Trellis Magazine - 2007 Issue
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Sonnet Article
History of the Sonnet Form
by D. Marbach
What is a sonnet? A sonnet was originally a lyric poetry form of 14 lines. Any poem with 14 lines is called a
quatorzain. Although sonnets are almost always quatorzains, not all quatorzains are sonnets. There are several
elements to the sonnet form, and these elements should be present in order for the poem to be a sonnet.
The sonnet originated in Italy. The Italian word “sonneto” means “little song”. The first sonnet is believed to have
been created in the early 13th century by an Italian named Giacomo da Lentini. He was the senior poet of the Sicilian
school. Da Lentini created the sonnet form from a popular type of Sicilian peasant song called a “strambatto”. The
peasant songs consisted of an “octave” (an eight-line stanza*) with the simple alternating rhyme scheme [a-b-a-b-a-b-
a-b]. To the strambatto, he added a “sestet” (a six-line stanza) with the chaining rhyme scheme [c-d-e-c-d-e]. Da
Lentini wrote many sonnets, but only a few have survived, including “Io m’aggio posto in core a Dio servire.”
One of the elements of a sonnet is its lyrical form, as if the poem were words which could be sung to the music of a
“lyre” (a small harp), because the beginnings of the sonnet were in the folk songs of Italy. The lyrical quality of the
sonnet is seen in its formal rhyme scheme and its mostly uniform number of syllables per line. However, although the
sonnet is a lyrical form, it is not intended to be sung like the strambatto.
Two other elements of a sonnet are its unequal stanzas of rhyming lines, and its turn. The stanzas of the sonnet are
unequal, with larger stanzas coming first and smaller stanzas coming last. The sonnet form should have an uneven
distribution because this allows for the poet to create a “volta” between stanzas. The Italian word “volta” means
“turn”. In Da Lentini’s sonnet form, the octave and sestet arrangement allowed for a turn in the poem between the
octave and the sestet. The turn could be used by the poet in a variety of ways, and the sonnet became very popular
as a creative writing game. The mood, thought, or focus of the sonnet occurred in two parts; the octave stated a
problem, asked a question, or expressed a tension, and the sestet resolved the problem, answered the question, or
relieved the tension. The
sonnet’s uneven distribution could also be used by the poet to incorporate several voices or points of view in the
poem, allowing a dialogue, such as in an “I and you” relationship.
The other common element of most sonnets is a theme of love. The love may be either romantic love for a woman,
Platonic love for a friend, spiritual love for the Deity, patriotic love for country, or love for mankind. In fact, the
word “sonnet” is often used informally to refer to any short romantic love poem.
Later in the 13th century another Italian, Guittone d’Arezzo, the founder of the Tuscan school of court poetry,
introduced the “kissing rhyme” pattern for his sonnet octave. This kissing rhyme pattern is [a-b-b-a-a-b-b-a]. D’
Arezzo wrote and circulated over 200 sonnets, but only a few of them have been preserved.
Two popular Italian poets, Dante and Petrarch, took the sonnet form and used it in their writing. They made the
sonnet a well-established form of poetry in the Italian language by the mid 13th century. The pattern for this Italian
sonnet was an octave with the kissing rhyme scheme and a sestet with a chaining rhyme scheme [a-b-b-a-a-b-b-a c-d-
e-c-d-e]. The lines usually had eleven syllables (hendecasyllable).
Dante’s La Vita Nuova (The New Life) was the first sonnet sequence ever written, containing 25 sonnets and several
other lyric poems with explanatory prose. A sonnet sequence is a series of sonnets that are organized in some
fictional, intellectual, or chronological order. The sequence may tell a story or develop an argument. Dante’s
sequence discusses his tremendous love for Beatrice.
Petrarch’s Canzoniere (Songs/Poems Collection) is a series of lyrical poems including over 300 sonnets. Petrarch is
considered to have perfected the Italian sonnet, which became known also as the Petrarchan sonnet. Canzoniere
includes many love poems and grief poems about a woman named Laura.
Different Italian poets used the sonnet form, and variations occurred as the sonnet spread over the next couple of
centuries. Poets chose either the alternating rhyme pattern [a-b-a-b] or the kissing rhyme pattern [a-b-b-a] in their
octave. Poets used a variety of sestet rhyme schemes with chaining or alternating variations, such as [c-d-c-c-d-c],
[c-d-e-d-c-e], and [c-d-c-d-c-d]. The theme typically still occurred in two moods; the octave stated a problem, asked
a question, or expressed a tension, and the sestet resolved the problem, answered the question, or relieved the
tension. However, poets also experimented with different divisions of the 14 lines. They divided the octave into
two “quatrains” (stanzas of four lines). They divided the sestet into two “tercets” (stanzas of three lines) or into
three “couplets” (stanzas of two lines). By dividing the poem differently, the poets could add complexity to the
theme.
As the sonnet form spread to other countries in Europe, the lines were adapted by that country’s poets. For
example, in France, the popular meter of French poets was the Alexandrine line (12 syllables), and so the French
sonnets used the Alexandrine line. Also, the French poets emphasized the “volta” between the octave and sestet
by inserting a rhyming couplet [c-c] there. The French sonnet rhyme scheme was often [a-b-b-a-a-b-b-a c-c-d-e-d-e].
In the early 16th century Sir Thomas Wyatt, an English poet in King Henry VIII’s court, encountered the sonnet in his
mission trips to Italy. Wyatt carried the idea back to the Tudor court. Wyatt imitated Petrarch with an octave of
kissing rhyme [a-b-b-a-a-b-b-a]. He changed the sestet by dividing it into a quatrain of kissing rhyme [c-d-d-c] and a
rhyming couplet (also called a “heroic couplet”) at the end [e-e]. Wyatt also reduced the number of syllables for each
line, using the iambic pentameter** line which was popular in English poetry. About thirty of Wyatt’s sonnets were
preserved in printed form, including “Farewell, Love, and all thy laws for ever.”
A friend of Wyatt’s in the Tudor court adapted the sonnet form further. Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey, liked to use
alternating rhyme for his sonnets, rather than kissing rhyme. In some of his sonnets he used a different set of rhymes
for the second and third quatrains, so that we see the English sonnet form beginning to emerge as [a-b-a-b c-d-c-d e-
f-e-f g-g] in Surrey’s preserved works, including “Set me whereas the sun doth parch the green.”
Why did the English poets start changing the Italian sonnet form? One of the main reasons for changing the rhyme
scheme of the Italian sonnet was that the Italian sonnet used only four or five endings for the rhymes (a b c d) or (a b
c d e). It was difficult for English poets to make a fourteen-line poem with only four or five different rhyming
endings. The Italian language is one of the Romance*** languages, which matches subject and verb as to number and
gender, and matches noun and adjective as to number and gender. The matching is indicated by similar endings on
the words. Italian words are more easily rhymed because they tend to end in the same cluster of syllables. The
English language does not match words so much, and the endings of English words come in a great variety. Compare
the Italian phrase “mama mia” with the English translation “my mother”. It is harder to rhyme things in English.
Surrey gave the fourteen-line English sonnet seven endings for the rhymes (a b c d e f g) because it was easier.
In 1575, the English poet and critic George Gascoigne was the first to define in writing the English sonnet form,
stating a limit of 14 lines, a line length of ten syllables, and the rhyme scheme of three quatrains and a couplet, in his
“Certayne Notes of Instruction Concerning the Making of Verse or Rhyme in English.”
The English sonnet is known also as the Shakespearean sonnet because William Shakespeare took the new form and
perfected it in his writings during the late 16th century. Shakespeare is credited with writing 154 sonnets, most of
which were published in 1609. His sonnets used 14 lines of iambic pentameter with rhyme scheme [a-b-a-b c-d-c-d e-
f-e-f g-g]. (Although Shakespeare’s sonnets were written in English, they contain archaic words and odd spellings.
Therefore, using a commentary or explanatory guide about Shakespeare’s sonnets can make them easier for the
modern reader to understand.)
The English sonnet feels different than the Italian sonnet. The English sonnet is broken into three quatrains and a
couplet, whereas the Italian sonnet is broken into an octave and a sestet. The English sonnet has no rhyming
couplets until the terminal rhyming couplet, which makes that final couplet seem like a definite end to the poem. In
the octave of a traditional Petrarchan sonnet [a-b-b-a-a-b-b-a] there are three rhyming couplets in the kissing rhyme
scheme, but no rhyming couplet at the end of the sestet. The Italian sonnet’s rhymes feel flowing and interlacing,
whereas the English sonnet’s rhymes do not carry over from quatrain to quatrain.
The English poets began experimenting with the sonnet form. Sir Philip Sidney, a statesman for the Elizabethan
court and an English poet, wrote an extraordinary sonnet sequence titled Astrophel and Stella about his hidden love
for another man’s wife. Sidney varied the rhyme schemes from sonnet to sonnet in this long series of over 100
sonnets with many experimental permutations. Sidney’s sonnet sequence, written in the late 16th century, was very
popular and was imitated by many English poets.
The writer Edmund Spenser, a member of the literary circle led by Sir Sidney, adapted the English sonnet into one of
Sidney’s experimental rhyme patterns. Spenser wanted to preserve the Italian sonnet’s flowing nature, its musicality
and emotionality, while still allowing himself the greater ability to rhyme within the sounds of the English language.
He fully developed this flowing form for his sonnets in Amoretti, a beautiful sequence of 88 sonnets dedicated to his
future wife as a marriage gift in 1595. The rhyme scheme, which became known as the Spenserian sonnet, has three
quatrains and a terminal couplet [a-b-a-b b-c-b-c c-d-c-d e-e]. This pattern produces three rhyming couplets,
including the terminal rhyming couplet. The Spenserian sonnet form invokes both the Italian and English model
simultaneously, while also deviating from both previous forms.
Sonnet sequences have been attempted by many poets. However, sonnet sequences are difficult to write and good
ones are rare. A good modern English sequence is Sonnets from the Portuguese, a sequence of 44 romantic love
sonnets written by Elizabeth Barrett Browning during her courtship with her husband, and published in 1850.
One special type of sonnet sequence is the “corona” (which means “crown”). The corona is a sequence of at least
seven sonnets. It includes repeated lines. The last line of the first sonnet is used as the first line of the second
sonnet, and the last line of the second sonnet is used as the first line of the third sonnet, and so on. Then the last
line of the seventh sonnet is the same as the first line of the first sonnet, which makes the sequence come back to
its beginning like a circle. An early corona in the Italian language is the poet Fazio degli Uberti’s sequence on the
seven deadly sins. One of the most famous coronas in English is by John Donne, a leading poet of the Metaphysical
school and the dean of St. Paul’s cathedral in London. Donne’s corona is the prologue of his Holy Sonnets written in
the early 17th century.
The sonnet appeared in America toward the end of the 18th century. It spread rapidly amongst American poets, and
was brought to a high level in the mid 19th century in the works of the popular American poet Henry Wadsworth
Longfellow. Longfellow translated Dante’s Divina Commedia (Divine Comedy) into English. Longfellow also wrote
many original sonnets, including six sonnets in the Italian sonnet form about Dante’s Divine Comedy, and sonnets
about other poets such as “Dante” and “Shakespeare.”
You may be familiar with the inscription engraved on the pedestal of the Statue of Liberty (“Give me your tired, your
poor….I lift my lamp beside the golden door!”). This inscription is the last five lines of the sonnet “The New
Colossus”, written by Emma Lazarus about the new statue. Lazarus was a New Yorker of Portuguese Jewish descent
who fought for the rights of refugees in the 19th century. The inspiring words of her sonnet have encouraged
compassion for immigrants and have given generations of newcomers hope. A lot of love for mankind is packed into
the “little song” of Emma Lazarus.
During the early 20th century, many black American poets of the Harlem Renaissance wrote sonnets. They chose this
form to express their struggle for racial equality. These sonnets transcended their authors’ culture, reaching a wide
audience. For example, when Winston Churchill addressed the House of Commons during World War II, he read aloud
the sonnet “If We Must Die.” The sonnet had been written decades earlier by Claude McKay in response to the
Harlem race riots of 1919. Senator Henry Cabot Lodge, Sr., read this poem into the U.S. Congressional record during
World War II for its inspirational theme. The sonnet brought the Harlem poet’s message to another time and place, to
people in another crisis, still invoking courage and dignity in the face of possible death.
Poets have created many interesting variations of the Petrarchan and Shakespearean sonnet forms over the
centuries. Examples are the heroic sonnet, the caudated sonnet, and the curtal sonnet. These special sonnet forms
still have the elements of a sonnet: lyrical pattern, stanzas with different weights, a turn, and a theme usually of
love.
The heroic sonnet is an 18-line sonnet which is a variant of the English sonnet. It can be made by adding a fourth
quatrain before the terminal couplet [a-b-a-b c-d-c-d e-f-e-f g-h-g-h i-i]. Or, it can be formed by having two
“heroic octaves” [a-b-a-b-a-b-c-c] and a terminal couplet. An example of a heroic sonnet is John Donne’s sonnet
“The Token.”
The caudated sonnet (caudated means “having a tail”) has more than fourteen lines because it has extra lines added
at the end like a tail. John Milton is probably the most famous poet who used the caudated sonnet in English, basing
it on a 15th century Italian Renaissance pattern. Milton was the secretary for foreign languages in the Cromwell
government of England in the mid 17th century. He used the Petrarchan sonnet form for the first fourteen lines and
added one or two tails for some of his political poems. The tail is a tercet of three lines. The first line of the tail
rhymes with the last line of the sestet, and the other two lines of the tail are a rhyming couplet. The lines of the tails
of caudated sonnets are sometimes half-lines. In one example, the rhyme scheme for Milton’s caudated sonnet “On
the New Forcers of Conscience under the Long Parliament” is [a-b-b-a-a-b-b-a c-d-e-d-e-c c-f-f f-g-g]. Gerard
Manley Hopkins also wrote some interesting caudated sonnets, including “Tom’s Garland.”
The curtal sonnet (curtal means “shortened) was a sonnet form invented by Gerard Manley Hopkins, a Jesuit priest
and one of the most creative English poets of the late 19th century. Hopkins wrote many inventive Petrarchan
sonnets. He often used accented syllables in the lines of his sonnets, as part of his invented “sprung rhythm” meter
for his lines. For example, accents indicate his two different choices for the stressed syllable in the word
“sometimes” in a stanza of his sonnet “The Caged Skylark”:
Though aloft on turf or perch or poor low stage,
Both sing sometímes the sweetest, sweetest spells,
Yet both droop deadly sómetimes in their cells
Or wring their barriers in bursts of fear or rage.
Hopkins’ curtal sonnet form is like a condensed sonnet. It has only ten and a half lines, which are divided as two
unequal stanzas of six and four-and-a-half. The rhyme pattern for his curtal sonnet “Peace” is [a-b-c-a-b-c d-c-b-d-
c].
Modern poets of the 20th and 21st centuries have used the sonnet to address any subject and mood, and have
loosened the restrictions on meter and rhyme. Sometimes they take liberties with the sonnet form, and sometimes
they adhere to it very strictly. Robert Frost, an American poet, often used the Italian and English forms strictly in
many sonnets about farm life in New England. Frost also would play with the sonnet form to suit his purposes.
Edward Estlin Cummings, the American poet known as e.e. cummings, used his Yankee wit and childlike
punctuation/capitalization style in sonnets. Cummings followed the traditional Italian and English sonnet forms, but
sometimes he experimented with surprising twists. Cummings experimented with all of these in his sonnets: stanzas
or words grouped oddly, meter shortened to 8 syllables, a more intricate rhyme scheme, looser rhymes, an added
line. His sonnets are often about romantic love, including the popular “i carry your heart with me.”
The sonnet is one of the oldest literary forms of the postclassical world, engaging almost every important poet writing
in a European or English language. It is still used by contemporary poets, who enjoy the game of playing within the
bounded space of 14 lines. May you be inspired to join the centuries of poets in using the sonnet form to express
your important message!
*stanza: a unit of recurring meter and rhyme used in a pattern of repetition and separation within a poem. The
Italian word “stanza” means “a room”. A stanza is made up of two or more lines of poetry. The stanza within a poem
is like a room within a house; it is a smaller part of the overall architecture.
**iambic pentameter: a type of meter used in English poetry which has ten syllables with five rising stresses in the
line. The Greek word “meter” means “measure”. Most lines of poetry in English have an accentual-syllabic meter,
which means that both the syllables and their accents are counted or measured. The line is made up of a specific
number of syllables with a specific pattern of accents, or stressed syllables. “Iambos” is a word used by ancient Greek
poets to indicate a metrical unit. In English, the metrical unit is usually called a “foot”. The iambic unit is a metrical
unit or foot consisting of an unstressed or short syllable followed by a stressed (or accented) or long syllable. An
example of an iambic unit would be the English word “about”. “Penta” is the Greek word for “five”. So, putting it all
together, iambic pentameter is a line of five iambic feet. An example of a line of iambic pentameter in poetry is
“Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?” from Shakespeare’s Sonnet 18. It is believed that most poetry is iambic
because spoken language is inherently iambic, consisting of words with stressed and unstressed syllables that can
alternate in everyday sentences. For example, you have created a line of iambic pentameter by saying, “I’ll have a
sandwich and some lemonade.”
***Romance languages: the group of European languages derived from spoken Latin. Latin was the language of the
Roman conquerors of Europe during the Roman Empire. The most important Romance languages are Italian, French,
Spanish, Portuguese, and Romanian. These languages share a common vocabulary and grammar heritage from ancient
Rome.
References
Levin, Phillis, The Penguin Book of the Sonnet: 500 Years of a Classic Tradition in English. New York: Penguin Books,
2001.
The Making of a Poem: A Norton Anthology of Poetic Forms, eds. Mark Strand and Eavan Boland. New York: W. W.
Norton & Company, 2000.
“Frost, Robert (Lee).” The Cambridge Guide to Literature in English, ed. Ian Ousby. New York: Cambridge University
Press, 1993.
“Shakespeare’s Sonnets.” Ibid.
Preminger, Alex; Scott, Clive; and Brogan, T.V.F., “Alexandrine.” The New Princeton Encylopedia of Poetry and
Poetics, eds. Alex Preminger and T.V.F. Brogan. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1993.
Rivers, Elias L.; and Brogan, T.V.F., “Corona.” Ibid.
Brogan, T.V.F., “Iambic.” Ibid.
Brogan, T.V.F.; Zillman, Lawrence J.; and Scott, Clive, “Sonnet.” Ibid.
Greene, Roland, “Sonnet Sequence.” Ibid.
Scott, Clive; and Brogan, T.V.F., “Sprung Rhythm.” Ibid.
“cummings, e.e.” Vol. 3, Encyclopaedia Britannica, 15th Edition. Chicago: Encylopaedia Brittanica Inc., 1985.
“Dante.” Vol. 3, Ibid.
Milgate, Wesley, “Donne, John.” Vol. 4, Ibid.
“Giacomo Da Lentini.” Vol. 5, Ibid.
“Guittone D’Arezzo.” Vol. 5, Ibid.
Reid, John Cowie, “Hopkins, Gerard Manley.” Vol. 6, Ibid.
“Longfellow, Henry Wadsworth.” Vol. 7, Ibid.
“Milton, John.” Vol. 8, Ibid.
Whitfield, John Humphreys, “Petrarch.” Vol. 9, Ibid.
“Romance languages.” Vol. 10, Ibid.
Ringler Jr., William Andrew, “Sidney, Sir Philip.” Vol. 10, Ibid.
“Sonnet.” Vol. 11, Ibid.
Hieatt, A. Kent, “Spenser, Edmund.” Vol. 11, Ibid.
History of the Sonnet Form
by D. Marbach
What is a sonnet? A sonnet was originally a lyric poetry form of 14 lines. Any poem with 14 lines is called a
quatorzain. Although sonnets are almost always quatorzains, not all quatorzains are sonnets. There are several
elements to the sonnet form, and these elements should be present in order for the poem to be a sonnet.
The sonnet originated in Italy. The Italian word “sonneto” means “little song”. The first sonnet is believed to have
been created in the early 13th century by an Italian named Giacomo da Lentini. He was the senior poet of the Sicilian
school. Da Lentini created the sonnet form from a popular type of Sicilian peasant song called a “strambatto”. The
peasant songs consisted of an “octave” (an eight-line stanza*) with the simple alternating rhyme scheme [a-b-a-b-a-b-
a-b]. To the strambatto, he added a “sestet” (a six-line stanza) with the chaining rhyme scheme [c-d-e-c-d-e]. Da
Lentini wrote many sonnets, but only a few have survived, including “Io m’aggio posto in core a Dio servire.”
One of the elements of a sonnet is its lyrical form, as if the poem were words which could be sung to the music of a
“lyre” (a small harp), because the beginnings of the sonnet were in the folk songs of Italy. The lyrical quality of the
sonnet is seen in its formal rhyme scheme and its mostly uniform number of syllables per line. However, although the
sonnet is a lyrical form, it is not intended to be sung like the strambatto.
Two other elements of a sonnet are its unequal stanzas of rhyming lines, and its turn. The stanzas of the sonnet are
unequal, with larger stanzas coming first and smaller stanzas coming last. The sonnet form should have an uneven
distribution because this allows for the poet to create a “volta” between stanzas. The Italian word “volta” means
“turn”. In Da Lentini’s sonnet form, the octave and sestet arrangement allowed for a turn in the poem between the
octave and the sestet. The turn could be used by the poet in a variety of ways, and the sonnet became very popular
as a creative writing game. The mood, thought, or focus of the sonnet occurred in two parts; the octave stated a
problem, asked a question, or expressed a tension, and the sestet resolved the problem, answered the question, or
relieved the tension. The
sonnet’s uneven distribution could also be used by the poet to incorporate several voices or points of view in the
poem, allowing a dialogue, such as in an “I and you” relationship.
The other common element of most sonnets is a theme of love. The love may be either romantic love for a woman,
Platonic love for a friend, spiritual love for the Deity, patriotic love for country, or love for mankind. In fact, the
word “sonnet” is often used informally to refer to any short romantic love poem.
Later in the 13th century another Italian, Guittone d’Arezzo, the founder of the Tuscan school of court poetry,
introduced the “kissing rhyme” pattern for his sonnet octave. This kissing rhyme pattern is [a-b-b-a-a-b-b-a]. D’
Arezzo wrote and circulated over 200 sonnets, but only a few of them have been preserved.
Two popular Italian poets, Dante and Petrarch, took the sonnet form and used it in their writing. They made the
sonnet a well-established form of poetry in the Italian language by the mid 13th century. The pattern for this Italian
sonnet was an octave with the kissing rhyme scheme and a sestet with a chaining rhyme scheme [a-b-b-a-a-b-b-a c-d-
e-c-d-e]. The lines usually had eleven syllables (hendecasyllable).
Dante’s La Vita Nuova (The New Life) was the first sonnet sequence ever written, containing 25 sonnets and several
other lyric poems with explanatory prose. A sonnet sequence is a series of sonnets that are organized in some
fictional, intellectual, or chronological order. The sequence may tell a story or develop an argument. Dante’s
sequence discusses his tremendous love for Beatrice.
Petrarch’s Canzoniere (Songs/Poems Collection) is a series of lyrical poems including over 300 sonnets. Petrarch is
considered to have perfected the Italian sonnet, which became known also as the Petrarchan sonnet. Canzoniere
includes many love poems and grief poems about a woman named Laura.
Different Italian poets used the sonnet form, and variations occurred as the sonnet spread over the next couple of
centuries. Poets chose either the alternating rhyme pattern [a-b-a-b] or the kissing rhyme pattern [a-b-b-a] in their
octave. Poets used a variety of sestet rhyme schemes with chaining or alternating variations, such as [c-d-c-c-d-c],
[c-d-e-d-c-e], and [c-d-c-d-c-d]. The theme typically still occurred in two moods; the octave stated a problem, asked
a question, or expressed a tension, and the sestet resolved the problem, answered the question, or relieved the
tension. However, poets also experimented with different divisions of the 14 lines. They divided the octave into
two “quatrains” (stanzas of four lines). They divided the sestet into two “tercets” (stanzas of three lines) or into
three “couplets” (stanzas of two lines). By dividing the poem differently, the poets could add complexity to the
theme.
As the sonnet form spread to other countries in Europe, the lines were adapted by that country’s poets. For
example, in France, the popular meter of French poets was the Alexandrine line (12 syllables), and so the French
sonnets used the Alexandrine line. Also, the French poets emphasized the “volta” between the octave and sestet
by inserting a rhyming couplet [c-c] there. The French sonnet rhyme scheme was often [a-b-b-a-a-b-b-a c-c-d-e-d-e].
In the early 16th century Sir Thomas Wyatt, an English poet in King Henry VIII’s court, encountered the sonnet in his
mission trips to Italy. Wyatt carried the idea back to the Tudor court. Wyatt imitated Petrarch with an octave of
kissing rhyme [a-b-b-a-a-b-b-a]. He changed the sestet by dividing it into a quatrain of kissing rhyme [c-d-d-c] and a
rhyming couplet (also called a “heroic couplet”) at the end [e-e]. Wyatt also reduced the number of syllables for each
line, using the iambic pentameter** line which was popular in English poetry. About thirty of Wyatt’s sonnets were
preserved in printed form, including “Farewell, Love, and all thy laws for ever.”
A friend of Wyatt’s in the Tudor court adapted the sonnet form further. Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey, liked to use
alternating rhyme for his sonnets, rather than kissing rhyme. In some of his sonnets he used a different set of rhymes
for the second and third quatrains, so that we see the English sonnet form beginning to emerge as [a-b-a-b c-d-c-d e-
f-e-f g-g] in Surrey’s preserved works, including “Set me whereas the sun doth parch the green.”
Why did the English poets start changing the Italian sonnet form? One of the main reasons for changing the rhyme
scheme of the Italian sonnet was that the Italian sonnet used only four or five endings for the rhymes (a b c d) or (a b
c d e). It was difficult for English poets to make a fourteen-line poem with only four or five different rhyming
endings. The Italian language is one of the Romance*** languages, which matches subject and verb as to number and
gender, and matches noun and adjective as to number and gender. The matching is indicated by similar endings on
the words. Italian words are more easily rhymed because they tend to end in the same cluster of syllables. The
English language does not match words so much, and the endings of English words come in a great variety. Compare
the Italian phrase “mama mia” with the English translation “my mother”. It is harder to rhyme things in English.
Surrey gave the fourteen-line English sonnet seven endings for the rhymes (a b c d e f g) because it was easier.
In 1575, the English poet and critic George Gascoigne was the first to define in writing the English sonnet form,
stating a limit of 14 lines, a line length of ten syllables, and the rhyme scheme of three quatrains and a couplet, in his
“Certayne Notes of Instruction Concerning the Making of Verse or Rhyme in English.”
The English sonnet is known also as the Shakespearean sonnet because William Shakespeare took the new form and
perfected it in his writings during the late 16th century. Shakespeare is credited with writing 154 sonnets, most of
which were published in 1609. His sonnets used 14 lines of iambic pentameter with rhyme scheme [a-b-a-b c-d-c-d e-
f-e-f g-g]. (Although Shakespeare’s sonnets were written in English, they contain archaic words and odd spellings.
Therefore, using a commentary or explanatory guide about Shakespeare’s sonnets can make them easier for the
modern reader to understand.)
The English sonnet feels different than the Italian sonnet. The English sonnet is broken into three quatrains and a
couplet, whereas the Italian sonnet is broken into an octave and a sestet. The English sonnet has no rhyming
couplets until the terminal rhyming couplet, which makes that final couplet seem like a definite end to the poem. In
the octave of a traditional Petrarchan sonnet [a-b-b-a-a-b-b-a] there are three rhyming couplets in the kissing rhyme
scheme, but no rhyming couplet at the end of the sestet. The Italian sonnet’s rhymes feel flowing and interlacing,
whereas the English sonnet’s rhymes do not carry over from quatrain to quatrain.
The English poets began experimenting with the sonnet form. Sir Philip Sidney, a statesman for the Elizabethan
court and an English poet, wrote an extraordinary sonnet sequence titled Astrophel and Stella about his hidden love
for another man’s wife. Sidney varied the rhyme schemes from sonnet to sonnet in this long series of over 100
sonnets with many experimental permutations. Sidney’s sonnet sequence, written in the late 16th century, was very
popular and was imitated by many English poets.
The writer Edmund Spenser, a member of the literary circle led by Sir Sidney, adapted the English sonnet into one of
Sidney’s experimental rhyme patterns. Spenser wanted to preserve the Italian sonnet’s flowing nature, its musicality
and emotionality, while still allowing himself the greater ability to rhyme within the sounds of the English language.
He fully developed this flowing form for his sonnets in Amoretti, a beautiful sequence of 88 sonnets dedicated to his
future wife as a marriage gift in 1595. The rhyme scheme, which became known as the Spenserian sonnet, has three
quatrains and a terminal couplet [a-b-a-b b-c-b-c c-d-c-d e-e]. This pattern produces three rhyming couplets,
including the terminal rhyming couplet. The Spenserian sonnet form invokes both the Italian and English model
simultaneously, while also deviating from both previous forms.
Sonnet sequences have been attempted by many poets. However, sonnet sequences are difficult to write and good
ones are rare. A good modern English sequence is Sonnets from the Portuguese, a sequence of 44 romantic love
sonnets written by Elizabeth Barrett Browning during her courtship with her husband, and published in 1850.
One special type of sonnet sequence is the “corona” (which means “crown”). The corona is a sequence of at least
seven sonnets. It includes repeated lines. The last line of the first sonnet is used as the first line of the second
sonnet, and the last line of the second sonnet is used as the first line of the third sonnet, and so on. Then the last
line of the seventh sonnet is the same as the first line of the first sonnet, which makes the sequence come back to
its beginning like a circle. An early corona in the Italian language is the poet Fazio degli Uberti’s sequence on the
seven deadly sins. One of the most famous coronas in English is by John Donne, a leading poet of the Metaphysical
school and the dean of St. Paul’s cathedral in London. Donne’s corona is the prologue of his Holy Sonnets written in
the early 17th century.
The sonnet appeared in America toward the end of the 18th century. It spread rapidly amongst American poets, and
was brought to a high level in the mid 19th century in the works of the popular American poet Henry Wadsworth
Longfellow. Longfellow translated Dante’s Divina Commedia (Divine Comedy) into English. Longfellow also wrote
many original sonnets, including six sonnets in the Italian sonnet form about Dante’s Divine Comedy, and sonnets
about other poets such as “Dante” and “Shakespeare.”
You may be familiar with the inscription engraved on the pedestal of the Statue of Liberty (“Give me your tired, your
poor….I lift my lamp beside the golden door!”). This inscription is the last five lines of the sonnet “The New
Colossus”, written by Emma Lazarus about the new statue. Lazarus was a New Yorker of Portuguese Jewish descent
who fought for the rights of refugees in the 19th century. The inspiring words of her sonnet have encouraged
compassion for immigrants and have given generations of newcomers hope. A lot of love for mankind is packed into
the “little song” of Emma Lazarus.
During the early 20th century, many black American poets of the Harlem Renaissance wrote sonnets. They chose this
form to express their struggle for racial equality. These sonnets transcended their authors’ culture, reaching a wide
audience. For example, when Winston Churchill addressed the House of Commons during World War II, he read aloud
the sonnet “If We Must Die.” The sonnet had been written decades earlier by Claude McKay in response to the
Harlem race riots of 1919. Senator Henry Cabot Lodge, Sr., read this poem into the U.S. Congressional record during
World War II for its inspirational theme. The sonnet brought the Harlem poet’s message to another time and place, to
people in another crisis, still invoking courage and dignity in the face of possible death.
Poets have created many interesting variations of the Petrarchan and Shakespearean sonnet forms over the
centuries. Examples are the heroic sonnet, the caudated sonnet, and the curtal sonnet. These special sonnet forms
still have the elements of a sonnet: lyrical pattern, stanzas with different weights, a turn, and a theme usually of
love.
The heroic sonnet is an 18-line sonnet which is a variant of the English sonnet. It can be made by adding a fourth
quatrain before the terminal couplet [a-b-a-b c-d-c-d e-f-e-f g-h-g-h i-i]. Or, it can be formed by having two
“heroic octaves” [a-b-a-b-a-b-c-c] and a terminal couplet. An example of a heroic sonnet is John Donne’s sonnet
“The Token.”
The caudated sonnet (caudated means “having a tail”) has more than fourteen lines because it has extra lines added
at the end like a tail. John Milton is probably the most famous poet who used the caudated sonnet in English, basing
it on a 15th century Italian Renaissance pattern. Milton was the secretary for foreign languages in the Cromwell
government of England in the mid 17th century. He used the Petrarchan sonnet form for the first fourteen lines and
added one or two tails for some of his political poems. The tail is a tercet of three lines. The first line of the tail
rhymes with the last line of the sestet, and the other two lines of the tail are a rhyming couplet. The lines of the tails
of caudated sonnets are sometimes half-lines. In one example, the rhyme scheme for Milton’s caudated sonnet “On
the New Forcers of Conscience under the Long Parliament” is [a-b-b-a-a-b-b-a c-d-e-d-e-c c-f-f f-g-g]. Gerard
Manley Hopkins also wrote some interesting caudated sonnets, including “Tom’s Garland.”
The curtal sonnet (curtal means “shortened) was a sonnet form invented by Gerard Manley Hopkins, a Jesuit priest
and one of the most creative English poets of the late 19th century. Hopkins wrote many inventive Petrarchan
sonnets. He often used accented syllables in the lines of his sonnets, as part of his invented “sprung rhythm” meter
for his lines. For example, accents indicate his two different choices for the stressed syllable in the word
“sometimes” in a stanza of his sonnet “The Caged Skylark”:
Though aloft on turf or perch or poor low stage,
Both sing sometímes the sweetest, sweetest spells,
Yet both droop deadly sómetimes in their cells
Or wring their barriers in bursts of fear or rage.
Hopkins’ curtal sonnet form is like a condensed sonnet. It has only ten and a half lines, which are divided as two
unequal stanzas of six and four-and-a-half. The rhyme pattern for his curtal sonnet “Peace” is [a-b-c-a-b-c d-c-b-d-
c].
Modern poets of the 20th and 21st centuries have used the sonnet to address any subject and mood, and have
loosened the restrictions on meter and rhyme. Sometimes they take liberties with the sonnet form, and sometimes
they adhere to it very strictly. Robert Frost, an American poet, often used the Italian and English forms strictly in
many sonnets about farm life in New England. Frost also would play with the sonnet form to suit his purposes.
Edward Estlin Cummings, the American poet known as e.e. cummings, used his Yankee wit and childlike
punctuation/capitalization style in sonnets. Cummings followed the traditional Italian and English sonnet forms, but
sometimes he experimented with surprising twists. Cummings experimented with all of these in his sonnets: stanzas
or words grouped oddly, meter shortened to 8 syllables, a more intricate rhyme scheme, looser rhymes, an added
line. His sonnets are often about romantic love, including the popular “i carry your heart with me.”
The sonnet is one of the oldest literary forms of the postclassical world, engaging almost every important poet writing
in a European or English language. It is still used by contemporary poets, who enjoy the game of playing within the
bounded space of 14 lines. May you be inspired to join the centuries of poets in using the sonnet form to express
your important message!
*stanza: a unit of recurring meter and rhyme used in a pattern of repetition and separation within a poem. The
Italian word “stanza” means “a room”. A stanza is made up of two or more lines of poetry. The stanza within a poem
is like a room within a house; it is a smaller part of the overall architecture.
**iambic pentameter: a type of meter used in English poetry which has ten syllables with five rising stresses in the
line. The Greek word “meter” means “measure”. Most lines of poetry in English have an accentual-syllabic meter,
which means that both the syllables and their accents are counted or measured. The line is made up of a specific
number of syllables with a specific pattern of accents, or stressed syllables. “Iambos” is a word used by ancient Greek
poets to indicate a metrical unit. In English, the metrical unit is usually called a “foot”. The iambic unit is a metrical
unit or foot consisting of an unstressed or short syllable followed by a stressed (or accented) or long syllable. An
example of an iambic unit would be the English word “about”. “Penta” is the Greek word for “five”. So, putting it all
together, iambic pentameter is a line of five iambic feet. An example of a line of iambic pentameter in poetry is
“Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?” from Shakespeare’s Sonnet 18. It is believed that most poetry is iambic
because spoken language is inherently iambic, consisting of words with stressed and unstressed syllables that can
alternate in everyday sentences. For example, you have created a line of iambic pentameter by saying, “I’ll have a
sandwich and some lemonade.”
***Romance languages: the group of European languages derived from spoken Latin. Latin was the language of the
Roman conquerors of Europe during the Roman Empire. The most important Romance languages are Italian, French,
Spanish, Portuguese, and Romanian. These languages share a common vocabulary and grammar heritage from ancient
Rome.
References
Levin, Phillis, The Penguin Book of the Sonnet: 500 Years of a Classic Tradition in English. New York: Penguin Books,
2001.
The Making of a Poem: A Norton Anthology of Poetic Forms, eds. Mark Strand and Eavan Boland. New York: W. W.
Norton & Company, 2000.
“Frost, Robert (Lee).” The Cambridge Guide to Literature in English, ed. Ian Ousby. New York: Cambridge University
Press, 1993.
“Shakespeare’s Sonnets.” Ibid.
Preminger, Alex; Scott, Clive; and Brogan, T.V.F., “Alexandrine.” The New Princeton Encylopedia of Poetry and
Poetics, eds. Alex Preminger and T.V.F. Brogan. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1993.
Rivers, Elias L.; and Brogan, T.V.F., “Corona.” Ibid.
Brogan, T.V.F., “Iambic.” Ibid.
Brogan, T.V.F.; Zillman, Lawrence J.; and Scott, Clive, “Sonnet.” Ibid.
Greene, Roland, “Sonnet Sequence.” Ibid.
Scott, Clive; and Brogan, T.V.F., “Sprung Rhythm.” Ibid.
“cummings, e.e.” Vol. 3, Encyclopaedia Britannica, 15th Edition. Chicago: Encylopaedia Brittanica Inc., 1985.
“Dante.” Vol. 3, Ibid.
Milgate, Wesley, “Donne, John.” Vol. 4, Ibid.
“Giacomo Da Lentini.” Vol. 5, Ibid.
“Guittone D’Arezzo.” Vol. 5, Ibid.
Reid, John Cowie, “Hopkins, Gerard Manley.” Vol. 6, Ibid.
“Longfellow, Henry Wadsworth.” Vol. 7, Ibid.
“Milton, John.” Vol. 8, Ibid.
Whitfield, John Humphreys, “Petrarch.” Vol. 9, Ibid.
“Romance languages.” Vol. 10, Ibid.
Ringler Jr., William Andrew, “Sidney, Sir Philip.” Vol. 10, Ibid.
“Sonnet.” Vol. 11, Ibid.
Hieatt, A. Kent, “Spenser, Edmund.” Vol. 11, Ibid.
Humor in Poetic Form
by D. Marbach
How do you write a funny poem? The masters of humorous poetry make it look simple. Their witty poems are natural and playful. You
might think that Dr. Seuss wrote Green Eggs and Ham in a moment of inspiration. Just as the Harlem Globetrotters make playing
basketball look easy, so Dr. Seuss makes writing humorous poetry look easy. However, if you have ever tried to write a funny poem,
you have discovered that it isn’t easy at all. The Harlem Globetrotters practiced their spinning, throwing, bouncing, and other
techniques for a long time to become comic masters with that ball. Dr. Seuss took a year to write The Cat in the Hat, with careful
attention to detail, and many revisions of the exact wording of his humorous verse.
There is no defined genre in English literature for funny poems. Literary scholars have not put effort into studying humorous poetry as
an art. They lump all the funny poems into the vague category “light verse” and view them as undeserving of serious consideration.
But A.A. Milne said light verse “is the supreme exhibition of somebody’s definition of art, the concealment of art. In the result it
observes the most exact laws of rhythm and metre as if by a happy accident, and in a sort of nonchalant spirit of mockery at the real
poets who do it on purpose.” The best writers of light verse are masters of poetic form.
Some of the witty poets wrote a lot of light verse and are famous for it. These include writers like Edward Lear, Arthur Guiterman,
Harry Graham, Dorothy Parker, and Ogden Nash. Such witty poets are known for their inventive humorous poetic styles and devices.
Other witty poets were better known for their serious poetry, or for their prose writings, but they also wrote light verse. This
includes a large number of writers, such as Lord Byron, Lewis Carroll, Hilaire Belloc, A. A. Milne, and T. S. Eliot. Even Shakespeare,
who wrote so eloquently about romantic love in his famous sonnets, used his poetic skill to mock love in lesser-known light verses.
Writing humorous poetry is technical work. It is akin to juggling a tower of spinning plates without dropping any of them, until just the
right moment when the tower seems to crumble unexpectedly and the juggler catches every plate, to the surprise and delight of the
audience. The writer uses rhyme, rhythm, and refrain to tickle the reader’s funny bone in a variety of poetic forms intended for
humor. Let’s study some of the techniques used in writing humorous poetry, starting with the elements of rhyme, rhythm, and refrain.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
RHYME: Rhyme is an important tool for creating light verse in the English language. Almost all the humorous poems ever written in
English have a pattern of end-rhymes. Rhyme delights the reader’s ear, and it makes the poem simpler for the reader to understand.
A fault of end-rhyme can endanger the structure of a funny poem with its awkwardness. When constructing end-rhymes in a
humorous poem, it is best to use the most exact rhymes possible. The vowel sound and consonant sound in the last syllable of the last
word of each of the two lines should rhyme perfectly to the ear, such as talk/walk, talk/hawk, or talk/cornstalk. A dictionary can be
consulted for pronunciation of end-words, and a rhyming dictionary can be used to find rhyming words.
Funny poems often include further playfulness with rhyme, such as internal rhyme and multi-syllable rhymes. Internal rhyme can be a
little surprise for your reader, by adding a word within a line that rhymes with the word at the end of that line. W. H. Auden used this
fun device (most/post) in stanzas of “Foxtrot” (excerpt):
The blackbird loves the earthworm,
The adder loves the sun,
The polar bear an iceberg,
The elephant a bun,
The trout enjoys the river,
The whale enjoys the sea,
And dogs love most an old lamp-post,
But you’re my cup of tea.
Multi-syllable rhymes can be created in several ways. For creating two-syllable rhymes, poets can use two-syllable words
(thinning/winning), or longer words (fated/liberated), or two separate words acting together (beseech him/impeach him). A multi-
syllable rhyme can be composed by a combination of a long word in a line and two or more short words in the other line, called a
“mosaic rhyme” (installment/Paul meant). The accented syllable in the rhyming sequence should match in both lines. An exact rhyme
is surrender with pretender, which both have the accent on the next-to-last syllable of the line. In contrast, for the two-syllable
rhyme “enic”, arsenic would not be an exact rhyme with hygienic because the accented syllable does not fall in the same place
within the last two syllables of each word.
Many masters of light verse use an occasional “triple rhyme” of three syllables to amuse the reader, emphasize a theme, or create a
punch line. The triple rhyme can consist of two long words, (posterity/rarity), or it can be a mosaic rhyme (posterity/spare it he).
The accented syllables of the triple rhyme should match, so as to make the rhyme sequence sound polished to the ear. Byron
employed many triple rhymes in his humorous poetry, such as this excerpt from “Dedication” in Don Juan:
Bob Southey! You're a poet--Poet-laureate,
And representative of all the race;
Although 'tis true that you turn'd out a Tory at
Last--yours has lately been a common case;
And now, my Epic Renegade! what are ye at?
With all the Lakers, in and out of place?
Humorous poems may include the device of “broken rhyme” for an end-rhyme. Broken rhyme is the division of a word at the end of a
line by hyphenating it, in order to produce a rhyme sound with the end of the next line. An example is this excerpt from Edward Lear’
s self-portrait poem which begins “How pleasant to know Mr. Lear”:
When he walks in his waterproof white,
The children run after him so!
Calling out, ‘He’s run out in his night-
gown, that crazy old Englishman, oh!
Broken rhymes are playful and they help to link lines together as the poem flows along. They can be used to surprise the reader with
“what comes next” in the lines.
Another type of humorous rhyme that poets use is the forced rhyme. In the sequence of a forced rhyme combination, a first end-
word is used which then forces the reader to pronounce and accent the next rhyming end-word in a particular way in order to match
the first one. There are several reasons for using a forced rhyme.
Forced rhyme can be used for a sense of closure at the end of a line, or to give prominence to a particular word. An example is
Hilaire Belloc’s poem “Lord Finchley”, which forces an unnaturally long secondary accent onto the last syllable of the last word:
Lord Finchley tried to mend the electric light
Himself. It struck him dead: And serve him right!
It is the business of the wealthy man
To give employment to the artisan.
A forced rhyme can be used to help the reader with pronouncing an unusual word, an invented word, or a nonsense word at the end
of a line. Unusual words are used in humorous poetry, but how will your reader know how to say these words? The forced rhyme is a
helpful tool to make the unusual word easier for the reader to pronounce in the way the poet intends. An example is Mark Twain’s
limerick “A Man Hired by John Smith and Co.”, which mocks the use of the abbreviation “Co.” for the word “Company” with Twain’s
two invented abbreviations. (Read this poem slowly and aloud for best effect, remembering the word “company” is the rhyme to
match.)
A man hired by John Smith and Co.
Loudly declared he would tho.
Man that he saw
Dumping dirt near his store.
The drivers, therefore, didn’t do.
Lastly, the forced rhyme can be used in poems where the poet has declined to write the ending to a line because it is not G-rated
(sex, violence, language). Sometimes it is funnier to let the reader “fill in the blank” with a forced rhyme than to state the actual
words. An example is this excerpt of rhyming couplets from Lewis Carroll’s “‘Tis the Voice of the Lobster”:
I passed by his garden, and marked, with one eye,
How the Owl and the Panther were sharing a pie:
The Panther took pie-crust, and gravy, and meat,
While the Owl had the dish as its share of the treat.
When the pie was all finished, the Owl, as a boon,
Was kindly permitted to pocket the spoon:
While the Panther received knife and fork with a growl,
And concluded the banquet by -------.
Another example is this printer’s humor from the Boston Globe newspaper “An Arab and His Donkey”, using the asterisk symbol to
represent three deleted words that rhyme with “isk” and sound like “asterisk”:
An Arab came to the river side,
With a donkey bearing an obelisk;
But he would not try to ford the tide,
For he had too good an * .
RHYTHM: In comedy, timing is everything. The poetic element of rhythm is often used in witty verse. Writers can skillfully and
purposefully use rhythm to propel the reader along in a fast gallop, to slow down the reader for a longer look, or to surprise the
reader with something sudden and unexpected at the end of the ride.
Rhythm in light verse can be measured out using either of two types of meter. The simpler type of meter is “accentual meter”. The
more exact meter is “accentual-syllabic meter”. The first line of the poem is most important in setting the rhythm for your reader, so
it should be written carefully in the meter you choose.
Accentual meter is a counting of the strongly-stressed syllables, or “beats”, in each line of the poem. Good accentual meter is like
the beat of a drum or the clapping of hands. It is natural and light-hearted. Weaker syllables before, between, and after the beat
syllables are not counted. The beats are strongly spoken, and they are evenly spaced in time. Most accentual meter has four beats
per line. The weaker syllables are spoken during the time between the beats. There may be brief pauses in the middle of the line or
at the end of the line, and a strong beat might fall on an unspoken pause.
Nursery rhymes and ballads are written in accentual meter. A common pattern for an English nursery rhyme is four spoken beats in
the first line, and three spoken beats in the second line. The second line has a fourth unspoken beat at the end in a pause. Here is
the nursery rhyme “Little Jack Horner” with the beats underlined:
Little Jack Horner sat in a corner
Eating a Christmas pie.
He put in his thumb, and pulled out a plum,
And said “What a good boy am I !”
Another nursery rhyme with the same accentual meter is “Little Miss Muffet”. If one person chants aloud Jack’s poem, and another
person chants aloud Muffet’s poem, starting at the same time and clapping the four beats per line together, they will not be speaking
the same words but they will end their poems at the same time. (Remember, there is a fourth beat on the unspoken pause at the end
of line 2 and line 4).
Little Miss Muffet sat on a tuffet
Eating her curds and whey.
Along came a spider and sat down beside her
And frightened Miss Muffet away!
Although the weaker syllables are not counted in accentual meter, it is important not to tangle the reader’s tongue. The reader can
only squeeze about three weak syllables between beats. The more weak syllables there are in a line of accentual meter, the faster
the line will feel.
To write a line of accentual meter, words are chosen so that the beat will fall on naturally-strong stresses in the syllables of words as
they are spoken in the English language. Strong stresses occur on the accented syllable of any multi-syllable word, and on a normally
stressed one-syllable word. Stresses do NOT occur on the unaccented syllable of a multi-syllable word, nor on unstressed one-syllable
words, so those should not be used for beats in your poetry-writing. Normally stressed one-syllable words include nouns, verbs,
adjectives or adverbs. One-syllable words that are normally weak (not stressed) are pronouns, conjunctions, prepositions, articles,
and forms of the verb “to be”. A dictionary can be consulted to determine accent in multi-syllable words, and the function of one-
syllable words.
A different meter used in humorous poetry is accentual-syllabic meter. This meter requires a careful counting of ALL of the syllables,
not just the strongly-stressed syllables, in each line of the poem. Accentual-syllabic meters are pleasing to the reader’s ear. Also, the
regular pattern creates expectations in the reader, expectations that the poet can use as a tool for comedy and surprise.
In accentual-syllabic meter counting, the smallest unit is the syllable, the next unit is the “foot” (a grouping of syllables), and the
largest unit is the line. To create a line of accentual-syllabic meter in English poetry, words are chosen so that the syllables will fall
into a pattern of stressed and unstressed syllables (the “feet”). The lines of light verse are usually six to twelve syllables long, with
feet of two or three syllables. There are several accentual-syllabic meters commonly used in English poetry.
Iambic meter has a foot of two syllables in the pattern of unstressed-stressed “ta-DUM”. The rhythm of two iambic feet goes “ta-DUM
ta-DUM”. An example of humorous iambic meter (four feet per line) is “History of Education” by David McCord, with the stressed
syllables underlined:
The decent docent doesn’t doze:
He teaches standing on his toes.
His student dassn’t doze – and does,
And that’s what teaching is and was.
Iambic is the rhythm most like normal conversation. Lines with five iambic feet are called “iambic pentameter”, a very common meter
for English poetry. But this meter can become monotonous, so iambic lines may occasionally substitute another foot, such as trochee
(stressed-unstressed) or spondee (stressed-stressed).
Trochaic meter is sometimes used for funny poems, rather than iambic, with lines of two-syllable feet in the pattern stressed-
unstressed “DUM-ta”.
Anapestic, dactylic, and amphibrachic meter have a foot of three syllables, and feel a bit faster than iambic meter. Anapestic feet are
in the pattern of unstressed-unstressed-stressed “ta-ta-DUM”. The rhythm of two anapestic feet goes “ta-ta-DUM ta-ta-DUM”. This
example of humorous anapestic meter is from “Carmen”, a poem about the opera, by Newman Levy:
Where the castanets clink on the gay piazetta, and
strains of fandangoes are heard from afar,
There lived, I am told, a bold hussy named Carmen, a
pampered young vamp full of devil and guile.
Dactylic feet are in the pattern of stressed-unstressed-unstressed “DUM-ta-ta”. A line of two dactylic feet goes “DUM-ta-ta DUM-ta-
ta” in rhythm. This example of humorous dactylic meter is Kenneth Leonhardt’s “Conceivably, the Compleat History of Human Sex”:
Adam and Eve,/I believe,/Were the start of it.
Everyone since,/I’m convinced,/Played a part in it.
Amphibrachic feet are in the pattern of unstressed-stressed-unstressed “ta-DUM-ta”. The rhythm of two amphibrachic feet goes “ta-
DUM-ta ta-DUM-ta”. In many humorous poems, a meter of three syllables might run anapestic, dactylic, or amphibrachic in any
particular line, depending on whether the line starts with an unstressed syllable or a stressed syllable.
Humorous poems can be written in a mixture of differently-metered lines, or of shorter and longer lines in the same meter. Also, it is
common for humorous poetry to have a strong beat rhythm, like accentual meter, even when most of the lines of the poem are in an
accentual-syllabic meter. Four feet per line of many accentual-syllabic meters, such as iambic or amphibrachic, can feel like the four
beats per line of accentual meter.
It takes some trial and error to find the rhythm that works best for a particular poem. Here is a fun example from Ira Gershwin, a
master of rhythm. Fast-paced lines (three weak syllables between each beat ) are followed by slower-speech lines (only one or two
weak syllables between each beat) in this excerpt from his satirical lyric “The Babbitt and the Bromide” (in Ziegfeld Follies):
A Babbitt met a Bromide on the avenue one day.
They held a conversation in their own peculiar way.
They both were solid citizens—they both had been around.
And as they spoke you clearly saw their feet were on the ground.
Hello! How are you?
Howza folks? What’s new?
I’m great! That’s good!
Ha! Ha! Knock wood!
REFRAIN: Another element that is often used in humorous poetry is repetition. A refrain is a repeated line, or a repeated part of a
line, that is used throughout a poem.
Refrains can be used to repeat a silly phrase, or a funny name, to reinforce the light tone. An example is in the poem “Macavity: The
Mystery Cat” by T. S. Eliot, which includes two refrains that employ the cat’s name throughout the poem. The refrains are italicized in
this excerpt:
Macavity, Macavity, there’s no one like Macavity,
He’s broken every human law, he breaks the law of gravity.
His powers of levitation would make a fakir stare,
And when you reach the scene of crime—Macavity’s not there!
Refrains and repetition can also be used with a pun, a word that has more than one meaning. Thomas Hood, a poet fond of puns,
wrote the ballad “Faithless Nelly Gray” using many repetitions of the body-part words “arms”, “legs”, and “feet”, starting with this
stanza:
Ben Battle was a soldier bold
And used to war’s alarms;
But a cannon-ball took off his legs,
So he laid down his arms!
Shakespeare had fun with a refrain (italicized) using the bird-call “cuckoo” as a pun for cuckold in “Spring” (excerpt):
When daisies pied, and violets blue,
And lady-smocks all silver-white,
And cuckoo-buds of yellow hue
Do paint the meadows with delight,
The cuckoo then, on every tree,
Mocks married men, for thus sings he:
'Cuckoo!
Cuckoo, cuckoo!' O word of fear,
Unpleasing to a married ear.
Now that we have explored how the elements of rhyme, rhythm, and refrain are tools for writing humorous poetry, let’s look at the
established poetic forms used for light verse in the English language.
Terse Verse: The first category of poetic forms may be called “terse verse”. These short poems use a few lines and rhymes to make
one point. The title of the poem may or may not be an important part of the humor. Types of terse verse include the Epigram and
the Epitaph.
The Epigram is a form that goes back to ancient Greek and Latin poetry, and has continued its long heritage into English poetry. It can
be serious or funny. An epigram is supposed to impart some important wisdom in a few words, and it is meant to be memorable.
Epigrams are carefully written. The title may be part of the joke. A famous humorous epigram is by Dorothy Parker:
“News Item”
Men seldom make passes
At girls who wear glasses.
Notice that Parker’s title is part of the humor, and she used exact two-syllable end-rhyme and two amphibrachic feet (ta-DUM-ta ta-
DUM-ta) for her lines.
An Epitaph is a poem which could go on the tombstone of a dead person. Funny ones rhyme, but the meter may not be exact in order
to seem “folksy”. Epitaphs don’t need a title if they include words like “Here lies so-and-so”. Some poets like to write their own
funny epitaph before they die! John Gay’s “My Own Epitaph” is an example:
Life is a jest, and all things show it;
I thought so once, but now I know it.
Another example is by John Ciardi:
Here, time concurring (and it does),
Lies Ciardi. If no kingdom come,
A kingdom was. Such as it was
This one beside it is a slum.
Metered Mayhem: The next category of forms for humor can be called “metered mayhem”. These accentual meter or accentual-
syllabic meter poems require careful counting. Types of metered mayhem include poetic forms such as the Nursery Rhyme, the
Limerick, and the Double Dactyl.
A Nursery Rhyme is a poem with strong beats of accentual meter, simple words and rhymes, and a silly story. Most children (and
adults) are familiar with the common historic English nursery rhymes, such as those in Mother Goose. Modern writers create nursery
rhymes too, like “Piggy-back” by Langston Hughes:
My daddy rides me piggy-back,
My mama rides me, too.
But grandma says her poor old back
Has had enough to do.
The Limerick has been around in English poetry for a long time. Edward Lear is credited with making the clean limerick popular in his
1846 illustrated Book of Nonsense. There are hundreds of anonymous limericks, including my favorite:
There was an old lady of Ryde
Who ate some green apples, and died.
The apples (fermented
Inside the lamented)
Made cider inside ‘er inside.
The limerick form consists of five lines rhyming aabba. The “a” lines have three metrical feet, and the shorter “b” lines have two feet.
The feet have three syllables, usually anapestic or amphibrachic. The first line traditionally introduces a person and place. (Some
poets, including Lear, combine the two short “b” lines into one long line on the page, so that there are only four lines. In this case, it
would appear as if that long line has internal rhyme and four feet.)
The Double Dactyl is a modern humorous form invented by Anthony Hecht and Paul Pascal (1966 Jiggery Pokery: A Compendium of
Double Dactyls). It has eight lines. The meter of the lines is two dactyls; except the shorter lines 4 and 8, which rhyme, have only one
dactyl and a final stressed syllable. Usually, line 1 is nonsense, line 2 is a name, and another line is a six-syllable word. This example is
by E. William Seaman and Eric Salzman:
Higgledy-Piggledy
Ludwig van Beethoven
Bored by requests for some
Music to hum,
Finally answered with
Oversimplicity,
‘Here’s my Fifth Symphony:
Duh, duh, duh, DUM!’
Doggerel: These poetic forms have end-rhyme but the meter of the lines is rough, uneven. Using the derogative term “doggerel”
implies the writer is unskilled. An amateur poet may have written an awkward line because of lack of skill. But the skillful poet creates
a rough line on purpose for comic effect, like a clown wearing too-long shoes and stumbling about in them. Ogden Nash often used
doggerel in his poetry. When he varied the line length, it was with the purpose in a longer line of slowing down the presentation of
the final rhyming word, and in a shorter line to present the rhyme word quickly. Humorous doggerel forms include Skeltonics, the
Clerihew, and the Little Willie.
Skeltonics are a form named for John Skelton, who created the title of Poet Laureate for himself in 1513. These long satirical poems
use lively, irregular, short lines of two or three stresses or beats, and extend the same rhyme over two or more consecutive lines but
in no particular rhyme scheme. This is an excerpt from Skelton’s mock-mourning “Philip Sparrow”:
When I remember again
How my Philip was slain,
Never half the pain
Was between you twain,
Pyramus and Thisbe,
As then befell to me.
I wept and I wailed,
The tears down hailed,
But nothing it availed
To call Philip again
Whom Gib, our cat, hath slain.
The Clerihew form was invented by Edmund Clerihew Bentley for humorous brief biographies and explanations, as in his 1905 illustrated
Biography for Beginners. The four lines rhyme aabb. The first line is a name, and the second line rhymes with the name. This
clerihew is by John Peterson (Halley/daily rhyme):
Edmund Halley
Watched for comets daily.
His success was slight
Till he began watching at night.
A Little Willie poem can have any simple rhyme scheme in four or more lines, such as abab or aabb. The subject is a child (not always
Willie) who comes to a tragic end (sometimes deservedly so). The first Little Willies were composed by Harry Graham in his 1898
illustrated Ruthless Rhymes for Heartless Homes. The light tone is a vital and tricky part of the humor, so that the poem will be
experienced as funny rather than cruel by the reader. Here is an example by Graham:
Billy, in one of his nice new sashes,
Fell in the grate and was burnt to ashes.
Now, although the room grows chilly,
I haven’t the heart to poke up Billy.
This anonymous one is a succinct description of the form:
Little Willie –
Pair of skates –
Hole in the ice –
Golden gates.
Refrain Forms: There are centuries-old French lyric poetic forms, such as rondeaux and ballades, which include refrains as part of the
rhyme scheme. The refrains can be used for puns or silly phrases. One of these forms is the Triolet, which in English poetry is used
exclusively for humor, and another is the Villanelle.
The Triolet has eight lines. The rhyme scheme is ABaAabAB, where A and B are the refrain lines. This silly example “Triolet” is by G.
K. Chesterton:
I wish I were a jelly fish
That cannot fall downstairs:
Of all the things I wish to wish
I wish I were a jelly fish
That hasn’t any cares,
And doesn’t even have to wish
“I wish I were a jelly fish
That cannot fall downstairs.”
The Villanelle is another refrain form. It is used for both serious poetry and light verse. It has stanzas of three lines (tercets) in rhyme
scheme aba with refrains. The most common form in English is the Passerat model, which is nineteen lines with two A refrains: A1bA2
abA1 abA2 abA1 ab A2 abA1A2. Traditionally, all the lines have the same meter and length. A modern example of this form using the
two refrains for humor is “Voice Mail Villanelle” by Dan Skwire:
We're grateful that you called today
And sorry that we're occupied.
We will be with you right away.
Press one if you would like to stay,
Press two if you cannot decide.
We're grateful that you called today.
Press three to end this brief delay,
Press four if you believe we've lied.
We will be with you right away.
Press five to hear some music play,
Press six to speak with someone snide.
We're grateful that you called today.
Press seven if your hair's turned gray,
Press eight if you've already died.
We will be with you right away.
Press nine to hear recordings say
That service is our greatest pride.
We're grateful that you called today.
We will be with you right away.
Satire and Parody: Satire is an ancient form of literature that ridicules something or someone. There are two types of satirical poetry
which emphasize the use of poetic form, the Parody and the Mock Epic/Ode/Elegy.
The Mock Epic is a kind of poetry that combines formal language with a trivial subject for a satire on serious heroic poetry and
society. A famous example is Homer’s Batrachomyomachia (Battle of the Frogs and Mice), a parody of the Iliad. This Greek parody has
been translated into English several times. This excerpt is from Thomas Parnell’s 1716 Heroic Couplets version (iambic pentameter
rhyming lines):
The dreadful Toils of raging Mars I write,
The Springs of Contest, and the Fields of Fight;
How threatning Mice advanc'd with warlike Grace,
And wag'd dire Combats with the croaking Race.
The Mock Odes/Elegies satirize those serious poetic forms and mock their dignified subjects and lofty language. This example excerpt
is from Thomas Gray’s “Ode on the Death of a Favourite Cat, Drowned in a Tub of Gold Fishes” whose long, silly title signals that the
poem is satire:
'Twas on a lofty vase's side,
Where China's gayest art had dy'd
The azure flow'rs that blow;
Demurest of the tabby kind,
The pensive Selima, reclin'd,
Gazed on the lake below.
A Parody imitates the style and thought of a literary work, author, or tradition in a humorous way. A parody poem derives its poetic
form from the original work that is being parodied. The poem being parodied must be one with which your reader is familiar for the
full humorous effect to be achieved.
In English, parodies of nursery rhymes and children’s stories are popular. Guy Wetmore Carryl wrote several books of these parodies
in poetic form, including Grimm Tales Made Gay, Mother Goose for Grown Ups, and the Aesop’s fables parody Fables for the Frivolous.
A short example is this humorous parody “Little Bo-Peep” by Frank Jacobs:
Little Bo-Peep
Has lost her sheep
And thinks they may be roaming;
They haven’t fled;
They’ve all dropped dead
From nerve gas in Wyoming.
Another favorite subject for parody in English poetry is the writing style of a famous poet. An extended example is G. K. Chesterton’s
“Variations of an Air: Composed on Having to Appear in a Pageant as Old King Cole”, in which Chesterton rewrites the nursery rhyme
“Old King Cole” in the styles of Tennyson, Yeats, Browning, Whitman, and Swinburne.
A parody may be of a particular famous poem. A short example of this type is Bob McKenty’s parody of the style and subject in
Dorothy Parker’s “News Item”:
“Eyeglasses or No…”
Men often get amorous
With gals who are mammarous.
A modern variation on parody is William Cole’s Uncoupled Couplets, in which he takes a famous poet’s line from an English poem and
rhymes it with his own new line in the same meter, for an irreverent purpose. Here is Cole’s “Robert Herrick” parody:
Gather ye Rosebuds while ye may
But take your little pill each day.
So, how do you write a funny poem? Now you know ways to use rhyme, rhythm, and refrain in a variety of poetic forms. You probably
have ideas popping into your head for a new poem! Here are a few tips from light-verse writers for “good humor”. Following these
tips will increase venues for publishing your funny poem so that more readers can see it and enjoy it.
First of all, keep the tone of your poem civil and light. You can playfully mock, chide, tease, undermine, and debunk the most
important, popular, or sacred subjects – the king, the church, the taxes, the family, and even death. But do not let the tone become
angry, vicious, or bitter. Your humorous poem should be amusing and delightful.
Second, write the poem to be understood immediately by the reader. A funny poem doesn’t need Cliff Notes. If you have to explain
your poem afterward, it wasn’t funny. Humorous poetry requires great mental effort on your part as the writer, but it should require
little mental effort on the reader’s part. Language (words, terms) and references (things outside the poem itself, such as a person,
literary work, or event) should be familiar to your intended audience. Take this advice to keep your thesaurus handy to look for a
familiar word choice, from Franklin P. Adams’ “To a Thesaurus”:
O precious code, volume, tome,
Book, writing, compilation, work,
Attend the while I pen a poem,
A jest, a jape, a quip, a quirk.
If you know your intended audience, and it is a specific group such as chemistry students, then you could tailor the language and
references—the “jokes”—to them. The chemistry students will laugh; but nobody else will understand your poem. Sometimes you can
make that chemistry poem funny to the average reader by changing or explaining just one technical word. An example is line 4 in
Arthur Guiterman’s “On the Vanity of Earthly Greatness”:
The tusks that clashed in mighty brawls
Of mastodons, are billiard balls.
The sword of Charlemagne the Just
Is ferric oxide, known as rust.
The grizzly bear whose potent hug
Was feared by all, is now a rug.
Great Caesar’s dead and on the shelf,
And I don’t feel so well myself!
Finally, keep the language clean. Innuendo is encouraged and enjoyed. Clever puns are funny. The masters of humorous poetry don’t
need to fetch a laugh by falling into the gutter. A fill-in-the-blank forced rhyme, or a pun word, can keep your language out of the
gutter. If it’s G-rated, more publishers will accept it, and more readers will see it and enjoy it.
The masters of light verse have shared their secrets with you. Now you can start practicing their techniques. The most wonderful
thing about writing humorous poetry, according to those who write it best, is that it is as enjoyable to write a witty poem as it is to
read one!!
References:
American Wits: an Anthology of Light Verse edited by John Hollander. American Poets Project, 2003.
The Random House Treasury of Light Verse edited by Louis Phillips. Random House, New York, 1995.
The New Oxford Book of English Light Verse edited by Kingsley Amis. Oxford University Press, New York, 1978.
The Norton Book of Light Verse edited by Russell Baker. W.W. Norton & Co., New York, 1986.
The New Princeton Encyclopedia of Poetry and Poetics edited by Alex Preminger and T.V.F. Brogan. Princeton University Press, 1993.
All the Fun’s in How You Say a Thing: An Explanation of Meter and Versification by Timothy Steele. Ohio University Press, Athens 1999.
The Book of Forms: A Handbook of Poetics by Lewis Turco. University Press of New England, Hanover 2000.
The Making of a Poem: A Norton Anthology of Poetic Forms edited by Mark Strand and Eavan Boland. W. W. Norton & Company, New
York 2000.
Writing Metrical Poetry: Contemporary Lessons for Mastering Traditional Forms by William Baer. Writer’s Digest Books, Cincinnati 2006.
by D. Marbach
How do you write a funny poem? The masters of humorous poetry make it look simple. Their witty poems are natural and playful. You
might think that Dr. Seuss wrote Green Eggs and Ham in a moment of inspiration. Just as the Harlem Globetrotters make playing
basketball look easy, so Dr. Seuss makes writing humorous poetry look easy. However, if you have ever tried to write a funny poem,
you have discovered that it isn’t easy at all. The Harlem Globetrotters practiced their spinning, throwing, bouncing, and other
techniques for a long time to become comic masters with that ball. Dr. Seuss took a year to write The Cat in the Hat, with careful
attention to detail, and many revisions of the exact wording of his humorous verse.
There is no defined genre in English literature for funny poems. Literary scholars have not put effort into studying humorous poetry as
an art. They lump all the funny poems into the vague category “light verse” and view them as undeserving of serious consideration.
But A.A. Milne said light verse “is the supreme exhibition of somebody’s definition of art, the concealment of art. In the result it
observes the most exact laws of rhythm and metre as if by a happy accident, and in a sort of nonchalant spirit of mockery at the real
poets who do it on purpose.” The best writers of light verse are masters of poetic form.
Some of the witty poets wrote a lot of light verse and are famous for it. These include writers like Edward Lear, Arthur Guiterman,
Harry Graham, Dorothy Parker, and Ogden Nash. Such witty poets are known for their inventive humorous poetic styles and devices.
Other witty poets were better known for their serious poetry, or for their prose writings, but they also wrote light verse. This
includes a large number of writers, such as Lord Byron, Lewis Carroll, Hilaire Belloc, A. A. Milne, and T. S. Eliot. Even Shakespeare,
who wrote so eloquently about romantic love in his famous sonnets, used his poetic skill to mock love in lesser-known light verses.
Writing humorous poetry is technical work. It is akin to juggling a tower of spinning plates without dropping any of them, until just the
right moment when the tower seems to crumble unexpectedly and the juggler catches every plate, to the surprise and delight of the
audience. The writer uses rhyme, rhythm, and refrain to tickle the reader’s funny bone in a variety of poetic forms intended for
humor. Let’s study some of the techniques used in writing humorous poetry, starting with the elements of rhyme, rhythm, and refrain.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
RHYME: Rhyme is an important tool for creating light verse in the English language. Almost all the humorous poems ever written in
English have a pattern of end-rhymes. Rhyme delights the reader’s ear, and it makes the poem simpler for the reader to understand.
A fault of end-rhyme can endanger the structure of a funny poem with its awkwardness. When constructing end-rhymes in a
humorous poem, it is best to use the most exact rhymes possible. The vowel sound and consonant sound in the last syllable of the last
word of each of the two lines should rhyme perfectly to the ear, such as talk/walk, talk/hawk, or talk/cornstalk. A dictionary can be
consulted for pronunciation of end-words, and a rhyming dictionary can be used to find rhyming words.
Funny poems often include further playfulness with rhyme, such as internal rhyme and multi-syllable rhymes. Internal rhyme can be a
little surprise for your reader, by adding a word within a line that rhymes with the word at the end of that line. W. H. Auden used this
fun device (most/post) in stanzas of “Foxtrot” (excerpt):
The blackbird loves the earthworm,
The adder loves the sun,
The polar bear an iceberg,
The elephant a bun,
The trout enjoys the river,
The whale enjoys the sea,
And dogs love most an old lamp-post,
But you’re my cup of tea.
Multi-syllable rhymes can be created in several ways. For creating two-syllable rhymes, poets can use two-syllable words
(thinning/winning), or longer words (fated/liberated), or two separate words acting together (beseech him/impeach him). A multi-
syllable rhyme can be composed by a combination of a long word in a line and two or more short words in the other line, called a
“mosaic rhyme” (installment/Paul meant). The accented syllable in the rhyming sequence should match in both lines. An exact rhyme
is surrender with pretender, which both have the accent on the next-to-last syllable of the line. In contrast, for the two-syllable
rhyme “enic”, arsenic would not be an exact rhyme with hygienic because the accented syllable does not fall in the same place
within the last two syllables of each word.
Many masters of light verse use an occasional “triple rhyme” of three syllables to amuse the reader, emphasize a theme, or create a
punch line. The triple rhyme can consist of two long words, (posterity/rarity), or it can be a mosaic rhyme (posterity/spare it he).
The accented syllables of the triple rhyme should match, so as to make the rhyme sequence sound polished to the ear. Byron
employed many triple rhymes in his humorous poetry, such as this excerpt from “Dedication” in Don Juan:
Bob Southey! You're a poet--Poet-laureate,
And representative of all the race;
Although 'tis true that you turn'd out a Tory at
Last--yours has lately been a common case;
And now, my Epic Renegade! what are ye at?
With all the Lakers, in and out of place?
Humorous poems may include the device of “broken rhyme” for an end-rhyme. Broken rhyme is the division of a word at the end of a
line by hyphenating it, in order to produce a rhyme sound with the end of the next line. An example is this excerpt from Edward Lear’
s self-portrait poem which begins “How pleasant to know Mr. Lear”:
When he walks in his waterproof white,
The children run after him so!
Calling out, ‘He’s run out in his night-
gown, that crazy old Englishman, oh!
Broken rhymes are playful and they help to link lines together as the poem flows along. They can be used to surprise the reader with
“what comes next” in the lines.
Another type of humorous rhyme that poets use is the forced rhyme. In the sequence of a forced rhyme combination, a first end-
word is used which then forces the reader to pronounce and accent the next rhyming end-word in a particular way in order to match
the first one. There are several reasons for using a forced rhyme.
Forced rhyme can be used for a sense of closure at the end of a line, or to give prominence to a particular word. An example is
Hilaire Belloc’s poem “Lord Finchley”, which forces an unnaturally long secondary accent onto the last syllable of the last word:
Lord Finchley tried to mend the electric light
Himself. It struck him dead: And serve him right!
It is the business of the wealthy man
To give employment to the artisan.
A forced rhyme can be used to help the reader with pronouncing an unusual word, an invented word, or a nonsense word at the end
of a line. Unusual words are used in humorous poetry, but how will your reader know how to say these words? The forced rhyme is a
helpful tool to make the unusual word easier for the reader to pronounce in the way the poet intends. An example is Mark Twain’s
limerick “A Man Hired by John Smith and Co.”, which mocks the use of the abbreviation “Co.” for the word “Company” with Twain’s
two invented abbreviations. (Read this poem slowly and aloud for best effect, remembering the word “company” is the rhyme to
match.)
A man hired by John Smith and Co.
Loudly declared he would tho.
Man that he saw
Dumping dirt near his store.
The drivers, therefore, didn’t do.
Lastly, the forced rhyme can be used in poems where the poet has declined to write the ending to a line because it is not G-rated
(sex, violence, language). Sometimes it is funnier to let the reader “fill in the blank” with a forced rhyme than to state the actual
words. An example is this excerpt of rhyming couplets from Lewis Carroll’s “‘Tis the Voice of the Lobster”:
I passed by his garden, and marked, with one eye,
How the Owl and the Panther were sharing a pie:
The Panther took pie-crust, and gravy, and meat,
While the Owl had the dish as its share of the treat.
When the pie was all finished, the Owl, as a boon,
Was kindly permitted to pocket the spoon:
While the Panther received knife and fork with a growl,
And concluded the banquet by -------.
Another example is this printer’s humor from the Boston Globe newspaper “An Arab and His Donkey”, using the asterisk symbol to
represent three deleted words that rhyme with “isk” and sound like “asterisk”:
An Arab came to the river side,
With a donkey bearing an obelisk;
But he would not try to ford the tide,
For he had too good an * .
RHYTHM: In comedy, timing is everything. The poetic element of rhythm is often used in witty verse. Writers can skillfully and
purposefully use rhythm to propel the reader along in a fast gallop, to slow down the reader for a longer look, or to surprise the
reader with something sudden and unexpected at the end of the ride.
Rhythm in light verse can be measured out using either of two types of meter. The simpler type of meter is “accentual meter”. The
more exact meter is “accentual-syllabic meter”. The first line of the poem is most important in setting the rhythm for your reader, so
it should be written carefully in the meter you choose.
Accentual meter is a counting of the strongly-stressed syllables, or “beats”, in each line of the poem. Good accentual meter is like
the beat of a drum or the clapping of hands. It is natural and light-hearted. Weaker syllables before, between, and after the beat
syllables are not counted. The beats are strongly spoken, and they are evenly spaced in time. Most accentual meter has four beats
per line. The weaker syllables are spoken during the time between the beats. There may be brief pauses in the middle of the line or
at the end of the line, and a strong beat might fall on an unspoken pause.
Nursery rhymes and ballads are written in accentual meter. A common pattern for an English nursery rhyme is four spoken beats in
the first line, and three spoken beats in the second line. The second line has a fourth unspoken beat at the end in a pause. Here is
the nursery rhyme “Little Jack Horner” with the beats underlined:
Little Jack Horner sat in a corner
Eating a Christmas pie.
He put in his thumb, and pulled out a plum,
And said “What a good boy am I !”
Another nursery rhyme with the same accentual meter is “Little Miss Muffet”. If one person chants aloud Jack’s poem, and another
person chants aloud Muffet’s poem, starting at the same time and clapping the four beats per line together, they will not be speaking
the same words but they will end their poems at the same time. (Remember, there is a fourth beat on the unspoken pause at the end
of line 2 and line 4).
Little Miss Muffet sat on a tuffet
Eating her curds and whey.
Along came a spider and sat down beside her
And frightened Miss Muffet away!
Although the weaker syllables are not counted in accentual meter, it is important not to tangle the reader’s tongue. The reader can
only squeeze about three weak syllables between beats. The more weak syllables there are in a line of accentual meter, the faster
the line will feel.
To write a line of accentual meter, words are chosen so that the beat will fall on naturally-strong stresses in the syllables of words as
they are spoken in the English language. Strong stresses occur on the accented syllable of any multi-syllable word, and on a normally
stressed one-syllable word. Stresses do NOT occur on the unaccented syllable of a multi-syllable word, nor on unstressed one-syllable
words, so those should not be used for beats in your poetry-writing. Normally stressed one-syllable words include nouns, verbs,
adjectives or adverbs. One-syllable words that are normally weak (not stressed) are pronouns, conjunctions, prepositions, articles,
and forms of the verb “to be”. A dictionary can be consulted to determine accent in multi-syllable words, and the function of one-
syllable words.
A different meter used in humorous poetry is accentual-syllabic meter. This meter requires a careful counting of ALL of the syllables,
not just the strongly-stressed syllables, in each line of the poem. Accentual-syllabic meters are pleasing to the reader’s ear. Also, the
regular pattern creates expectations in the reader, expectations that the poet can use as a tool for comedy and surprise.
In accentual-syllabic meter counting, the smallest unit is the syllable, the next unit is the “foot” (a grouping of syllables), and the
largest unit is the line. To create a line of accentual-syllabic meter in English poetry, words are chosen so that the syllables will fall
into a pattern of stressed and unstressed syllables (the “feet”). The lines of light verse are usually six to twelve syllables long, with
feet of two or three syllables. There are several accentual-syllabic meters commonly used in English poetry.
Iambic meter has a foot of two syllables in the pattern of unstressed-stressed “ta-DUM”. The rhythm of two iambic feet goes “ta-DUM
ta-DUM”. An example of humorous iambic meter (four feet per line) is “History of Education” by David McCord, with the stressed
syllables underlined:
The decent docent doesn’t doze:
He teaches standing on his toes.
His student dassn’t doze – and does,
And that’s what teaching is and was.
Iambic is the rhythm most like normal conversation. Lines with five iambic feet are called “iambic pentameter”, a very common meter
for English poetry. But this meter can become monotonous, so iambic lines may occasionally substitute another foot, such as trochee
(stressed-unstressed) or spondee (stressed-stressed).
Trochaic meter is sometimes used for funny poems, rather than iambic, with lines of two-syllable feet in the pattern stressed-
unstressed “DUM-ta”.
Anapestic, dactylic, and amphibrachic meter have a foot of three syllables, and feel a bit faster than iambic meter. Anapestic feet are
in the pattern of unstressed-unstressed-stressed “ta-ta-DUM”. The rhythm of two anapestic feet goes “ta-ta-DUM ta-ta-DUM”. This
example of humorous anapestic meter is from “Carmen”, a poem about the opera, by Newman Levy:
Where the castanets clink on the gay piazetta, and
strains of fandangoes are heard from afar,
There lived, I am told, a bold hussy named Carmen, a
pampered young vamp full of devil and guile.
Dactylic feet are in the pattern of stressed-unstressed-unstressed “DUM-ta-ta”. A line of two dactylic feet goes “DUM-ta-ta DUM-ta-
ta” in rhythm. This example of humorous dactylic meter is Kenneth Leonhardt’s “Conceivably, the Compleat History of Human Sex”:
Adam and Eve,/I believe,/Were the start of it.
Everyone since,/I’m convinced,/Played a part in it.
Amphibrachic feet are in the pattern of unstressed-stressed-unstressed “ta-DUM-ta”. The rhythm of two amphibrachic feet goes “ta-
DUM-ta ta-DUM-ta”. In many humorous poems, a meter of three syllables might run anapestic, dactylic, or amphibrachic in any
particular line, depending on whether the line starts with an unstressed syllable or a stressed syllable.
Humorous poems can be written in a mixture of differently-metered lines, or of shorter and longer lines in the same meter. Also, it is
common for humorous poetry to have a strong beat rhythm, like accentual meter, even when most of the lines of the poem are in an
accentual-syllabic meter. Four feet per line of many accentual-syllabic meters, such as iambic or amphibrachic, can feel like the four
beats per line of accentual meter.
It takes some trial and error to find the rhythm that works best for a particular poem. Here is a fun example from Ira Gershwin, a
master of rhythm. Fast-paced lines (three weak syllables between each beat ) are followed by slower-speech lines (only one or two
weak syllables between each beat) in this excerpt from his satirical lyric “The Babbitt and the Bromide” (in Ziegfeld Follies):
A Babbitt met a Bromide on the avenue one day.
They held a conversation in their own peculiar way.
They both were solid citizens—they both had been around.
And as they spoke you clearly saw their feet were on the ground.
Hello! How are you?
Howza folks? What’s new?
I’m great! That’s good!
Ha! Ha! Knock wood!
REFRAIN: Another element that is often used in humorous poetry is repetition. A refrain is a repeated line, or a repeated part of a
line, that is used throughout a poem.
Refrains can be used to repeat a silly phrase, or a funny name, to reinforce the light tone. An example is in the poem “Macavity: The
Mystery Cat” by T. S. Eliot, which includes two refrains that employ the cat’s name throughout the poem. The refrains are italicized in
this excerpt:
Macavity, Macavity, there’s no one like Macavity,
He’s broken every human law, he breaks the law of gravity.
His powers of levitation would make a fakir stare,
And when you reach the scene of crime—Macavity’s not there!
Refrains and repetition can also be used with a pun, a word that has more than one meaning. Thomas Hood, a poet fond of puns,
wrote the ballad “Faithless Nelly Gray” using many repetitions of the body-part words “arms”, “legs”, and “feet”, starting with this
stanza:
Ben Battle was a soldier bold
And used to war’s alarms;
But a cannon-ball took off his legs,
So he laid down his arms!
Shakespeare had fun with a refrain (italicized) using the bird-call “cuckoo” as a pun for cuckold in “Spring” (excerpt):
When daisies pied, and violets blue,
And lady-smocks all silver-white,
And cuckoo-buds of yellow hue
Do paint the meadows with delight,
The cuckoo then, on every tree,
Mocks married men, for thus sings he:
'Cuckoo!
Cuckoo, cuckoo!' O word of fear,
Unpleasing to a married ear.
Now that we have explored how the elements of rhyme, rhythm, and refrain are tools for writing humorous poetry, let’s look at the
established poetic forms used for light verse in the English language.
Terse Verse: The first category of poetic forms may be called “terse verse”. These short poems use a few lines and rhymes to make
one point. The title of the poem may or may not be an important part of the humor. Types of terse verse include the Epigram and
the Epitaph.
The Epigram is a form that goes back to ancient Greek and Latin poetry, and has continued its long heritage into English poetry. It can
be serious or funny. An epigram is supposed to impart some important wisdom in a few words, and it is meant to be memorable.
Epigrams are carefully written. The title may be part of the joke. A famous humorous epigram is by Dorothy Parker:
“News Item”
Men seldom make passes
At girls who wear glasses.
Notice that Parker’s title is part of the humor, and she used exact two-syllable end-rhyme and two amphibrachic feet (ta-DUM-ta ta-
DUM-ta) for her lines.
An Epitaph is a poem which could go on the tombstone of a dead person. Funny ones rhyme, but the meter may not be exact in order
to seem “folksy”. Epitaphs don’t need a title if they include words like “Here lies so-and-so”. Some poets like to write their own
funny epitaph before they die! John Gay’s “My Own Epitaph” is an example:
Life is a jest, and all things show it;
I thought so once, but now I know it.
Another example is by John Ciardi:
Here, time concurring (and it does),
Lies Ciardi. If no kingdom come,
A kingdom was. Such as it was
This one beside it is a slum.
Metered Mayhem: The next category of forms for humor can be called “metered mayhem”. These accentual meter or accentual-
syllabic meter poems require careful counting. Types of metered mayhem include poetic forms such as the Nursery Rhyme, the
Limerick, and the Double Dactyl.
A Nursery Rhyme is a poem with strong beats of accentual meter, simple words and rhymes, and a silly story. Most children (and
adults) are familiar with the common historic English nursery rhymes, such as those in Mother Goose. Modern writers create nursery
rhymes too, like “Piggy-back” by Langston Hughes:
My daddy rides me piggy-back,
My mama rides me, too.
But grandma says her poor old back
Has had enough to do.
The Limerick has been around in English poetry for a long time. Edward Lear is credited with making the clean limerick popular in his
1846 illustrated Book of Nonsense. There are hundreds of anonymous limericks, including my favorite:
There was an old lady of Ryde
Who ate some green apples, and died.
The apples (fermented
Inside the lamented)
Made cider inside ‘er inside.
The limerick form consists of five lines rhyming aabba. The “a” lines have three metrical feet, and the shorter “b” lines have two feet.
The feet have three syllables, usually anapestic or amphibrachic. The first line traditionally introduces a person and place. (Some
poets, including Lear, combine the two short “b” lines into one long line on the page, so that there are only four lines. In this case, it
would appear as if that long line has internal rhyme and four feet.)
The Double Dactyl is a modern humorous form invented by Anthony Hecht and Paul Pascal (1966 Jiggery Pokery: A Compendium of
Double Dactyls). It has eight lines. The meter of the lines is two dactyls; except the shorter lines 4 and 8, which rhyme, have only one
dactyl and a final stressed syllable. Usually, line 1 is nonsense, line 2 is a name, and another line is a six-syllable word. This example is
by E. William Seaman and Eric Salzman:
Higgledy-Piggledy
Ludwig van Beethoven
Bored by requests for some
Music to hum,
Finally answered with
Oversimplicity,
‘Here’s my Fifth Symphony:
Duh, duh, duh, DUM!’
Doggerel: These poetic forms have end-rhyme but the meter of the lines is rough, uneven. Using the derogative term “doggerel”
implies the writer is unskilled. An amateur poet may have written an awkward line because of lack of skill. But the skillful poet creates
a rough line on purpose for comic effect, like a clown wearing too-long shoes and stumbling about in them. Ogden Nash often used
doggerel in his poetry. When he varied the line length, it was with the purpose in a longer line of slowing down the presentation of
the final rhyming word, and in a shorter line to present the rhyme word quickly. Humorous doggerel forms include Skeltonics, the
Clerihew, and the Little Willie.
Skeltonics are a form named for John Skelton, who created the title of Poet Laureate for himself in 1513. These long satirical poems
use lively, irregular, short lines of two or three stresses or beats, and extend the same rhyme over two or more consecutive lines but
in no particular rhyme scheme. This is an excerpt from Skelton’s mock-mourning “Philip Sparrow”:
When I remember again
How my Philip was slain,
Never half the pain
Was between you twain,
Pyramus and Thisbe,
As then befell to me.
I wept and I wailed,
The tears down hailed,
But nothing it availed
To call Philip again
Whom Gib, our cat, hath slain.
The Clerihew form was invented by Edmund Clerihew Bentley for humorous brief biographies and explanations, as in his 1905 illustrated
Biography for Beginners. The four lines rhyme aabb. The first line is a name, and the second line rhymes with the name. This
clerihew is by John Peterson (Halley/daily rhyme):
Edmund Halley
Watched for comets daily.
His success was slight
Till he began watching at night.
A Little Willie poem can have any simple rhyme scheme in four or more lines, such as abab or aabb. The subject is a child (not always
Willie) who comes to a tragic end (sometimes deservedly so). The first Little Willies were composed by Harry Graham in his 1898
illustrated Ruthless Rhymes for Heartless Homes. The light tone is a vital and tricky part of the humor, so that the poem will be
experienced as funny rather than cruel by the reader. Here is an example by Graham:
Billy, in one of his nice new sashes,
Fell in the grate and was burnt to ashes.
Now, although the room grows chilly,
I haven’t the heart to poke up Billy.
This anonymous one is a succinct description of the form:
Little Willie –
Pair of skates –
Hole in the ice –
Golden gates.
Refrain Forms: There are centuries-old French lyric poetic forms, such as rondeaux and ballades, which include refrains as part of the
rhyme scheme. The refrains can be used for puns or silly phrases. One of these forms is the Triolet, which in English poetry is used
exclusively for humor, and another is the Villanelle.
The Triolet has eight lines. The rhyme scheme is ABaAabAB, where A and B are the refrain lines. This silly example “Triolet” is by G.
K. Chesterton:
I wish I were a jelly fish
That cannot fall downstairs:
Of all the things I wish to wish
I wish I were a jelly fish
That hasn’t any cares,
And doesn’t even have to wish
“I wish I were a jelly fish
That cannot fall downstairs.”
The Villanelle is another refrain form. It is used for both serious poetry and light verse. It has stanzas of three lines (tercets) in rhyme
scheme aba with refrains. The most common form in English is the Passerat model, which is nineteen lines with two A refrains: A1bA2
abA1 abA2 abA1 ab A2 abA1A2. Traditionally, all the lines have the same meter and length. A modern example of this form using the
two refrains for humor is “Voice Mail Villanelle” by Dan Skwire:
We're grateful that you called today
And sorry that we're occupied.
We will be with you right away.
Press one if you would like to stay,
Press two if you cannot decide.
We're grateful that you called today.
Press three to end this brief delay,
Press four if you believe we've lied.
We will be with you right away.
Press five to hear some music play,
Press six to speak with someone snide.
We're grateful that you called today.
Press seven if your hair's turned gray,
Press eight if you've already died.
We will be with you right away.
Press nine to hear recordings say
That service is our greatest pride.
We're grateful that you called today.
We will be with you right away.
Satire and Parody: Satire is an ancient form of literature that ridicules something or someone. There are two types of satirical poetry
which emphasize the use of poetic form, the Parody and the Mock Epic/Ode/Elegy.
The Mock Epic is a kind of poetry that combines formal language with a trivial subject for a satire on serious heroic poetry and
society. A famous example is Homer’s Batrachomyomachia (Battle of the Frogs and Mice), a parody of the Iliad. This Greek parody has
been translated into English several times. This excerpt is from Thomas Parnell’s 1716 Heroic Couplets version (iambic pentameter
rhyming lines):
The dreadful Toils of raging Mars I write,
The Springs of Contest, and the Fields of Fight;
How threatning Mice advanc'd with warlike Grace,
And wag'd dire Combats with the croaking Race.
The Mock Odes/Elegies satirize those serious poetic forms and mock their dignified subjects and lofty language. This example excerpt
is from Thomas Gray’s “Ode on the Death of a Favourite Cat, Drowned in a Tub of Gold Fishes” whose long, silly title signals that the
poem is satire:
'Twas on a lofty vase's side,
Where China's gayest art had dy'd
The azure flow'rs that blow;
Demurest of the tabby kind,
The pensive Selima, reclin'd,
Gazed on the lake below.
A Parody imitates the style and thought of a literary work, author, or tradition in a humorous way. A parody poem derives its poetic
form from the original work that is being parodied. The poem being parodied must be one with which your reader is familiar for the
full humorous effect to be achieved.
In English, parodies of nursery rhymes and children’s stories are popular. Guy Wetmore Carryl wrote several books of these parodies
in poetic form, including Grimm Tales Made Gay, Mother Goose for Grown Ups, and the Aesop’s fables parody Fables for the Frivolous.
A short example is this humorous parody “Little Bo-Peep” by Frank Jacobs:
Little Bo-Peep
Has lost her sheep
And thinks they may be roaming;
They haven’t fled;
They’ve all dropped dead
From nerve gas in Wyoming.
Another favorite subject for parody in English poetry is the writing style of a famous poet. An extended example is G. K. Chesterton’s
“Variations of an Air: Composed on Having to Appear in a Pageant as Old King Cole”, in which Chesterton rewrites the nursery rhyme
“Old King Cole” in the styles of Tennyson, Yeats, Browning, Whitman, and Swinburne.
A parody may be of a particular famous poem. A short example of this type is Bob McKenty’s parody of the style and subject in
Dorothy Parker’s “News Item”:
“Eyeglasses or No…”
Men often get amorous
With gals who are mammarous.
A modern variation on parody is William Cole’s Uncoupled Couplets, in which he takes a famous poet’s line from an English poem and
rhymes it with his own new line in the same meter, for an irreverent purpose. Here is Cole’s “Robert Herrick” parody:
Gather ye Rosebuds while ye may
But take your little pill each day.
So, how do you write a funny poem? Now you know ways to use rhyme, rhythm, and refrain in a variety of poetic forms. You probably
have ideas popping into your head for a new poem! Here are a few tips from light-verse writers for “good humor”. Following these
tips will increase venues for publishing your funny poem so that more readers can see it and enjoy it.
First of all, keep the tone of your poem civil and light. You can playfully mock, chide, tease, undermine, and debunk the most
important, popular, or sacred subjects – the king, the church, the taxes, the family, and even death. But do not let the tone become
angry, vicious, or bitter. Your humorous poem should be amusing and delightful.
Second, write the poem to be understood immediately by the reader. A funny poem doesn’t need Cliff Notes. If you have to explain
your poem afterward, it wasn’t funny. Humorous poetry requires great mental effort on your part as the writer, but it should require
little mental effort on the reader’s part. Language (words, terms) and references (things outside the poem itself, such as a person,
literary work, or event) should be familiar to your intended audience. Take this advice to keep your thesaurus handy to look for a
familiar word choice, from Franklin P. Adams’ “To a Thesaurus”:
O precious code, volume, tome,
Book, writing, compilation, work,
Attend the while I pen a poem,
A jest, a jape, a quip, a quirk.
If you know your intended audience, and it is a specific group such as chemistry students, then you could tailor the language and
references—the “jokes”—to them. The chemistry students will laugh; but nobody else will understand your poem. Sometimes you can
make that chemistry poem funny to the average reader by changing or explaining just one technical word. An example is line 4 in
Arthur Guiterman’s “On the Vanity of Earthly Greatness”:
The tusks that clashed in mighty brawls
Of mastodons, are billiard balls.
The sword of Charlemagne the Just
Is ferric oxide, known as rust.
The grizzly bear whose potent hug
Was feared by all, is now a rug.
Great Caesar’s dead and on the shelf,
And I don’t feel so well myself!
Finally, keep the language clean. Innuendo is encouraged and enjoyed. Clever puns are funny. The masters of humorous poetry don’t
need to fetch a laugh by falling into the gutter. A fill-in-the-blank forced rhyme, or a pun word, can keep your language out of the
gutter. If it’s G-rated, more publishers will accept it, and more readers will see it and enjoy it.
The masters of light verse have shared their secrets with you. Now you can start practicing their techniques. The most wonderful
thing about writing humorous poetry, according to those who write it best, is that it is as enjoyable to write a witty poem as it is to
read one!!
References:
American Wits: an Anthology of Light Verse edited by John Hollander. American Poets Project, 2003.
The Random House Treasury of Light Verse edited by Louis Phillips. Random House, New York, 1995.
The New Oxford Book of English Light Verse edited by Kingsley Amis. Oxford University Press, New York, 1978.
The Norton Book of Light Verse edited by Russell Baker. W.W. Norton & Co., New York, 1986.
The New Princeton Encyclopedia of Poetry and Poetics edited by Alex Preminger and T.V.F. Brogan. Princeton University Press, 1993.
All the Fun’s in How You Say a Thing: An Explanation of Meter and Versification by Timothy Steele. Ohio University Press, Athens 1999.
The Book of Forms: A Handbook of Poetics by Lewis Turco. University Press of New England, Hanover 2000.
The Making of a Poem: A Norton Anthology of Poetic Forms edited by Mark Strand and Eavan Boland. W. W. Norton & Company, New
York 2000.
Writing Metrical Poetry: Contemporary Lessons for Mastering Traditional Forms by William Baer. Writer’s Digest Books, Cincinnati 2006.
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The Sestina: A Moment in the Eternal
by D. Marbach
The sestina is a poetic form with a long history. It was invented in the twelfth century by Arnaut Daniel, a poet and mathematician in
medieval southern France. The form is complicated, repetitive, sometimes obsessive. It has been described as a reverie, a folding flame,
a braid, and a squared circle. If it is so complicated, why would anyone want to write one of these poems? Why would anyone bother
to read one? Because, in the sestina form, the poet and the reader can share the magical experience of a moment in the eternal –
the simultaneously linear and circular nature of time.
The standard sestina form is 39 lines. Each line is the same length in syllables or meter. The lines are arranged is seven stanzas.
There are 6 six-line stanzas and 1 three-line stanza. The s
by D. Marbach
The sestina is a poetic form with a long history. It was invented in the twelfth century by Arnaut Daniel, a poet and mathematician in
medieval southern France. The form is complicated, repetitive, sometimes obsessive. It has been described as a reverie, a folding flame,
a braid, and a squared circle. If it is so complicated, why would anyone want to write one of these poems? Why would anyone bother
to read one? Because, in the sestina form, the poet and the reader can share the magical experience of a moment in the eternal –
the simultaneously linear and circular nature of time.
The standard sestina form is 39 lines. Each line is the same length in syllables or meter. The lines are arranged is seven stanzas.
There are 6 six-line stanzas and 1 three-line stanza. The s