The Making of a Sonnet: A Norton Anthology Book

An excellent collection, organized by century. Extraordinary to see the ways in which the form developed over time, and also the unique approach of each poet within the same strict form. Lovely.

Here's a sample:

The Illiterate - by George Meredith

Touching your goodness, I am like a man
Who turns a letter over in his hand
And you might think this was because the hand
Was unfamiliar, but, truth is, the man
Has never had a letter from anyone;
And now he is both afraid of what it means
And ashamed because he has no other means
To find out what it says than to ask someone.
His Uncle could have left the farm to him,
Or his parents died before he sent them word,
Or the dark girl changed and want him for beloved.
Afraid and letter-proud, he keeps it with him.
What would you call his feeling for the words
That keep him rich and orphaned and beloved?


106) Death Be Not Proud - John Donne
106) Batter My Heart - " "
143) Grasshopper and the Cricket - Leigh Hunt
155) Half My Life is Gone - Longfellow
155) The Sheaves - " "
189) The Silken Tent - Frost
190) Never Again - " "
213) View - Phyllis McGinley
232) The Illiterate - William Meredith
237) The Snow Weed - Howard Moss
238) Jacob's Ladder - Donald Davie
239) Death By Drowning - Elizabeth Brewster
242) Mrs. Snow - Donald Justice
251) Llanto - Philip Levine
258) Conversation Among the Ruins - Sylvia Plath
264) Poetic - K. Fields
267) Sonnet - Robert Pinsky
300) Sonnet - Michelangelo
305) Wreath - George Herbert
332) American Sonnet - Billy Collins
344) I Find No Peace - Petrarch
344) My Lady - Michelangelo
351) Night Scene - Paul Verlaine
360) Sonnet - Phillippe Jaccottet