Sonnet
Fourteen-line formal verse
A sonnet is a fourteen-line poem with a formal rhyme scheme, traditionally exploring themes of love, beauty, or mortality.
The form originated in Italy and reached English through Petrarch and later Shakespeare, whose Shakespearean sonnets follow a distinct three-quatrain-plus-couplet structure.
She wrote him a sonnet for their anniversary.
Four-line poetic unit
- coupletTwo successive verse lines
- octaveEight-note interval
- sestetSix-line verse unit
- voltaRepeated section's alternate ending
iambic · pentameter · stanza · meter · Petrarchan · Shakespearean · Spenserian · tercet
Intense fond attachment
- beautyAesthetic excellence
- mortalityState of eventual death
- timeMeasured passage of moments
- devotionDeep, loyal commitment
longing · desire · praise · courtship · unrequited · adoration · jealousy · eternity
Elizabethan dramatist and poet
- PetrarchMedieval Italian lyric poet
- MiltonBaroque English verse master
- KeatsEnglish Romantic poet
- NerudaChilean Nobel laureate
Wordsworth · Rilke · Sidney · Spenser · anthology · beloved · immortality · muse
Skilled manual art
- writingRecorded language on surface
- draftingCreating technical blueprints
- revisionAltering to improve
- constraintLimiting condition or rule
challenge · discipline · structure · mastery · workshop · prompt · exercise · competition
quatrain
Four-line poetic unit
volta · iambic · pentameter · stanza · meter · Petrarchan · Shakespearean · Spenserian · tercet · verse
love
Intense fond attachment
devotion · longing · desire · praise · courtship · unrequited · adoration · jealousy · eternity · transience
Shakespeare
Elizabethan dramatist and poet
Wordsworth · Neruda · Rilke · Sidney · Spenser · anthology · beloved · immortality · muse · conceit
craft
Skilled manual art
constraint · challenge · discipline · structure · mastery · workshop · prompt · exercise · competition · recitation
- Spanish LiteratureDon Quixote, Don Quijote, Cervantes, Miguel de Cervantes, El Cid
- Danish WritersHans Christian Andersen, Soren Kierkegaard, Andersen, Kierkegaard
Sonnetfree verse
Poetry without fixed structure
prose poem · prose poetry · experimental poetry · found poetry · automatic writing
Sonnetepic
Impressively grand in scope
epic poem · long poem · Paradise Lost · The Divine Comedy · Beowulf
Sonnetfolk ballad
Narrative song passed orally
oral poetry · spoken word · slam poetry · nursery rhyme · limerick
- Shakespearean sonnetFourteen-line poem, ABAB pattern
- love sonnetsFormal verses about devotion
- Petrarchan sonnetFourteen-line poem, octave-sestet structure
- Italian sonnetFourteen-line poem, octave-sestet structure
- romantic sonnetsAmorous fourteen-line verses
- English sonnetFourteen lines, ABAB pattern