The Sonnet for Beginners: The Last Chapter.

 I would like to end by saying that many sonnet forms are probably out there in the ether now that I do not know of or am not interested in covering, as I have covered the main ones. However, I want to end with the last two that to me seem worth looking at briefly, to wind up this little canter or going over the ground of the world of sonnets, or little songs as the root word meant which is from Italian as I have probably stated earlier, somewhere, already; the word 'Sonneto.'

First, I would like to talk of the anti-sonnet which is not a new form. Shakespeare wrote a really interesting one. It basically meant to rebel against the Petrarchan one which was limited in its meter and rhyme scheme and theme.  By moving on to his own meter and rhyme scheme and changing its form and widening the themes of the sonnet form Shakespeare basically became the first of the anti sonneteers and all who have come later who matter are also not only sonneteers but also anti sonneteers in a sense. But let me quote his best anti-sonnet, according to me and many others.

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My mistress' eyes are nothing like the sun (Sonnet 130)

William Shakespeare - 1564-1616

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My mistress' eyes are nothing like the sun;
Coral is far more red than her lips' red;
If snow be white, why then her breasts are dun;
If hairs be wires, black wires grow on her head.
I have seen roses damasked, red and white,
But no such roses see I in her cheeks;
And in some perfumes is there more delight
Than in the breath that from my mistress reeks.
I love to hear her speak, yet well I know
That music hath a far more pleasing sound;
I grant I never saw a goddess go;
My mistress when she walks treads on the ground.
     And yet, by heaven, I think my love as rare
     As any she belied with false compare. "

It's all there, the iambic pentameter, the closing or clinching couplet, the abab rhyme scheme for the first three quatrains and the cc for the last two lines, and best of all the complete break with the tradition of the Laura poems of Petrarch where the mistress is romanticized to an unearthly level, which irritated Shakespeare enough to make her earthy but no less lovable. Milton, Wordsworth, Shelley, Michael Madhusudan Dutt, Sonnet Mondal, I - all ring in their changes to the Petrarchan ideal and thus belong not only to the tradition of sonnets but also to the tradition of anti-sonnets.

I also want to talk of the minison. Introduced to me by my poetry partner in crime it consists simply of, in its purest form, fourteen letters of the alphabet but can be made impure by making it fourteen words or fourteen syllables. A form ideal for twitterature, but it also packs a punch. An example is "tell you a secret." More about it and examples can be read on this site: https://neutralspaces.co/minison/ .

We did a minison in The Significant League's 2021 NAPOWRIMO, as a prompt by Reena Prasad, that brought some 75 of us to write many wonderful minisons.

So let me write one to sign off: "sonnets do dance". 

The END.