The Penguin Book of the Sonnet: 500 Years of a Classic Tradition in English
Book Description:
The sonnet is one of the oldest and most enduring literary forms of the post-classical world, a meeting place of image and voice, passion and reason, elegy and ode. It is a form that both challenges and liberates the poet.
For this anthology, poet and scholar Phillis Levin has gathered more than 600 sonnets to tell the full story of the sonnet tradition in the English language. She begins with its Italian origins; takes the reader through its multifaceted development from the Elizabethan era to the Romantic and Victorian; demonstrates its popularity as a vehicle of protest among writers of the Harlem Renaissance and poets who served in the First World War; and explores its revival among modern and contemporary poets. In her vibrant introduction, Levin traces this history, discussing characteristic structures and shifting themes and providing illuminating readings of individual sonnets. She includes an appendix on structure, biographical notes, and valuable explanatory notes and indexes. And, through her narrative and wide-ranging selection of sonnets and sonnet sequences, she portrays not only the evolution of the form over half a millennium but also its dynamic possibilities.
Subjects: Poetry & poets, Poetry texts & anthologies, Poetry, Anthologies (multiple authors), English, Irish, Scottish, Welsh, Poetry / Anthologies (multiple authors), Collections, English poetry, Sonnets, English,
A worthy collection of sonnets in English
The sonnet begins when a fine man of law
devised the structure of a little song;
a genre that, while definitely not long,
could say a lot -- indeed entirely more
than any ballad sung by troubadour.
Journeys to far lands have made it strong,
and many fine companies it has been among;
its makers are the ones who know the score.
Shakespeare and Milton, Wordsworth and Millay,
Longfellow, Whittier, that transcendental lot,
a host of other poets have used the form;
it's a surprising, yet quite lovely way
to take some flowers, fit them in tiny pot,
and in this way create a wondrous norm.
Sonnets great and less so
THE SONNET IN OLD AGE
If to the sessions of sweet silent thought
one summons memories of sonnets long reread in mind
unsprings the blasted lyrics Time has left unpaged
dreams of other nights and other days
in quiet places long since lost in youth
where little lines embodied- Glory, Beauty, Truth.
Then Shakespeare Donne Keats,
Hopkins Milton Wordsworth Yeats
obscuring lesser names and smaller shades
inspire with dearer dearer life
tranquillity's reflection
in old age
Consoling our last moments
in God's praise.
