Sonnet Definition | What is Sonnet? - PoetrySoup

A crown of sonnets or sonnet corona is a sequence of sonnets, usually addressed to some one person, and/or concerned with a single theme. It is a 7-sonnet sequence in which the last line of each sonnet is repeated in the first line of the next. The first and last lines of the sequence are also strict repetends; this gives the sequence its crown-like circularity.

Example

ANNUNCIATION.
Salvation to all that will is nigh ;
That All, which always is all everywhere,
Which cannot sin, and yet all sins must bear,
Which cannot die, yet cannot choose but die,
Lo ! faithful Virgin, yields Himself to lie
In prison, in thy womb ; and though He there
Can take no sin, nor thou give, yet He'll wear,
Taken from thence, flesh, which death's force may try.
Ere by the spheres time was created thou
Wast in His mind, who is thy Son, and Brother ;
Whom thou conceivest, conceived ; yea, thou art now
Thy Maker's maker, and thy Father's mother,
Thou hast light in dark, and shutt'st in little room
Immensity, cloister'd in thy dear womb.

The curtal sonnet is a form invented by Gerard Manley Hopkins, and used in three of his poems. It is an eleven-line (or, more accurately, ten-and-a-half-line) sonnet, but rather than the first eleven lines of a standard sonnet it consists of precisely ¾ of the structure of a Petrarchan sonnet shrunk proportionally. The octave of a sonnet becomes a sestet and the sestet a quatrain plus an additional "tail piece." That is, the first eight lines of a sonnet are translated into the first six lines of a curtal sonnet and the last six lines of a sonnet are translated into the last four and a half lines of a curtal sonnet.

Example

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[n] a sonnet consisting of an octave with the rhyme pattern abbaabba, followed by a sestet with the rhyme pattern cdecde or cdcdcd

A sonnet consisting of an octave with the rhyme pattern abbaabba followed by six lines with a rhyme pattern of cdecde or cdcdcd. Lay - A long narrative poem, especially one that was sung by medieval minstrels.

Example

Synonyms

Petrarchan sonnet

See Also...

sonnet

A Reasonnet  is another fourteen-liner, a sonnet.

Specifications:
four tercets and a couplet
rhyming pattern of  aaa,  bbb,  ccc,  ddd,  ee
pentameter,  iambic not required
The first three tercets present a problem which is then resolved in
the last tercet and a conclusion is presented in the couplet.

Example

RUNNING ON EMPTY a Reasonnet by Reason A. Poteet Waiting once more for the wonders at dawn, a tired, empty muse re-paces the lawn struck dumb by notions refusing to spawn. The new day arrives but dark does not lift, an overcast sky now leaves her short shrift, as workers head home from serving night shift. With nothing to prompt, she sneaks up the stair. Some fifteen young bards enroute along there went searching but found her out like a bear. One ran some errands for a friend who's ill. Two ran a fever; three ran for the thrill. Four ran their mouths while five ran up a bill. Who needs a muse? Be amused, seize your day! Embrace your moments, write the night away.

[n] a verse form consisting of 14 lines with a fixed rhyme scheme
[v] compose a sonnet
[v] praise in a sonnet

Lyric poems that are 14 lines that usually have one or more conventional rhyme schemes.

Example

Into My Own
by Robert Frost

ONE of my wishes is that those dark trees,
So old and firm they scarcely show the breeze,
Were not, as ’twere, the merest mask of gloom,
But stretched away unto the edge of doom.

I should not be withheld but that some day 5
Into their vastness I should steal away,
Fearless of ever finding open land,
Or highway where the slow wheel pours the sand.

I do not see why I should e’er turn back,
Or those should not set forth upon my track 10
To overtake me, who should miss me here
And long to know if still I held them dear.

They would not find me changed from him they knew—
Only more sure of all I thought was true.

See Also...

Elizabethan sonnet, English sonnet, Italian sonnet, Petrarchan sonnet, poem, poetise, poetize, praise, Shakespearean sonnet, Spenserian sonnet, verse form, versify