Note: Some poetry collections with links will be included at the bottom of the essay. They each include many poems written using a sonnet form throughout.

Since it was first developed as a form in the Italian courts during the 1300s, the sonnet form has prevailed and lasted through the centuries. A large reason for this, I believe, is that the form lends itself well to an admixture of literary inventiveness and personal introspection. While every poetry form allows for self-expression, sonnets hold a distinct place in poetry by giving often complex ideas a place to simmer and settle within 14 to 16 line thinkboxes. This thinkbox form has allowed the procurement of memorable poems from legacy writers including Shakespeare, John Keat’s “When I have fears that I may cease to be” and other poems such as “The New Colossus” by Emma Lazarus, where we get the line “Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses”. “The New Colossus” is engraved in a bronze plaque at the pedestal of the Statue of Liberty.

While themes of romance and love usually seem to permeate sonnets more so than other themes, sonneteers (yes, sonneteers), particularly John Milton, opened the form up to cover a greater range of themes and ideas, ranging from the political to the predictive to the spiritual to the scientific. The form is comfortably settled into its own modes of self-expression covering a large array of themes and ideas.

Then, In comes science fiction zooming across our preconceived notions of true sonneteering. If sonnets are like think boxes where personal ideas can be refined and reforged to give way to some new or slightly adjusted angle on existing themes, then science fiction being so occupied in that space bordering on the speculation of newness or reconfiguration lends itself well to the form.

Through the New Telescope
If not amazed before, we should be now.
To use a cliched line, “It boggles the mind”
To contemplate this universal “Wow!”
Those not awed by what this scope may find
Are undeveloped souls—or else afraid
To ponder immensity, accept humility—
Seeing how huge creation has been made.
Such is beyond the too-proud mind’s ability.
Unseen before—this wild, incredible vastness,
A billion billion galaxies in view!—
Amazed to see the light of primordial pastness
As now the unfathomably old is vibrant, new!
Now we should see how small a race we are,
Circling around our once-thought “central” star.

- Frank Coffman

The Think Box of Social and Cultural Introspection.

To me, the sonnet is like a think box that can encapsulate any line of thought and stretch it to fit the paradigms of any possible theme. Think of an essay; at its core, an essay is simply an attempt to explain an idea, argue for or against an opinion, or explain the experiences in one’s life, with varying degrees of overlap to allot some amount of author and reader connection.

“Through the New Telescope” by Frank Coffman is responding to an idea, that of a new, high-powered telescope, and contemplating the excitement that can be endeared from its discoveries. In fourteen lines, juxtaposition within the sonnet gives perspective and view to ideas typically reserved for cliched speech and settles them in a nest of dueling specificity; “Seeing how huge creation has been made. / such is beyond the too-proud mind’s ability," and crucially, “To ponder immensity, accept humility… a billion billion galaxies in view… now we should see how small a race we are / circling around our once-thought “central” star.” There's the contrast between feeling attuned to the vastness of creation compared to the egotism of the mind, as well as the inverted order at the closing lines reinforcing the same idea. The smallness of our species's footprint in the universe contrasts well with both the image of a colossal star and ideas of pseudo-science in assuming Earth was the center of the universe. Ego and brashness, often given an abrasive vastness, are contrasted with the real vastness—the beauty of how large creation truly is. There’s a mix of style and time period, crossing from Romanticism to contemporary social commentary to future technology. Here, the sonnet does in fourteen lines what it often takes essays pages and pages of explanation or suspense or build-up to discern.

The think box form of a sonnet is not a hindrance. On the contrary, the form can be shifted around and changed to glom onto any number of topics, themes, and ideas, and rework them into something that is palatable yet cavernous. Any number of interpretations and perspectives can be gleaned from the topic of the poem; while assembling the various necessities associated with morning routine and preparation, I could easily segue into crossing that experience with that of the poem. How small we are in our daily lives when compared to the grand designs of the universe. Or maybe the poem’s topic could be discussed in tandem with the excess hatred related to certain political pedagogies. In other words, what purpose does that hatred serve when the canvas it is spread against is so immeasurable as to capture the beauty of the universe’s broadening existence? These are just some thoughts that come to mind as I reflect on the poem.

Just as important, the form also isn’t as boxy as it comes across.

Let's visit another poem.

Exiled Leader
I’ve few wants on my planet, fewer needs—
I like seas, trees, exploring what I’ve made,
prospecting for the transgalactic trade,
composing music while collecting seeds.
I like green islands, but won’t interfere
if eco climate needs a waste of ice
or rock-filled deserts are simply the price
of balancing the seas and atmosphere.
I’m rarely lonely, happy to create:
atonal opera, atoning for
those antisocial acts that led to war,
jailed on the planet that I populate.
So I plant trees, make insects, have a swim,
watch, read, compose… my life’s an endless whim.

- Robin Helweg-Larsen

Right from its title, the poem springs forth. Yet again, with this sonnet, we run into another idea with political undertones. Here, we read about a leader, exiled from his position of leadership. I sense an allusion to the exiles of leaders throughout history. However, it would be culpable to view this poem from a purely historical point-of-view.

At its expanse, this sonnet is both galactic and planet-wide. The leader, in an “atonal opera”, must atone for his “antisocial acts that led to war”. The word antisocial, in this instance, is used to denote a subversion of expectations, that of a leader attaining power and using that power to distance him/herself and his/her galactic empire from other galactic empires. The poem, interspersed with brief details of galactic trading, the freedom of environmental catastrophe or growth among their subjects, and being jailed on an entire planet, also focuses heavily on the particular underlying theme of isolation. Yet it is not isolation in a completely negative sense. On the contrary, “atonal opera, atoning for / those antisocial acts that led to war” contrasts nicely with “watch, read compose… my life’s an endless whim”. In this leader’s exile, he has been allotted all the time on his world to explore, trade, and create. His isolation is one spent in dissimilitude through both personal atonement and self-led enjoyment.

Much like “Through the New Telescope”, there is also a greater picture emphasized. That of a lived perspective and context. The theme is specific, yet it is also far reaching on the merits of its fish bowl—the galaxy. If sonnets are like think boxes, then a science fiction sonnet is like a think box kaleidoscope of varying data points and colors that encapsulates the universe, everything from the microorganisms crawling through the ground to the colossal universe through which we view the world with our own narrow eyesights. To comprehend and contemplate the universe, and then to set that contemplation in its own box wrapped in bright and colorful wrapping paper is to move only a single step toward the infinite abyss reflected specifically in our Earthly mirror, the oceans. In “Exiled Leader”, we find our removed leader externalizing a skewed neutrality between “green islands” and “rock-filled deserts”. He doesn’t completely care if others need to adjust the environment for “balancing the seas and atmosphere”.

Convention and Deviation

The conventional sonnet typically has two primary forms, Petrarchan and Shakespearean. Both use iambic pentameter, featuring an unstressed syllable follow by a stressed syllable, for five feet in poetic meter. Both feature distinctive rhyme schemes, with Petrarchan having an ABBAABBACDECDE rhyme scheme and Shakespearean having a ABABCDCDEFEFGG rhyme scheme. They also each have a volta, or turnaround, which usually occurs around lines eight, nine, and ten in a sonnet. The volta is a shift in the poem that either precludes the support of the previous sequence of thought or offers a new perspective on the sonnet's subject matter. While these two forms serve as solid guides to the structured, formalistic anarchy of sonneteering, they are by no means the forms that need to be used to convey a sonneteer's ideas in every context.

Many sonnets written in the last 200 years stray heavily from the origins of the form. Yet they are still widely read through the lens of their own sylistic supposition of the form. Poets like Maya Angelou, Rita Dove, William Blake, and other historical poets have added their own spins on sonnets.

The aforementioned Frank Coffman, Ann K. Schwader, and others take up the speculative ends of vitalization in sonnet writing. If science fiction poetry is a paradoxical misnomer, then its existence is exculpated by the way in which its literary space can be used to invent and procure new poetic forms and twists in themes. Often these new poetic forms can be tempestuous takes on previously created ones, such as with the sonnet form.

I say all of this to subsume assumptions on the idea that the think box analogy can be a means of developing arduously restrictive creative or interpretive sheathing. The sonnet form is both formalistic and freeing. It is also personal and self-directed. Without intention, the sonnet itself will usually fall flat when in the process of being interpreted and analyzed. However, each choice made in relation to understanding a sonnet can come together diffusely enough to ensure that the volta and ending comes across to a reader with at least some degree of increased understanding.

Of course, sonnets can still be written in the guise of their older, more traditional forms. My thought here is that poetry, as formal as it can be, should never be phonetically restrictive to the point where the formality actively impedes the flow and desired understanding or readability of the work itself. Some sonnets work well being read short and sweet, sing-and-song, while other sonnets work better when they have room to breathe in how they are read to oneself or aloud, namely using elements of free verse.

I'd love to close this exploration out with a nice, dandy, and forceful rephrasing of the introduction, but I won't. So, here are some speculative poetry collections with sonnets:

• What the Night Brings by Frank Coffman.
• Unquiet Stars by Ann K. Schwader.
• Doubt and Circuitry by T.D. Walker.
• In the Yaddith Time by Ann K. Schwader.
• The Worm Sonnets by Amelia Gorman (the collection is out of print, so be sure to contact Amelia Gorman/publisher for a PDF copy).