The poem of my choice is a sonnet by John Keats titled On First Looking into Chapman’s Homer, which is focused on a piece of poetry describing the importance and the impact of poetry in general. It is important to note that “the sonnet has been a popular literary form in English since the sixteenth century, when it was adopted from the Italian sonnetto, meaning “little song” (Meyer & Miller, 2019, p. 484). The first thing that one notices when reading the poem is the fact that it is an Italian sonnet with its two distinct parts. It is stated that “the first eight lines (the octave) typically rhyme abbaabba. The final six lines (the sestet) may vary; common patterns are cdecde, cdcdcd, and cdccdc” (Meyer & Miller, 2019, p. 484). In other words, the poem’s form is tightly related to the poem’s content because the first six lines or the octave focus on the narrator’s travels and search for literary understanding. However, the latter six lines, or the sestet, are centered around the revelation and knowledge of the narrator, where a new translation of the Greek poem is delivered in a more profound manner to create awe.
The common rhyme is an “old” sound, such as words, hold, gold told, and bold, which define the octave of the poem. The meter is also present in the latter part of the piece with alternations between eyes and skies, or men and ken. The challenge is manifested in the fact that the line number is predetermined to be six plus six, and each section needs to have its own theme, context, as well as meters. Therefore, by understanding and seeing these format rules of an Italian sonnet, it becomes more apparent how challenging it is to create such a poem.
Reference
Meyer, M., & Miller, D. Q. (2019). Literature to go (4th ed.). Macmillan Higher Education.