A Brief History of the Sonnet - Chapter 19 (On Neruda and the Roseate Sonnet)

 Reading sonnets is something like being on a train journey when you are a child and watching random scenes through the window of the rural landscape drenched in beauty. Then the train takes to wings and you see the sky with birds swimming in it. It becomes a submarine and you see the underwater creatures frolic and play there. Glimpses of nations, of historical eruptions and changes, of poets and muses, of labouring and burnt midnight oil and quill and ink, giving way to the computer age. The scenery becomes urban and the birds less, the sky becomes polluted and the journey resumes on railway tracks. Soon you will reach your destination. There is a lady in the compartment with you. You want to please her and so you read her this sonnet from Neruda all women like.

One Hundred Love Sonnets: XVII

BY PABLO NERUDA

I don’t love you as if you were a rose of salt, topaz,

or arrow of carnations that propagate fire:

I love you as one loves certain obscure things,

secretly, between the shadow and the soul.

I love you as the plant that doesn’t bloom but carries

the light of those flowers, hidden, within itself,

and thanks to your love the tight aroma that arose

from the earth lives dimly in my body.

I love you without knowing how, or when, or from where,

I love you directly without problems or pride:

I love you like this because I don’t know any other way to love,

except in this form in which I am not nor are you,

so close that your hand upon my chest is mine,

so close that your eyes close with my dreams.

She snuggles closer to you languorously and lets you make love to her, for opening the treasure box of all the sonnet-diamonds you have for her in all the previous chapters as now she has become more learned than before.

The journey that carried you around the world and now even to South America leaves you pondering about India. Michael was Bengali, so was Toru, so was Derozio, so was Sri Aurobindo, so is Sonnet Mondal. But Seth? Even he was born in Kolkatta.

And what about Kerala? And Kashmir? And Tamil Nadu? And Uttar Pradesh? and Maharashtra? And Orissa? Etc. The other states of India.

Patience to prevent that murmur soon replied by letting me make the roseate sonnet form as an alteration of the sonnet form to put Kerala too on the international sonnet writing map.

The roseate sonnet is two quatrains, a couplet which is a volta, no rhyme scheme, line length, metronome, beat or syllable or meter , and a last stanza which is an acrostic for ROSE which makes it a hybrid form but of four stanzas and fourteen lines in classic sonnet style (4-4-2-4). But by removing the thorny obstacles that stand in the way of Indian sonneteers, mainly meter, though criticized for it as therefore making it too easy, I achieved unexpected success and soon so many roseate sonnets began pouring in it is now being made into an anthology. The ROSE was used as a symbol because of its universal literary associations. I have put Kerala on the international map of sonnet writing.

Not just that - I revived interest in the form, especially my version, to the extent that poets from Kashmir, like Dr Santosh Bakaya wrote a whole narrative poem in it, for the anthology, putting Kashmir on the map and Jaipur, of world sonnet writing. It is called "You heard the Scream, didn't you?" It follows in the tradition of Pushkin and Vikram Seth, therefore, by telling a story, as narrative verse, in fifty sonnets.

There are others too.

I have written about a hundred roseate sonnets - thirty will come out soon in the anthology.

Daipayan Nair has written any number of powerful roseate sonnets and cached it on a wonderful page on FB. This is Bengali- Malayali in origin and coupled with pictorial matching.

Geethanjali Dilip has written many putting Tamil Nadu on the map along with Bhuvaneshwari Shivakumar Shankar who is the editor for the anthology.

Dev Mishra has written them becoming a representative of it in a way from Orissa though he is much wider and has carried it to a deeper level by doing it in many different ways and even mixing it with Duane Vorhees's form the Couplette. Dev Mishra is one of the best in India at present at writing in forms.

"(P)-   Indeed! I  see you experiment rigorously with many forms and styles, even new formats like the Roseate Sonnet. Which format is truly the most challenging one for Dev Mishra and why?

DM– No format is impossible if you intend to do it. However, I will consider the Roseate Sonnet Couplette — a merger of two novel forms, done by me — to be the toughest. A Roseate Sonnet is devised by Dr. Ampat Koshy. It is pretty simple. A traditional sonnet re-modelled with an acrostic at the end reading ROSE. A couplette, on the other hand, demands the rhyme of syllables. For instance, the first syllable has to rhyme with the second, the third with the fourth and so on. This is relatively challenging because you have to take care of the rhyme of syllables and the acrostic at the end, without compromising with the idea that you have."

The form Couplette (not couplet) is invented by Dr. Duane Vorhees."

Dev Mishra has also tried several versions of the Roseate Sonnet making it more difficult by using the acrostic in the beginning of all stanzas or in the end and/or middle, in the case of the couplet to complete it etc, besides doind the roseate couplette.

Roy Mark Azanza Corrales of the Philippines has also brought out an entire book of Roseate Sonnets.

Gauri Dixit comes from Maharashtra, Sunita Singh from Uttar Pradesh, Satbir Chadha from Haldwani, Reena Prasad from Kerala with Vineetha Mekkoth (our co-editor) - all have graced the form. Writers from 12 countries, including Michelle "Wyn" Corbett from Canada, from UK Dominic Francis, from USA Alistair Towesland Allen, Michele Baron, Angel Meredith etcetera, and poets in three languages, English, Hindi and Urdu have attempted it or variations on it, naturally, more than 500 have already been written and the secret of this success is it is simple, with just the right amount of difficulty. The anthology contains 102 poets with 180 sonnets and before that there was a competition which was judged by Lopa Banerjee and Elizabeth Kuriakose and in it also some 50 or so took part. This was in the Learning and Creativity-Silhouette e-magazine. The anthology will soon be published by Authorspress and Sudarshan Kcherry. Writers from almost all states in India have given poems for it spreading the sonnet fever again from Kerala first to all over India. Uiba Mangang who is one from the North East is another example. Lily Swarn from Punjab is too. Sarmita Dey continues writing it and carrying on the form thus, in a sense, in Bengal. We have Precious Chilongozi from Malawi, Africa, writing one.

Here is one by me that has been published to make you get the structure:

A Roseate Sonnet by Dr AV Koshy

August 31, 2020

I understand
why dawn ‘breaks’
& night ‘steals’.
But why hearts have to, too, or do

or people wheel and deal
to steal
from one another
I never could. I am naive,
sometimes.

Restless hearts, break like the dawn
O debtors, stolen from by others or life
Steal away from the dark night(s) in the hearts of men, and fate
Enjoy the first, fiery, red flush of dawn. 

(http://odetoapoetess.com/2020/08/31/a-roseate-sonnet-by-dr-koshy-av/?fbclid=IwAR2_3MZiZK-I0vkMl1xfOS8rg387Og7rsC5LgtCf0xPi-GPyjosGjX4j1-Y) first credit link.

https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/49236/one-hundred-love-sonnets-xvii

https://www.photonews.in/2019/03/28/poetry-is-a-pilgrimage-debasish-mishra/

https://learningandcreativity.com/roseate-sonnet-an-experience-in-learning-the-art-of-poetry/