First blogging assignment!

Pick one of the sonnets we read for class and write two paragraphs for your first blog post. Write 300 words. In the first paragraph, compare the sonnet form

with the form of a tweet and a novel. What do these different forms allow you to do? Are there different expectations for these forms? In the second paragraph,

show how the author uses the sonnet form to express a problem. You can say how the sonnet form express a problem by analyzing the significance of the rhymes,

rhythm, or final couplet. You could address SOME, NOT NECESSARILY ALL, of the following questions: What relationship do the rhyming words have with each other?

Are they synonyms, antonyms, or in no relation to each other? What is the effect of a couplet? Some of us in class today thought that a couplet produces a sense

 of conclusion, a sense of an end. Does that usual effect apply to the poem you’re analyzing? How? Finally, are there any significant changes in the rhythm?

For example, after a number of iambs, is there a spondee? If so, what might that suggest about the word or words that make a change in the rhythm?

The sonnet form has similarities and differences with the form of a tweet and with that of a novel. When comparing a sonnet and a tweet, a sonnet is found to be far more elaborate than a tweet, and incorporates far more eloquent language. However, sonnets and tweets resemble each other in the aspect that they are both" snapshots" of a larger story. Tweets are generally short sentences or even phrases that describe a part of a person's life; meanwhile, sonnets can be described as snapshots in the sense that they are not written individually, but are rather written in a sequence of sonnets that eventually comes together to form an entire story. As quoted from Mr. Weise, "a tweet is a modern sonnet." A novel differs from a sonnet in the sense that it is the entire story while a sonnet is only part of the story; parallels can be drawn between the chapters in a novel and a single sonnet in a sequence of sonnets. However, a novel is similar to the sonnet is the sense that it is made up of elaborate language and describes events in detail.

In Sonnet 75 by Spenser, the rhyming scheme tends to generally follow a spondee-iamb-iamb-iamb-iamb pattern until line 4, where this pattern changes, as well as the speaker in the poem. This illustrates that a change in rhythm also usually represents another kind of change in the poem, whether it is a change in speaker, a change in the emphasis/importance of the lines, or any other kind of change. The final couplet in this poem, which also shows a change in rhythm, illustrates the solution to the problem addressed in the poem; the main character finds a way to immortalize his love: through the poem itself. These final two lines demonstrate a rhyme-scheme change in emphasis; the change in the rhythm of the poem illustrates the conclusion by finding or acknowledging the solution to immortalizing the love that these two characters share.