How to Write a Sonnet: A Student Guide

Are you writing a sonnet -- maybe for a class, or just for fun? Here's a guide for you.

My name is Gideon Burton and I have written thousands of sonnets -- and helped untold numbers of students compose their own. I've taught the history of the sonnet form, and frankly, I just love this form of poetry. Some do not. Some people HATE sonnets. I get it. They are hard. They have rules. Bad ones are painful to read. Good ones can be tough to compose. Hopefully this will take the sting out if it just a bit and maybe get you on the road to something of which you can be proud.

I've divided this guide into four parts:

1. Know the Form
2. Read Model Sonnets
3. Imitate and Experiment
4. Select a Subject

Write It

Write It
by Gideon Burton

Know this: if but an inky remnant scrawl
awakens memory, then wake. The wake
of thunders sunders, echoes, spreads and sprawls,
and you have heard and known it for your sake,

as though He tuned the atmosphere to breathe
your breathing. Rhythmed right, alive to light
too light to sink or wince or falling leave
the falling leaves their crimsons breaking bright.

So fight, so grasp two-fisted, whitely tight
what was to you so present thick with fire
with floods of rushing hushing stillness. Bite
the sugar-stinging bloody orange. Wire

and weld the ever wonder, page to ink,
to keep untamed, alive in all you think.

composed 12-9-12