Many poets write using poem. Many more are masters of put forms. At a time when the majority of America's documented poets are writing in a plain style--blank verse and free verse--going back to learn the "forms" might seem out-of-date. However, there are some good arguments to give confidence a diligent student of poetry to the study of formal poetry.
There are those who say "if you don't count the beats, it isn't poetry." After almost a century of free verse, such a pronouncement seems a bit great! What can be said, however, is that the main history of poetry is one of regular meter and rhyme? A poet should spend some time with forms if for no other reason than to honor the past, to pay a little back to custom!
Then, if you think concerning how to write a sonnet, writing poems with "no rules, " can breed a sure laxity. If there is no rhyme, no regular meter, no rule for length of the line or the poem itself, what calculate does a poet apply to judge a poem a success? One thing following a form can do is propel a poet back to work and rework the lines until they are the best instance of the form. Thinking, working that hard could create a better poem than the amorphous notion that anything goes in poem!
Perhaps one of the best explanations for what a poet can learn how to write a sonnet from a turn with forms came from one of America's leading sonneteers, Aaron Kramer. Asked by students why anybody would want to write a sonnet, he pulled a chair into the center of the room.
Some other steps on how to write a sonnet
1. Choose your method of sonnet. The two most ordinary kinds of sonnet are the Petrarchan (Italian) sonnet and the Shakespearean (English) sonnet. Note that the Petrarchan consists of quatrains (the octave) and a closing sestet in the pattern ABBA ABBA CDE CDE. The letters stand for a rhyme (i.e., a's should rhyme with a's and b's should rhyme with b's). The Shakespearean method is two unique quatrains followed by two like and one different couplet: However, it can also be quatrains and a couplet. In The Art of Shakespeare's Sonnets, Helen Vendler describes it as Q1, Q2, Q3, and C. The structure is fundamentally the same, though, with the couplet being the finisher.
2. Write your appearance in iambic pentameter. This is where every other syllable is stressed, so that each line ends with a physically powerful rhyme. There are also ten syllables in each line, five of which contain emphasis (pentameter). The ninth line of the sonnet (Shakespearean/Italian style) more often than not has a turn or a change of tone know this fully for how to write a sonnet.
3. Keep writing! It will almost certainly take you a few drafts to be happy with your sonnet, but don't get disheartened. Keep the trusty lexicon by your side and you'll be fine.
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