Sonnets+2010

Read "How Do I Love Thee" 1. Most critics agree that Sonnets from the Portuguese are love poems written to Elizabeth Barrett Brownings's husband, poet Robert Browning. Read Sonnet 43 carefully. Then, discuss what Browning's uses of tone, syntax, and figurative language reveal about her attitude toward her husband. 2. Read Sonnet 43 carefully and, in a well-developed essay, explore how the changes in rhythm througout the poem address the central question. 3. Discuss the relationship between the subject and the form of the poem. How does Browning bend the rules througout the poem to create tension between the two? 4. Compare her poem to a love sonnet of your choice by Shakespeare. How do they differ in form, language, and complexity?
 * Answer theMC How Do I Love Thee questions

[|A Sonnet for the Earth] Anna Hempstead Branch [|The Sonnet-Ballad] Gwendolyn Brooks [|The World Is Too Much with Us] William Wordsworth [|The New Colossus] Emma Lazarus [|Death Be Not Proud] John Donne [|How Do I Love Thee?] Elizabeth Barret Browning [|Leda and the Swan] W.B. Yeats [|Mowing] Robert Frost [|Sonnet 130 (Mistress's eyes)] William Shakespeare [|Ozymandias] Percy Bysshe Shelley [|When I consider how my light was spent] John Milton [|Unholy Sonnet 1] Mark Jarman [|Unholy Sonnet 11] Mark Jarman [|Student Sonnets 1]

Sonnet about a Nose

'Tis very odd that poets should suppose There is no poetry about a nose, When plain as is the nose upon your face, A noseless face would lack poetic grace. Noses have sympathy: a lover knows Noses are always touched when lips are kissing: And who would care to kiss where nose was missing? Why, what would be the fragrance of a rose, And where would be our mortal means of telling Whether a vile or wholesome odour flows Around us, if we owned no sense of smelling? I know a nose, a nose no other knows, 'Neath starry eyes, o'er ruby lips it grows; Beauty is in its form and music in its blows.

Knock Knock Knock by Il Min Ahn

Knock, knock, knock. Knocked the neighbor on the door. Sunrise nor set were near lovely as she. Doors flew open and her feet hit my floor For a slight moment I dreamed of a “we.” She approached me slowly, I tensed up quick “Care for some coffee?” nervously asked I, But with no answer she took out an ice pick I froze for a moment and said “Oh my...” The sharp metal ice pick reached my soft neck I said, “take all my money, just don’t kill me” “It depends,” said she, “First write me a check” “There are no checks in Korea. Oh gee.” Awkward silence filled the atmosphere. I thought she must be a foreigner here.

Learning to Write a Sonnet


The sonnet form is old and full of dust And yet I want to learn to write one well. To learn new forms and grow is quite a must, But I will learn it quickly, I can tell.

And so I sit, today, with pen in hand, Composing three new quatrains with a rhyme. The rhythm flows like wind at my command. The A-B-A-B form consumes my time.

But I’m not done until there’s fourteen lines. One ending couplet, after three quatrains. I’ve tried to write this new form several times. The effort’s huge; I have to rack my brain.

But I persist, my fourteen lines now done. I wrote my poem; my sonnet work is won.

//by Denise Rodgers

Elizabeth Barrett Browning Answers 1. d 2. b 3. a 4. c 5. e 6. a 7. b 8. a//