Sonnets

Some people chafe at what they see as the restrictions of the commandments.  They say that there is no room  for individuality, that everyone has to march in lockstep and there is little freedom of expression.  My mother, who helped create my love of poetry, pointed out to me as a teenager that the gospel is a structure which allows vast variety within it.  She likened it to the rules of sonnets in poetry.  The sonnet is a very strict form, with 14 lines in iambic pentameter (that means da-DA da-DA da-DA da-DA da-DA, next line, as a cadence), which is the closest written rhythm to speech, and two patterns of rhyme to choose from, the Italian or Elizabethan. The Italian uses two quatrains (sets of four lines) and one set of six; the Elizabethan or Shakespearean uses three quatrains and an ending couplet: ABAB CDCD EFEF GG, with those letters being the ending word to rhyme.  (What, you thought you were done with school?)

The content, once you have mastered the structure, can be anything you want.  Shakespeare wrote 154 sonnets.  Probably the most famous one starts, "Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?"  One of my favorites, on growing older, begins, "That time of year thou mayest in me behold/When yellow leaves, or none, or few, do hang /Upon those boughs which shake against the cold,/Bare ruined choirs where late the sweet birds sang."  The best known sonnets of religious content are John Donne's "Holy Sonnets" and the most familiar one of those is "Death, be not proud..."  which ends triumphantly, "Death, thou shalt die!" But I like this one--

     At the round earth's imagined corners blow
     Your trumpets, angels, and arise, arise
     From death, you numberless infinities
     Of souls, and to your scattered bodies go;
     All whom the flood did, and fire shall o'erthrow,
     All whom war, dearth, age, agues, tyrannies,
     Despair, law, chance hath slain, and you, whose
     Eyes shall behold God, and never taste death's woe.
     But let them sleep, Lord, and me mourn a space;
     For, if above all these my sins abound,
     'Tis late to ask abundance of thy grace,
     When we are there.  Here on this lowly ground,
     Teach me how to repent, for that's as good
     As if Thou hast seal'd my pardon with Thy blood.

Quite a sermon, isn't it?  And quite a difference in content between love poems, religious concepts, and meditations on anything you choose.  All within the confines of a careful structure, and all with the vast individuality of expression.  I love the leafless tree in winter as "bare ruined choirs [seats for the singers]" and the "round earth's imagined corners" and then there is Hopkins, who stood the cadence on its head while preserving the form.  Far, far, from a knee-jerk, lockstep process.  It is a way to create beauty with words.


Sidebar--family story:  When my father was at the University of Utah as an English major, he took a poetry class from the newest 'bright young man' on the faculty, and a great deal of time was spent in class on the sonnet.  Worried about what would be on the final exam, everyone figured the sonnet would be a sure bet.  They were right.  Everyone had to choose maybe it was three essays out of whatever, and they overwhelmingly chose the sonnet as one of those.  When he returned the papers, he announced that he got so sick of reading about sonnets, that everyone who wrote that question got their grade docked one.  It made my father so mad, he went to the requisite office and changed his major to journalism so that he would never, never have a class with that teacher again.  I heard this story many times. When I showed up at the University of Utah many years later, I had Chaucer with--you guessed it--same guy.  It was a fairly useless experience.  One of my classmates remarked that he was a lush.  I hadn't been worldly-wise enough to pick up on the signs.  This was a 9 a.m. class and he always had big dark glasses, and his words were just slightly slurred.  I told her I thought he just had a slight speech impediment.  He wore cowboy boots, the fringe of hair below his very bald top went to his shoulders, and he was a blowhard.  Even 26 years later, I could see why my father didn't like him.  I ended up taking Chaucer from the other professor who taught the class, and that was a much more demanding experience, and much more worthwhile.  (I took the class over because of an incomplete due to illness.)  I never went near the other guy again either.