Form is something that is heavily played with in various types of poetry. However, sonnets, more so than many other types of poetry, is often heavily bound to its restrictions. This is especially true in the rhyme scheme for Shakespearean sonnets. Moreover, all of Shakespeare’s sonnets are written in iambic pentameter, which further prevents deviation from form.
Shakespeare’s Sonnet 73 stays true to this common meter and rhyme scheme. Even though there are many restrictions upon Shakespeare’s poetic form he is able to creatively convey his ideas using the colorful vocabulary and imagery for which he was famous. In this particular sonnet, Shakespeare compares the human body to the fading seasons, the departing day and a vanishing fire. He sums up the poem with a concluding heroic couplet. This couplet is used to demonstrate the message that the author means to portray in his poem. In Sonnet 73, Shakespeare closes with this couplet:
“This thou perceiv’st, which makes thy love more strong,
To love that well which thou must leave ere long.”
In order to understand the poem it is crucial to comprehend these last two lines. The lines reflect a carpe diem theme, telling the person to whom the speaker is writing that seeing the nearness of death will make one’s love for life stronger. The speaker states that it is best to “seize the day” and love life and all its pleasures because it will end very soon.
By using the form typical of Shakespearean sonnets the author can use imagery to exemplify a point and end by stating it in a way that is more obvious to the reader. Structured form can serve as a palette for any poet to paint any masterpiece, however with a more free form, artists are able to leave the two dimensional canvas and create not just a painting but anything one could imagine. Therefore, the structure and restrictions set up sonnets stifles creativity to some degree. In a sonnet there are infinite things one could discuss but only a limited way to discuss them.
With that said, the form that an author uses can shape his or her poetry. When one gets beyond Shakespeare’s wonderful way with words his monotonous formula for poetry stifles the way that he could express himself. Form is important in showing what an author means to say and to use a form that is rarely changing suppresses what a reader can gain from a poem.
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3 comments:
You quickly get to the heart of why the sonnet is no longer a popular form of poetry. The idea of having such a rigid form for expressing one's ideas seems almost silly now, as though everyone is supposed to think so similarly that a restrictive form will serve all purposes. It certainly makes me wonder why anyone ever decided to so severely constrain artistic expression in the first place
Your opinion on poetic form provides an interesting contrast to some others I have read so far. I believed that poetic form gave freedom from the restrictions of everyday language. There is no need for proper sentences, words and phrases can be thrown together at the will of the author. I understand though the restrictions due to poetic form especially of the Shakespearian sonnet. Reminds me of the discussion in class of the restrictive nature of the Victorian period.
Form is important in poems/sonnets and it makes it harder to create a poem/sonnet. By having form restrict the capabilities and potential of a poem, it also makes poetry more of an art in my personal opinion. The poet has to choose their words carefully and thoughfully in order to express whatever they wish to express within the limitation of form. Therefore, it takes talent to draft an Italian or Shakespearean sonnet. However, I do agree that form definitely restrict a poet's creativity.
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