Sonnets are good for an amount of content that's of a certain size (without too much padding or compression) with a binary structure (such as question and response). "How much?" you ask -- and I can't answer that in words. Write a few on different topics, taking note of how much you have to struggle to fill out or stuff your words into the form. Eventually you'll get a sense of how much content you can pour into that 14-line bottle.
The binary structure is, of course, because without that 8+6 structure around a volta (or 12+2 with a summary couplet) it's not a sonnet. The exact rhyme scheme is irrelevant, and anyone who insists that there's only 2 (or 3) valid ones is talking out their hat -- poets have varied the schema to suit their needs since the second one ever written. But without that turn, it's simply some 14-line poem in some other, non-sonnet form.
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timeasmymeasure
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Date: 2012-03-05 06:23 pm (UTC)The binary structure is, of course, because without that 8+6 structure around a volta (or 12+2 with a summary couplet) it's not a sonnet. The exact rhyme scheme is irrelevant, and anyone who insists that there's only 2 (or 3) valid ones is talking out their hat -- poets have varied the schema to suit their needs since the second one ever written. But without that turn, it's simply some 14-line poem in some other, non-sonnet form.
---L.