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Shakespeare sonnet structure6/12/2023 Elizabeth Barrett Browning’s “ How Do I Love Thee?” (which starts out with “How do I love thee? Let me count the ways”) is a good example of a Petrarchan sonnet. Petrarchan sonnets-named for Petrarch, the 14th-century Italian poet who gained fame for writing them-contain an eight-line stanza called an “octave,” followed by a six-line stanza called a “sestet.” The octave’s rhyme scheme is ABBAABBA, while the sestet’s is either CDECDE or CDCCDC. How those lines are broken up (and which ones rhyme) depends on the type of sonnet. And much like there are different varieties of apples-honeycrisp, Granny Smith, etc.-there are different sonnet varieties, each with its own defining features.Īll of them, however, must have 14 lines and a rhyme scheme. A haiku, for example, is traditionally a three-line poem whose first and third lines comprise five syllables, and whose second line has seven.Ī sonnet is just another type of poem, in the same way that an apple is a type of fruit. But there are rules for specific types of poems. There aren’t really any rules for poetry in general: You can play with punctuation, rhyme schemes, formatting, grammar, and everything else as you like. Basically, it’s any collection of written or spoken words that have some sort of lyrical quality, rhythm, and/or structure that’s less straightforward than a series of sentences is. Defining the word poem isn’t that simple.
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