MetaFilter posts tagged with sonnets

Shakespeare's Sonnets Turn 400

Joe Beese — Wed, 20 May 2009 06:59:16 -0800

400 years ago today, Thomas Thorpe entered into the Stationers' Register a book titled "Shake-Speares Sonnets". However, Clinton Heylin argues that - like Bob Dylan's Basement Tapes - the Sonnets were never intended for a wide audience. "In both cases, they were killing time and at the same time dealing with huge personal issues in a private way, which they never conceived of coming out publicly."

Shakespeare's Sonnets

Kattullus — Sat, 24 May 2008 19:40:34 -0800

William Shakespeare wrote some of the world's finest sonnets. The website shakespeares-sonnets.com is a fine place to start delving into the poems. Here you can see scans of the first edition of The Sonnets as printed by Thomas Thorpe in 1609. If you wish there were more sonnets by Shakespeare, your jones might be eased by the Shakespeare Sonnet Shake-Up, which lets you remix them according to taste. And finally there's Shakespeare in Tune, a site where Jonathan Willby recites each of the 154 sonnets following a short improvisation on a German flute.

Francesco Petrarch & Laura deNoves

hama7 — Sat, 24 Jul 2004 15:44:16 -0800

Francesco Petrarch & Laura deNoves.

A sonnet is a moment's monument (Rossetti)

thomas j wise — Wed, 24 Sep 2003 10:49:12 -0800

Sonnet Central Wordsworth once said of the sonnet that he hoped that those "[w]ho have felt the weight of too much liberty,/Should find such brief solace there, as I have found." Sonnet Central offers a copious library of sonnets, mainly in the Anglo-American tradition but with examples from around the world. Those who wish to explore further in the sonnet's paradoxically expansive "scanty plot of ground" (Wordsworth again) may also wish to try Petrarch's Canzoniere (complete set, Italian with English translations); Shakespeare's Sonnets (self-described as "amazing"; the full cycle with glosses and paraphrases, plus illustrations and links to other poems); Golden Age Spanish Sonnets (translations); Christina Rossetti's Monna Innominata: A Sonnet of Sonnets (a reflection on the traditional sonnet sequence); George Meredith's Modern Love (a bleaker revision of the sonnet sequence tradition, featuring sixteen-line "sonnets"); and an excerpt from John Hollander's Powers of Thirteen (do the math and you'll see the experiment--it's an interesting modern sequence).

grabbingsand — Sun, 11 Aug 2002 19:40:02 -0800

Meet John Clare. In 1832, he wrote to John Taylor, saying:

'in spite of every difficulty rhyme will come to the end of my pen -- when I am in trouble I go on & it gives me pleasure by resting my feelings of every burthen & when I am pleased it gives me extra gratification & so in spite of myself I rhyme on.'*

And John Clare knew difficulty. Born to dirt poor farmers in 1793, he wrote his first poem at 13 and published his first book of poetry at 27. Yet he found himself committed to the Northampton General Lunatic Asylum by the age of 48. Why? It was determined that he suffered from too many "years addicted to poetical prosings."

A poet of the sonnet form, he has suffered from a lack of academic attention until just recently. He does, however, have a society in his name, and a John Clare conference will be held in North America next year.