'Affair Of The Heart'

The sonnet is historically a 13th-century form of poetry which consists of fourteen lines normally written in iambic pentameter. It typically discusses spiritual matters and affairs of the heart. There are, however, many interpretations of this definition.

The earliest seems to be the Italian or Petrarchan sonnet, with a rhyme scheme abba-abba-cde-cde; a theme is displayed and expounded in the first two quatrains, a new theme is introduced in the following three lines (marked by a 'turn' or volta in the ninth line) and the whole is concluded in the last three lines. Often, the six concluding lines present a solution to a dilemma or problem posed in the first eight lines.

The familiar English sonnet form as we know it was first introduced in the 16th century. Prior to that, poets like Milton contented themselves with the Italian form. The English form scans as abab-cdcd-efef-gg; a triptych of related images evolves in the three quatrains and a conclusion is given in the last two lines. Shakespeare in particular was enamoured by this form (example here).

There are modern forms of the sonnet as well, with other shapes and sizes. Hopkins, for example, played with the sonnet form more conventionally in 'As Kingfishers Catch Fire...':

As kingfishers catch fire, dragonflies dráw fláme;
As tumbled over rim in roundy wells
Stones ring; like each tucked string tells, each hung bell’s
Bow swung finds tongue to fling out broad its name;
Each mortal thing does one thing and the same:
Deals out that being indoors each one dwells;
Selves—goes itself; myself it speaks and spells,
Crying Whát I do is me: for that I came.

Í say móre: the just man justices;
Kéeps gráce: thát keeps all his goings graces;
Acts in God’s eye what in God’s eye he is—
Chríst—for Christ plays in ten thousand places,
Lovely in limbs, and lovely in eyes not his
To the Father through the features of men’s faces.

He also used the unusual 3/4 sonnet in poems such as 'Pied Beauty':

Glory be to God for dappled things—
For skies of couple-colour as a brinded cow;
For rose-moles all in stipple upon trout that swim;
Fresh-firecoal chestnut-falls; finches’ wings;
Landscape plotted and pieced—fold, fallow, and plough;
And áll trádes, their gear and tackle and trim.

All things counter, original, spare, strange;
Whatever is fickle, freckled (who knows how?)
With swift, slow; sweet, sour; adazzle, dim;
He fathers-forth whose beauty is past change:
Praise him.

As you can see, the sonnet takes many forms. Consider this last example, 'Affair of the Heart (guest starring several other organs)'. What kind of a sonnet is it, and how does it achieve its effects?

A serenade is coursing through my gut:
The wine and other wine and soup and beer,
The pesky discourse of the radiant slut,
The urinary moiety of fear.
Still here to come the stew of Irish style
That loiters with a cannibal intent,
A battery of a salt-and-pepper guile
Provoking now dyspeptic accident.

Then comes the coffee and the last goodbye.
And suddenly the shock is too damn' near;
A last tear for the last girl of my eye.
My tent! My hut! My residence so dear!
The lawyers and their wallet-turning thugs
Make alimonious hell of secret hugs.