Writing Poetry: Sonnets, Haiku, and Tanka

Sometimes writing poetry is difficult, especially if you want to go old school and use a set rhyme scheme, or heaven forbid, attempt iambic pentameter. Fear not! Here is some poetry writing help.

Here are a few helpers:

For rhymes, check out: RhymeZone.com or Rhymer.com

Syllable Checker: WordCalc.com

Sonnets

I do a lecture on sonnets themselves. I have attached a PDF of my background lecture.

A sonnet is a 14-line lyric poem with a single theme, originated during the Italian Renaissance and later spread throughout Europe. Usually written in iambic pentameter. Most common themes are romantic love and religion.

There are three formats: Italian (called “Petrarchan”), Spenserian, and English (called “Shakespearean”). The most common are Petrarchan and Shakespearean; Edmund Spenser is the only poet to use the format that bears his name.

Sonnet Lecture Notes

For more specific details, here are my lecture notes: Sonnet Notes Lecture PDF

A SAMPLE:
Shakespeare’s SONNET 18

Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?
Thou art more lovely and more temperate:
Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May,
And summer’s lease hath all too short a date: (First quatrain: main theme/main metaphor)

Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines,
And often is his gold complexion dimm’d;
And every fair from fair sometime declines,
By chance, or nature’s changing course, untrimm’d; (Second quatrain: metaphor extended and complicated)

But thy eternal summer shall not fade
Nor lose possession of that fair thou ow’st;
Nor shall Death brag thou wander’st in his shade,
When in eternal lines to time thou grow’st; (Third quatrain: conflict or twist introduced by “but”)

So long as men can breathe or eyes can see,
So long lives this, and this gives life to thee. (Ending couplet: a conclusion or last image)