https:poetrydish.blogspot.com: April 2013

This day is special for Bobby Stallone

A guy, who lives in the northern time zone;

I better call him now on telephone;

Sing him a song with melodious tone

From my country home, outside Montreal

And wait eagerly for the first snow fall;

To give him gifts I purchased in the mall,

To match his tattoos, wrinkles, warts and all;

Yet brushing off hardships I have carried;

And my commitments to kids so candid;

And yet, heaps of sugar-ants dominate

The icing, which keeps dripping off the plate;

Happy birthday to you my handsome mate;

From the cloud, I wish for you all things great.

The motivation to create the Hendianne sonnet came as a result of the interest shown by my husband and my youngest sister, Anne in my poetry; both them have since passed on. The tribute paid to them is shown by way of naming the sonnet the “Hendianne”. There are two methods being used in the creation of this 21^st Century sonnet.

1) Use rhyming couples within a rhyme scheme aa aabbbb ccdd dd as follows:

An opening couplet. This introduces the theme or problem

At the end of the opening couplet use sexain which is three couplets. The sexain is where the theme or problem is developed.

At the end of the sexain use a quatrain which is two couplets, this signals a change in the speaker’s tone, mood or stance of the poem; this pivot, turn or shift is referred to as the “volta” in classical sonnets and is easily recognized by such initial words as “but”, “yet” or “and yet”;

Now, complete the Hendianne sonnet with a rhyming couplet. This ending couplet or “coda” provides a logical resolution to the problem.

2) Another method of creating the Hendianne sonnet pattern is as follows:

Begin with the opening triplet (three verses). This introduces the theme or problem;

At the end of the opening triplet use a sexain which is three couplets. The sexain is where the theme or problem is developed;

At the end of the sexain use a triplet, this is where the speaker’s tone, mood or stance of the poem changes. This is the pivotal moment in the sonnet;

Now, complete the Hendianne sonnet with a rhyming couplet. This ending couplet or “coda” provides a logical resolution to the problem.

The rhyme scheme for this method is somewhat flexible, but with only two requirements that the second verse in the opening triplet must rhyme with first verse of the sexain; and the ending couplet must rhyme. The poem, "Errol Barrow Day" uses method 2, so check it out.

“Birthday Wishes from the Cloud” is structured around seven rhyming couplets partitioned as follows; opening couplet, sexain (three couplets), quatrain (two couplets) and closing couplet in iambic pentameter within a rhyme scheme aaaabbbbccdddd.

The sonnets of Wordsworth, Shakespeare, Milton, Keats, Spenserian and Petrarchan brands have influenced greatly the creation of this highly structured sonnet dubbed the “Hendianne”. Tables 1 and 2 show exemplars used to compare the structural variants among the different types of English Language sonnets from past centuries to the present.

Table 1

Exemplars

Birthday Wishes from the Cloud

This day is special for Bobby Stallone

A guy, who lives in the northern time zone;

I better call him now on telephone;

Sing him a song with melodious tone

From my country home, outside Montreal

And wait eagerly for the first snow fall;

To give him gifts I purchased in the mall,

To match his tattoos, wrinkles, warts and all;

Yet brushing off hardships I have carried;

And my commitments to kids so candid;

And yet, heaps of sugar-ants dominate

The icing, which keeps dripping off the plate;

Happy birthday to you my handsome mate;

From the cloud, I wish for you all things great.

Petrarchan Sonnet 159

In what bright realm, what sphere of radiant thought

Did Nature find the model whence she drew

That delicate dazzling image where we view

Here on this earth what she in heaven wrought?

What fountain-haunting nymph, what dryad, sought

In groves, such golden tresses ever threw

Upon the gust? What heart such virtues knew?—

Though her chief virtue with my death is frought.

He looks in vain for heavenly beauty, he

Who never looked upon her perfect eyes,

The vivid blue orbs turning brilliantly –

He does not know how Love yields and denies;

He only knows, who knows how sweetly she

Can talk and laugh, the sweetness of her sighs.

One day I wrote her name upon the strand

(Spenserian Sonnet)

One day I wrote her name upon the strand,

But came the waves and washed it away:

Again I wrote it with a second hand,

But came the tide and made my pains his prey.

Vain man (said she), that dost in vain assay

A mortal thing so to immortalize;

For I myself shall like to this decay,

And eke my name be wiped out likewise.

Not so (quod I); let baser things devise

To die in dust, but you shall live by fame;

My verse your virtues rare shall eternize,

And in the heavens write your glorious name:

Where, when as death shall all the world subdue,

Our love shall live, and later life renew.

Miltonic Sonnet 19

When I consider how my light is spent,

E're half my days, in this dark world and wide,

And that one Talent which is death to hide,

Lodg'd with me useless, though my Soul more bent

To serve therewith my Maker, and present

My true account, least he returning chide,

Doth God exact day labour, light deny'd,

I fondly ask; But patience to prevent

That murmur, soon replies, God doth not need

Either man's work or his own gifts, who best

Bear his milde yoak, they serve him best, his State

Is Kingly. Thousands at his bidding speed

And post o're Land and Ocean without rest:

They also serve who only stand and waite.

Shakespearean Sonnet 1

FROM fairest creatures we desire increase,

That thereby beauty's rose might never die,

But as the riper should by time decease,

His tender heir might bear his memory:

But thou, contracted to thine own bright eyes,

Feed'st thy light'st flame with self-substantial fuel,

Making a famine where abundance lies,

Thyself thy foe, to thy sweet self too cruel.

Thou that art now the world's fresh ornament

And only herald to the gaudy spring,

Within thine own bud buriest thy content

And, tender churl, makest waste in niggarding.

Pity the world, or else this glutton be,

To eat the world's due, by the grave and thee.

Sonnet XXVI – To Sleep

(Wordsworth)

A flock of sheep that leisurely pass by,

One after one; the sound of rain, and bees

Murmuring; the fall of rivers, winds and seas,

Smooth fields, white sheets of water and pure sky,

By turns have all been thought of, yet I lie

Sleepless; and soon the small birds’ melodies

Must hear, first uttered from my orchard trees;

And the first Cuckoo’s melancholy cry.

Even thus last night, and two nights more, I lay,

And could not win thee, Sleep! by any stealth:

So do not let me wear to-night away:

Without Thee what is all the morning’s wealth?

Come, blessed barrier between day and day,

Dear mother of fresh thoughts and joyous health!

Table 2

English Language Sonnets
	Composition	Rhyme Scheme	Pivot or Volta
Hendianne 21^st Century West Indies	Example: “Birthday Wishes from the Cloud” Seven rhyming Couplets in iambic pentameter proportioned as follows: opening couplet Sexain couplets Quatrain couplets Ending Couplet	aaaabbbbccdddd	Unravels at Quatrain couplets
Miltonic 17^th Century England	Example: “Milton Sonnet 19” An enjambment Quatorzain in iambic pentameter	abbaabbacdecde	Slowly after Verse 8
Petrarchan Sonnet, 14^th Century Italy	Example: “Petrarchan Sonnet 159” Octave (8 verses), Question Sexain (6 verses) and resolution	abbaabbacdedcd	Unravels slowly between octave and sexain
Shakespearean late 16^th Century and early 17^th Century England	Example: “Sonnet 1” Three quatrains and an ending couplet which provides the resolution to the problem in iambic pentameter.	abacdedefgfghh	Deep into sonnet after the second quatrain arrives
Spenserian Mid 16^th Century England	Example: “One day I wrote her name upon the strand” Three quatrains and one couplet in iambic pentameter with interlocking rhyme scheme closed by a couplet in iambic pentameter.	ababbcbccdcdee	Slowly and logically sometimes after the second quatrain
Wordsworth 19^th Century England	Example: Sonnet XXVI – To Sleep A quatorzain catalogue poem of sorts *A catalogue poem’s simplicity is used to teach children how to write a poem, using repetition and variation in listing objects, ideas, people or places.	abbaabbacdcdcd	Arrives at the last verse

I muse in the morning

Tanks to gas I am drinking
All kinds of thoughts come to mind
So for you I shall be kind
While my gears are roving wild
See not this picture my child

Big mouth women cha-cha-cha
Open me doors from afar
Best of me taken from range
Parked self 'neath woman's tongue tree
They rattle querulously

Lawyers and doctors alike
Never again take a bike
A mini-bus is too small
BMW rides all
Black and white and rainbows too
So many things I can do

Don't deem what I say is true
Check the highway flowing through
Count and figure out the flow
Passing by you to and fro
Brand new BMW
Riding who! Boo, Sue and Lou

Poets often write about social issues; so there is no surprise that the poem casts a critical eye on materialism with respect to the motor-car culture. Motor-cars are electronic horses serving industry and leisure pursuits. They are luxury items too for the rich, the famous and the materialistic cravings of folks in all the different strata of the society. The electronic gadgetry in stellar cars is always a source of vibrant discussion, observation and longing for, no doubt about that. BMW articulates the poet’s intentions and observations in this social commentary poem using the rhetorical device known as prosopopoeia. This device gives non-human beings the ability to speak like they are human beings.

Another poetic device used in this poem is the Elision: the omission of a letter or syllable as a means of contraction, generally to achieve a uniform metrical pattern, but sometimes to smooth the pronunciation; most such omissions are marked with an apostrophe. Examples from poem shown below:

Parked self ‘neath woman’s tongue tree,

(Parked self beneath woman’s tongue tree)

Don’t deem what I say is true!

(Do not deem what I say is true!)

We measure syllables in classical poetry to determine the length of verses; by separating syllable stresses in terms of those syllables that are stressed and those syllables that are unstressed by using Qualitative meter which is the tool assigned to the metrical forms of English Language poetry. Keep in focus that every syllable must have a vowel in it. Examples from poem are shown below where stressed syllable embolden with the ictus (⁄) hovering above them; and the breve (ˬ) hovering over unstressed syllables:

The metrical forms of Greek and Latin poetry use quantitative meter for determining the length and shortness of syllables in their poetry. Quantitative meter has never worked well in Germanic languages like English, but it was common in Latin, Greek, Sanskrit, and Arabic poetry. Vowels in syllables can be long or short by “nature” or by “position”. Nature and position determine the vowel quality. In scanning poems in Quantitative meter the long vowels are marked with a macron (-) and the short vowels are marked with a breve (ˬ). Our focus here is on Qualitative meter because the reference point is on English Language poetry. The examples shown are taken from the poem “BMW”.

Notice that the rhyme scheme in this poem is aabbcc ddeeff gghhii jjkkll tells you that each stanza has rhyming couplets. A further analysis of the poem shows that these couplets are made up of the open couplet and the closed couplet. In metered poetry a couplet is created when two successive verses rhyme.

The opened couplet is made when the thought is carried beyond the rhyming verse to end at any verse of a subsequent couplet. The enjambment provides an obvious clue showing where the open couplet is at. Here is an example taken from Edmund Spenser’s “Prosopopoeia: or Mother Hubbard’s Tale”

Even as new occasion appears?

Or shall we tie ourselves for certain years

To any service, Or to any place?

For it behooves ere that into the race

We enter, to resolve first hereupon.

Now surely brother (said the Fox anon)

Here are some examples of open couplets taken from the poem, “BMW”

All kinds of thoughts come to mind,

So for you I shall be kind,

While my gears are roving wild,

See not this picture my child.

Lawyers and doctors alike,

Never again take a bike.

Black and white and rainbows too;

So many things I can do.

Count and figure out the flow,

Passing by you to and fro;

Brand new BMW

Driving Tom, Dick, Sue and Lou.

Closed couplet emerges when the sense and syntax are self-contained within the two verses. No enjambment is used. Here are some examples taken from the poem, “BMW”:

I muse in the wee morning;

Tanks of gas I am drinking;

Big Mouth Women cha-cha-cha;

Open me doors from afar;

Best of me taken from range;

Strange behavior on high wage;

Parked me ‘neath woman’s tongue tree,

They rattled querulously;

A mini bus is too small;

BMW rides all;

Don't deem what I say is true!

Check the highway flowing through;

“BMW” is written in the form of a sexain trimeter that incorporates closed couplets and open couplets with a rhyme scheme aabbcc ddeeff gghhii jjkkll. In a sexain trimeter poem each stanzas has six verses with the same length of three metrical feet, and any rhyme scheme is applicable. A verse with three metrical feet is called a trimeter. A poem with all its verses measuring three feet and with all the stanzas having six verses is called a sexain trimeter poem. The foot is the smallest level of organization of syllables whether by stress or length. The foot is the basic metrical unit that generates verse in classical English poetry and in Quantitative meter of classical ancient Greek and Latin poetry. The foot is classified by the number of syllables in the word as follows:

Monosyllable (Monosyllabic) is made up of one syllable words (example; big)

Disyllable (Disyllabic) is made up of two syllable words (example; picture)

Trisyllable (Trisyllabic) is made up of three syllable words (example; behavior)

Tetrasyllables (Tetrasyllabic) is made up of four syllable words (example; querulously)

The metrical unit is composed of syllables, the number of which is limited, with a few variations, by the sound pattern the foot represents. Scansion of verses in the first stanza of poem “BMW” provide examples of this as shown below:

There are six kinds of syllables:

Close Syllables

Open Syllables

Silent-E Syllables

Vowel Combination Syllables

Vowel-R Syllables

Consonant-L-E Syllables

A close syllables has one vowel and ends with a consonant. Examples taken from poetic works are underlined as follows:

Tanks to gas I am drinking;

All kinds of thoughts come to mind;

See not this picture my child.

An open syllable has one vowel, and that vowel occurs at the end of the syllable. Examples taken from poetic works are underlined as follows:

Big Mouth Women cha-cha-cha;

Open me doors from afar;

Best of me taken from range;

So many things I can do.

Don't deem what I say is true!

Check the highway flowing through;

Count and figure out the flow;

Passing by you to and fro;

Riding who: Boo, Sue and Lou?

The silent-e syllable ends in an “e”, has only one consonant before that “e” and only one vowel before that consonant. Examples taken from poetic works are underlined as follows:

Zesty conkies we share;

Pumpkin alone will never do;

With potato, sugar and spice;

Cook on square leaves with care.

Pass the plate with cheer,

To friends but satellites of none;

Great cheese-on-bread is there.

The vowel combination syllable has a cluster of two or three vowels or a vowel consonant unit with a sound or sounds particular to that unit. Examples taken from poetic works are underlined as follows:

Conkies banana wear;

Housed in jacket uniquely ours;

Skilled fingers cut the leaves to strap,

Laboriously they toiled each day,

In cane-fields near Foursquare;

Plenty facts stuck with glue

What are the images you see

Empire and George VI would die;

That Jesus Christ incarnation is true;

On the economic pie;

The gentle spring rain;

Give me a piece of luck

The saddest noise, the sweetest noise

At the end of the hall under the chair

The toy box---silent---near the old rocking chair

But then I really had no clue

Under the veil of favoritism

The vowel-r syllable is one which includes only one vowel followed by an “r”, or one vowel followed by an “r” which is followed by a silent “e”, or a vowel combination followed by an “r”. Examples taken from poetic works are underlined as follows:

Plainly stacked on tableware;

From stalk with sharp hardware;

What are the images you see

Pass the plate with cheer,

Great cheese-on-bread is there.

Amid great strife elsewhere;

From near and far

See, land, air and dog scenes;

Mix corn, coconut fair

Cook on square leaves with care

The consonant + le syllables known as (C+le syllables) are found at the end of words. Examples taken from poetic works are underlined as follows:

An apple a day

And to baffle my foes I lash out

Humble folks now speak with a peerage tone.

The adorable wife stands in the crowd

Now they cuddle and they run

Of the Christian Church, is memorable

Insatiable desire to transform conditions for the masses

And life is sweet in this cyber bubble

Sustainable goals must be the refrain

The marble dolphin spat for them to see

The English Language phonics rules state that a syllable must have a vowel. The English vowels are “a, e, i, o and u”. In some situations “y and w” are vowels. The diphthongs are “oi, oy, ou, ow, au, aw, oo” and many others. The diphthong has two vowels but in reality the vowels are treated as one vowel when counting for the number of syllables in words. The English Language consonants are; b, c, d, f, g, h, j, k, l, m, n, p, q, r, s, t, v, w, x, y, z, ch, sh, th, ph, wh, ng, and gh”.

Here are some examples of vowels, diphthongs and consonants taken from verses in the second stanza of poem “BMW” as shown in Tables 9 and 10. The vowels are underlined; the diphthongs italicized; the silent vowels in brackets and consonants are unmarked:

Plainly stacked on tableware;

From stalk with sharp hardware;

What are the images you see

Pass the plate with cheer,

Great cheese-on-bread is there.

Amid great strife elsewhere;

From near and far

See, land, air and dog scenes;

Mix corn, coconut fair

Cook on square leaves with care

The consonant + le syllables known as (C+le syllables) are found at the end of words. Examples taken from poetic works are underlined as follows:

An apple a day

And to baffle my foes I lash out

Humble folks now speak with a peerage tone.

The adorable wife stands in the crowd

Now they cuddle and they run

Of the Christian Church, is memorable

Insatiable desire to transform conditions for the masses

And life is sweet in this cyber bubble

Sustainable goals must be the refrain

The marble dolphin spat for them to see

Table 9

Big Mouth Women cha-cha-cha;

(This verse has 7 syllables and 8 vowels)

Open me doors from afar;

(This verse has 7 syllables and 8 vowels)

Best of me taken from rang(e);

(This verse has 7 syllables and 8 vowels)

Strange behavior on high wag(e);

(This verse has 7 syllables and 10 vowels)

Park(e)d self ‘neath woman’s tong(ue) tree,

(This verse has 7 syllables and 12 vowels)

They rattled querulously;

(This verse has 7 syllables and 8 vowels.

Table 10

Big Mouth Women cha-cha-cha;