Scared of Sonnets?

When reading about sonnets in the book An Exaltation of Forms I was honestly a little scared. I remember vaguely covering material on these types of poems and high school and all I could think about was fancy language that made no sense. However, when reading about the form and origins of the sonnet I came to realize that maybe they aren’t as bad as they seem to be.

Sonnets originally originated in Great Britain and Ireland and was later introduced to America in the late eighteenth century. American sonnets were slightly more modernized then their original form. “The sonnet has perhaps the most polyglot and varied history of any European poetic form” (Hacker 298). As the sonnet was introduced to American poets it became popular amongst poets such as Gwendolyn Brooks who was an African American poet who wrote about racism and segregation.

Looking at the sonnet named “Sonnet 73” by William Shakespeare I see these sort of fancy words I referred to earlier “That time of the year thou mayst in me behold” (Hacker 303). This is the opening line to the sonnet and now since I have a greater understanding of poetry in general seeing these words do not scare me anymore. Also the formation of the sonnet was hard to understand at first but after reading through these examples and seeing the fourteen lines of iambic pentameter and the defining end statement it seemed easier to grasp.

Citation:

Hacker, Marilyn. “The Sonnet.” An Exaltation on Forms: Contemporary Poets Celebrate the Diversity of Their Art. Edited by Annie Finch and Katherine Varnes. U of Michigan P, 2002, pp. 217–222.