The sonnet, or “little song,” is a 14 line poem stolen from the Italian love-poem tradition (google Petrarch for details). In English, over the past four centuries it has gained a few admirers and a few recognized forms—the most common one is a meter of iambic pentameter (daDum daDum daDum daDum daDum) and a fairly rigid rhyme scheme. Shakespeare wrote his ABAB CDCD EFEF GG, but any formal rhyme scheme over 14 lines will do. (ex. ABA BCB CDC EFE FF, ABBA CDDC EFGEFG, ABCD ABCD EFG EFG, ABABAB CDDC EFFE, you get the idea). Or--try to use some sonic play that is not about the end rhyme (repeated consonants, emphasis on a specific vowel sound, whatever works!)
Sonnets have historically been written in the form of arguments, and when I say argument, I mean a text that attempts to persuade. In a love poem, persuasion can be seen in seduction or in a genuine expression of more spiritual and serious affection. When a sonneteer meditates on death or marriage or the decision to beget children, by the end of the poem reasons pro and con have often been discussed and a conclusion reached. You can argue taxes, drum a roommate out with escalating insults, make an impassioned plea for green architecture—anything can be an argument. Sonnets are less often "story" poems, though sonnet cycles (like Rilke’s Sonnets to Orpheus) can be written around an epic narrative. Yet each single sonnet in the Rilke cycle attempts to deeply address just one idea relevant to this tale of love and pride and loss.
Usually a sonnet contains a “turn” about two thirds of the way through—an AHA! moment, or a shift in logical language (if this and if this and if this THEN this), or a changing of direction (often signalled with diction like “yet well I know” WS 18 or “But” WS 130 or “but just from listening” RI.i. or “Or perhaps he would stay there” RII.xiv. or “but never this /fine specimen” from e.e.c.’s pity this monster...). No matter how it is offered up, a turn is nearly always present in a sonnet, signaling the close of the poem.
So—meter, rhyme/sound, argument, a turn in logic: these elements, plus the kitchen sink—that’s all you should think about including in your sonnets (though in the end... 14 lines and a turn will do). Otherwise, surprise me and yourselves.
Here's a few:
i carry your heart with me by e.e.cummings
i carry your heart with me(i carry it in
my heart)i am never without it(anywhere
i go you go,my dear; and whatever is done
by only me is your doing,my darling)i fear
no fate(for you are my fate,my sweet)i want
no world(for beautiful you are my world,my true)
and it's you are whatever a moon has always meant
and whatever a sun will always sing is you
here is the deepest secret nobody knows
(here is the root of the root and the bud of the bud
and the sky of the sky of a tree called life;which grows
higher than the soul can hope or mind can hide)
and this is the wonder that's keeping the stars apart
i carry your heart(i carry it in my heart)
'pity this busy monster, manunkind'pity this busy monster, manunkind,
not. Progress is a comfortable disease:
your victim (death and life safely beyond)
plays with the bigness of his littleness
--- electrons deify one razorblade
into a mountainrange; lenses extend
unwish through curving wherewhen till unwish
returns on its unself.
A world of made
is not a world of born --- pity poor flesh
and trees, poor stars and stones, but never this
fine specimen of hypermagical
ultraomnipotence. We doctors know
a hopeless case if --- listen: there's a hell
of a good universe next door; let's go
I.i.(from Rilke's Sonnets to Orpheus) A tree ascended there. Oh pure transcendence! Oh Orpheus sings! Oh tall tree in the ear! And all things hushed. Yet even in that silence a new beginning, beckoning, change appeared. Creatures of stillness crowded from the bright unbound forest, out of their lairs and nests; and it was not from any dullness, not from fear, that they were so quiet in themselves, but from just listening. Bellow, roar, shriek seemed small inside their hearts. And where there had been at most a makeshift hut to receive the music, a shelter nailed up out of their darkest longing, with an entryway that shuddered in the wind- you built a temple deep inside their hearing. II.xiv. (from Rilke's Sonnets to Orpheus) Look at the flowers, so faithful to what is earthly, to whom we lend fate from the very border of fate. And if they are sad about how they must wither and die, perhaps it is our vocation to be their regret. All Things want to fly. Only we are weighed down by desire caught in ourselves and enthralled with our heaviness. Oh what consuming, negative teachers we are for them, while eternal childhood fills them with grace. If someone were to fall into intimate slumber, and slept deeply with Things--how easily he would come to a different day, out of the mutual depth. Or perhaps he would stay there; and they would blossom and praise their newest convert, who now is like one of them, all those silent companions in the wind of the meadows.
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