we go breaking them -- and while the ghost of Ezra Pound calms down just a little.

Now let’s get to your second disparate problem; the use of the sonnet form itself.

If you read the rather fulsome praise for the form in the Princeton Encyclopedia of Poetry and Poetics, you’ll discover that some (I confess I am among them) consider the Shakespearian sonnet (hereafter referred to as the sonnet, for sheer laziness; we’ll touch upon alternate versions later) to be the ultimate accomplishment of short poetic structure in English. It has it all, in just 14 lines. The trick is to use the form to its full extent.

Form fits function and ultimately the sonnet is a dialectic structure. It is designed to shape logical analysis of a problem, to provide a venue for dynamic argument and resolution and then to guide the writer through to a conclusion, and if you do it right it’ll make some art in the process. As a form the sonnet consists of two main blocks of text, the octet (first eight lines) and the sestet (last six lines). As a general rule, the octet splits into two four-line quatrains, defined by the rhyme scheme. The sestet splits into a third quatrain and a final couplet. Thus the fabulous sonnet rhyme scheme,

ABAB CDCD EFEF GG

that probably was beaten into you at some stage of your high school education.

If you want to look at the sonnet as a poetic syllogism, the octet sets forth the thesis. The third quatrain that opens the sestet sets for the antithesis and then you sum up in the last couplet, the synthesis.

Let’s consider a concrete example of a sonnet that uses this form to achieve its dialectic aim, the poem I sent Viscount Gemini de Grendelus to celebrate his knighting.

When dark descends and all look to the dawn
For hope, for light, for warmth drawn from the sun,
All know the dismal dark first must be gone:
And thus the race with darkness must be run.
Why run that course, when daylight that we crave
Must follow, sure as age shall follow youth?
Why challenge darkness? What need we to brave
When sun must shine, when brightness must bring truth?
There always shall be darkness, it is true,
And in such shadow beasts seek out their prey.
If we are better than those beasts we rue
We’ll fight to make the dark as safe as day.
Of stars that pierce such darkness, none deny
The brightness in the night named Gemini.

Okay, let’s get the tombstone data out of the way. Indeed, it’s a sonnet;

1) 14 lines

2) standard sonnet rhyme scheme of
- ABAB (dawn/sun/gone/run)
- CDCD (crave/youth/brave/truth)
- EFEF (true/prey/rue/day)
- GG (deny/Gemini)

3) iambic pentameter lines.

That’s great, we’ve defined the corpse; any life in its bones? Let’s break it down and see.

First the octet:

When dark descends and all look to the dawn
For hope, for light, for warmth drawn from the sun,
All know the dismal dark first must be gone:
And thus the race with darkness must be run.
Why run that course, when daylight that we crave
Must follow, sure as age shall follow youth?
Why challenge darkness? What need we to brave
When sun must shine, when brightness must bring truth?

You can look at the octet as a single thematic block and it works fine that way. Indeed, in this octet the narrative flows from the beginning to the middle and thence to an ending of sorts, the big rhetorical question. This narrative block in turn breaks down nicely, consistent with and emphasized by the rhyme scheme, into two quatrains.

When dark descends and all look to the dawn
For hope, for light, for warmth drawn from the sun,
All know the dismal dark first must be gone:
And thus the race with darkness must be run.

Why run that course, when daylight that we crave
Must follow, sure as age shall follow youth?
Why challenge darkness? What need we to brave
When sun must shine, when brightness must bring truth?

Let us look closely at the first quatrain and what it actually says.

When dark descends and all look to the dawn
For hope, for light, for warmth drawn from the sun,
All know the dismal dark first must be gone:
And thus the race with darkness must be run.

The first quatrain sets forth the whole premise of the poem; the race with darkness. Light good, dark… not good; philosophy by Gronk in his cave. The archetype is at the heart of this; dark is dismal and undesirable, but it’s inevitable. It is to be endured. In this poem, darkness is the rain on life’s parade.

Now that we’ve set forth that premise we can see the dialectic unfold. The second quatrain sets forth the fundamental issue at hand; “why fight the problem?”

Why run that course, when daylight that we crave
Must follow, sure as age shall follow youth?
Why challenge darkness? What need we to brave
When sun must shine, when brightness must bring truth?

This is the voice of cowardly reason, the appeaser submitting to the inevitable, though when you look past greeting-card truisms the logic is horribly, cynically faulty. The logic here is flawed in terms of ethics. The unduly optimistic faith that age must follow youth is reflected in the assuredness that brightness must bring truth. This is philosophy by Pollyanna, standing on a street-corner waiting for a mugger to give her a seminar in realpolitik.

Okay; the octet has set forth the fundamental issue being addressed (quatrain 1) and has posed a possible, pathetic solution (quatrain 2); do nothing, go with the flow, assume like Annie that tomorrow is only a day away and Daddy Warbucks will take care of things in general. This is a weak but sadly credible premise; it assumes that we are passengers in life, that we do not make our own destinies or our own choices. Leave it to someone or something else (in this case the movements of the heavens), it’ll all work out okay. This is the voice of appeasement making its segue to ethical surrender. It also describes the easy path. We all know this is the path many (most?) people take, every day. It’s the path that calls to us. It may not be spiffy, it seems to say, but who cares? The sun will come up and it’ll all be okay. Does it really matter if there are beasts out there when we know they will slink off at dawn? This reaction is insidious; it also is terribly human.

And then, like the next movement of a symphony shifting to a major key, the poem shifts gears as it enters the sestet and we get the response, starting with the third quatrain.

There always shall be darkness, it is true,
And in such shadow beasts seek out their prey.
If we are better than those beasts we rue
We’ll fight to make the dark as safe as day.

The first line of the quatrain acknowledges the thesis of the octet and the second line transcends it. In the second line the true nature of darkness is revealed, a means to the ends of malevolence. Darkness is not just the absence of light, it is the medium in which beasts lurk and flourish (or, far more perplexing ethically, are allowed to flourish by people like the narrator of that second quatrain). Then comes the challenge to the appeaser which one hopes is rhetorical; “If we are better than those beasts”; if we are no better than the beasts then we have surrendered. Doesn’t the second quatrain sum up as existential and ethical surrender, the abrogation of personal responsibility? The third quatrain looks the second quatrain in the face and, in the final couplet of the quatrain, spits in its eye.

Yes, light will come; yes, light is good. That doesn’t mean we have to sit still and accept the darkness and its fellow-travelers. If we accept the darkness passively, the third quatrain says, we are no better than beasts; surrender may seem human but it actually makes you less than human, it renders you bestial. That’s a pretty strong ethical and philosophical response to the fundamental thesis set forth in the octet. Are we men or beasts?

And then we come to the couplet. The GG rhyme serves as punctuation for the poem, the period at the end of the sentence. After the longer flow of quatrains we suddenly have this wonderful, thumping rhyming couplet followed by silence, which hammers home those last words in the mind and memory of the reader or listener. I’m short! I rhyme! Nothing follows me! Look at me! Read me! This is the good stuff!

And in this case, indeed it is the good stuff.

Of stars that pierce such darkness, none deny
The brightness in the night named Gemini.

The poem tells you that there is someone named Gemini, someone who pierces the darkness that so intimidates the octet and that the third couplet holds in such contempt. In Gemini there is one who does not appease, does not submit, does not go quietly into that good night (I hope Dylan Thomas would have liked this poem). Note that the light doesn’t filter through, it doesn’t just happen. The light pierces the darkness. It’s active, it’s aggressive. It is a conscious act of defiance.

Gemini is neither sun nor moon, he is not shattering the darkness; that would be facile and life isn’t facile. Rather he is playing his part, one pin-point among many -- and yet too few; it’s still dark, isn’t it? -- in the darkness, struggling to deny those beasts the freedom they need to flourish. He is but a pin-point; even so, among those many pin-points, this is a special one. That’s blatantly obvious to the observer; “none deny” -- not even the beaten voice of the second quatrain, perhaps? -- there’s something, someone, special here.

If the third quatrain, in defying the second quatrain, asks us if we are men or beasts, I think the couplet makes one thing clear; Gemini is the antithesis of the beasts. This is what it is to be a Knight (and yes, the pun is both deliberate and fortuitous but hey, bloom where you’re planted), this is what it is to be a man, this is what it is to blaze forth in the darkness. You may not win but, dammit, you’ll know you tried and afterwards the darkness will have nightmares about facing you.

The last couplet hammers home the message of defiance and hope. That last word rings in your ears like a bugle call to battle; the beasts do not merely approach, they are here, and right now, right here in the darkness, this star is ablaze. The challenge is implicit; Gemini is one special person but he is a person like we are, neither sun or moon, just another pin-prick. If he can transcend that and be so brilliant, what’s your excuse and mine?

That’s what a sonnet’s form lets you do; frame the question, pose a possible solution, then shoot that first solution down in flames and from the ashes of those flames hold up for final consideration a jewel, a nugget of image or wisdom or hope. Debate, discovery, dynamics, dialectic; all that in 14 lines, 140 syllables.

Damn, I love sonnets!

And to go back to the first issue, let’s look at the role of rhythm in the creation of the sonnet; beyond mere mechanics, beyond punching a categorical ticket, it contributes to the end product by highlighting certain words. Take the third line of the sonnet above:

All know the dismal dark first must be gone.

Let’s break down the rhythm of that particular line:

all KNOW the DISmal DARK first MUST be GONE

So far so good?

I could have written that line two ways:

All know the dismal dark **first must*** be gone

or

All know the dismal dark ***must first*** be gone

Both versions work within the framework of the poem, neither fights the rhythm scheme. Let’s look at the variable, the placement of those two words within the iamb.

The poem could read “first MUST” or “must FIRST”. Which is stronger? I think placing the emphasis on “must” is stronger. It hammers home that there’s a necessity here. The dark MUST leave. Either permutation would work technically, but the emphasis provided by the rhythm renders the one I chose a stronger version. It is a little thing that makes it a better poem.

This last analysis is fine-tuning to the point of navel gazing, gentle friend. However I hope it emphasizes to you the synergy that is at the heart of poetry. Poetry is the amalgam of grammar and rhythm, of prosody and musicality. It’s all the pieces working together to make the names ring, the messages shine. It’s art, dammit! This is the good stuff!

The Spenserian form doesn’t thunder out such a thumping ending. For Spenser, as for Shakespeare, the octet was the same pair of quatrains. Rather than its last sestet being that wonderful, punctuated EFEFGG, it’s a far more gentle and balanced EFGEFG. You don’t get that last KABOOM couplet. Instead, the form begs you to make a balanced argument, two halves set against each other. It’s a more subtle ending. And we could cloud the issue further with Petrarch’s variant, too.

However, one thing at a time, gentle friend. Start with the ultimate machine, the Shakespearian model. We can look at alternate choices later.

ABAB CDCD EFEF GG. Ten syllables per line, each line five iambs, “ba-DUM ba-DUM ba-DUM ba-DUM ba-DUM” and that instinctive pause at the end of each line.

Use the form, explore challenge and response. Give the reader the question, the answer and then that percussive, brilliant last couplet to sum up, to make the point, to make sure the reader and listener don’t miss what matters. It’s got dynamic tension, conflict and resolution, yin and yang. It is how people think, aspire and define. It’s all there for you.

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