Get it? Got it? Sonnet!

It’s February, and you know what that means: sonnets.

Has it really been a year since I wrote that how to write a sonnet post? Whoa. Well, I still don’t want to write it all again, so I suggest you open that little link in a separate window. This year we’re going to leave Shakespeare behind and go off-road with the Spenserian sonnet. Yeah, that one, the one that’s basically a footnote in last year’s sonnet post.

Part of the reason everyone rolls their eyes when sonnets come around is that the form can feel tired and predictable. Going from a Shakespearean to a Spenserian rhyme scheme changes up that predictability, and can add tension to your writing. Let’s start with a quick refresher on what and how to sonnet, and then I’ll dive into a comparison of the two forms.

what’s a sonnet?

A sonnet is a 14 line poem in verse.

Let’s break that down just a little more, because even though that sounds pretty simple, there’s some terms of art in there that you should know.

14 lines, that’s pretty self-explanatory. Depending on the type of sonnet you’re writing, though, those lines are broken into different numbers of groups called stanzas. The form we’re working on this month has two options:

• four stanzas: three 4-line stanzas and a 2-line stanza at the end (sometimes called the volta)
• two stanzas: a 6-line stanza and an 8-line stanza

Each line has to scan, or adhere to a specific rhythmic pattern. As you get better at scansion you’ll start to get a feel for when it’s ok to substitute different rhythms, but for the purpose of this month’s slam I want to know that you’ve mastered the basics. Learn to drive before you go all Fast and Furious on me, ok? So we’ll be working strictly in iambic pentameter. For a refresher on how to scan a poem and how iambic pentameter works, I’m going to refer you back to last year’s sonnet explanation.

Keep that window open; you might want to check out the instructions on checking your rhymes in there, too. Depending on which form you are trying to write, your poem will have a specific rhyme scheme. A Spenserian sonnet has the scheme ABAB BCBC CDCD EE.

Since you have two options for how to break up your stanzas, your poem will either look like

• ABAB BCBC CDCD EE

or

• ABABBCBC CDCDEE

This rhyme scheme, that builds on the rhymes that came before rather than separating the stanzas into clear groupings of four lines, can help keep the Spenserian sonnet from feeling stale. Since you already are probably familiar with Shakespearean sonnets, let’s do a quick side-by-side before I release you into the wild to write:

• 14 lines
• iambic pentameter
• ABAB
• BCBC
• CDCD
• EE
• Not boring