A Crown of Sonnets or poems that originated in Italy are those that are about one person or one theme. The sonnets become a Crown of Sonnets as the sonnet uses the last line of its previous sonnet as its first line. The Crown of Sonnets was first published very recently in the year 2016 in the Netherlands. There are Heroic Crowns of Sonnets which use fourteen sonnets and the Master Sonnet which is the fifteenth sonnet. The last line of the first sonnet is used on the final sonnet as its first line to create the Crown of Sonnets.
An example of a Crown of Sonnets poem can be found in the children's book by Marilyn Nelson, 'A Wreath for Emmett Till.' And the ever popular 'Intertidal' is a multiple effort by artists Annie Finch, Judith Barrington, Lesley Wheeler, Kathrine Varnes, Julie Kane, D'Arcy Randall and Julia Lisella. Another well-known poet of more contemporary Crowns of Sonnets is Marilyn Hacker.
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.