Of sonnets and discipleship
Our assignment last week in my poetry class was to write a sonnet–English or Italian, our choice. But when it comes to sonnets, that, in many ways, is where the freedom seems to end. You can’t write as many lines as you want (has to be 14, of course). You can’t make it rhyme–or not–however you might like (must be abab, cdcd, efef, gg for the English kind). Line length is non-negotiable, too:five “feet” of “iambs” (unstressed syllables followed by stressed ones). Sonnets and the poets who write them take their metrics very, very seriously.
My classmates and I were a little freaked out. Writing formal poetry–poetry that adheres to form (sonnet, sestina, villanelle, tanka, ode)–seems the exclusive purview of the professionals. Plus, isn’t formal poetry too often, well,formal, in the other sense of that word: stuffy and standoffish?
Who wants to write a formal poem? Not us, we all said. How can we say what we want to say when we’re so restricted? What is the point of writing a poem if you feel all hedged in–if the form itself seems intent on cramping your style, stifling your self-expression, limiting your freedom?
