Sri Aurobindo

Letters on Poetry and Art

SABCL - Volume 27

Part 2. On His Own and Others’ Poetry
Section 3. Practical Guidance for Aspiring Writers
Guidance in Writing Poetry

On Writing Sonnets [2]

Has it struck you that these sonnets are rather simple as regards their rhythm? Should not there be variations in pauses and overflows, different rhymes, etc.?

It is the Shakespearean model, three quatrains each with alternate rhymes and a couplet. Pauses and overflows are not usual in this type. Variations — depends on what variations.

For example, the rhymes in the sestet could be CDE, CDE.

It would no longer be the Shakespearean model. In the Miltonic form the sestet is rhymed anyhow, the one you prefer being only one sequence, provided there are three rhymes and no couplet; but then the octet has to follow a fixed system of two rhymes only ABBA ABBA. Nowadays however people throw the sonnet into all sorts of irregular forms, I believe.

20 December 1936