1. Trimester 1 Writing Reflection
On a sheet of paper, please answer the following questions in complete sentences:
How has your writing improved since last trimester? (What, specifically, have you learned to do better?)
What do you still need to work on? (Again, be specific.)
What is one writing goal you can set for yourself for this trimester? (Make it SMART: specific, measurable, achievable, realistic, time-sensitive)

2. Shakespearean Sonnets
English 10B

3. William Shakespeare
Mini Bio:

4. What is a sonnet?
Iambic what?
What’s that!?
A sonnet is a fourteen-line poem in iambic pentameter.

5. Iambic Pentameter
 Iambic Pentameter is the rhythm and metre in which poets and playwrights wrote in Elizabethan England. It is a meter that Shakespeare uses.

6. Heartbeat.
Quite simply, it sounds like this: dee DUM, dee DUM, dee DUM, dee DUM, dee DUM. It consists of a line of five iambic feet, ten syllables with five unstressed and five stressed syllables. It is the first and last sound we ever hear, it is the rhythm of the human heart beat.

7. Pentameter? Well an ‘iamb’ is ‘dee Dum’ – it is the heart beat.
Penta is from the Greek for five.
Meter is really the pattern
So, there are five iambs per line!
(Iambic penta meter )

8. Why Use Iambic Pentameter?
It is percussive and attractive to the ear and has an effect on the listener's central nervous system. An Example of Pentameter from Shakespeare: but SOFT what LIGHT through YONder WINdow BREAKS
Sound familiar?

9. Syllables What is a syllable?
Well, there are three syllables (separate sounds) in the word syllable!
“But soft, what light through yonder window breaks.”
How many syllables are there in that quotation?

10. “But soft, what light through yonder window breaks.”
Write this down and underline the stressed syllables.
This rhythm is iambic pentameter!
Well done!

11. Back to sonnets. Well, it is a poetic form.
But it has a certain structure as well as a rhyming pattern.

12. Rhyming patterns
The Shakespearean sonnet has three quatrains followed by a couplet, the scheme being: abab cdcd efef gg.
More head scratching?

13. Quatrain? Quatrains are four line stanzas of any kind
I have divided the following sonnet into the three quatrains.
You will also see the rhyming pattern
marked out for you.

14. Sonnet 18
Shall I compare thee to a summer's day? (a) Thou art more lovely and more temperate: (b) Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May, (a) And summer's lease hath all too short a date: (b) Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines, (c) And often is his gold complexion dimmed, (d) And every fair from fair sometime declines, (c) By chance, or nature's changing course untrimmed: (d) But thy eternal summer shall not fade, (e) Nor lose possession of that fair thou ow'st, (f) Nor shall death brag thou wander'st in his shade, (e) When in eternal lines to time thou grow'st, (f)  So long as men can breathe, or eyes can see, (g)
 So long lives this, and this gives life to thee. (g)

15. Sonnet 18
We will take a closer look at this iconic Shakespearean Sonnet and look for the following:
S- Speaker
O- Occasion
A- Audience
P- Purpose
S- Subject
Tone

16. More Important Poetic Terms
Foot- A metrical unit composed of stressed and unstressed syllables.
Example: An iamb is an example of a foot
Meter- the measured pattern of rhythmic accents in poems.
Example: Pentameter includes five feet per line.

17. More Poetic Terms Quatrain- A four-line stanza in a poem.
Example: A Shakespearean sonnet contains three quatrains followed by a couplet.
Couplet- A pair of rhymed lines.
Example:
So long as men can breathe, or eyes can see, (g)
  So long lives this, and this gives life to thee. (g)

18. More Poetic Terms
Free Verse- Poem without a regular pattern of meter of rhyme.
Is the Shakespearean Sonnet in free verse?
What might be an example of free verse poetry?
Blank Verse- A line of prose in unrhymed iambic pentameter.
Examples can be found in some of Shakespeare’s sonnets.
Also, in Robert Frost's poem “Birches.”
“When I see birches bend to left and right / Across the lines of straighter darker trees, / I like to think some boy's been swinging them.”

19. More Poetic Terms
Turn- The “turn” in a sonnet is the point where there is a shift in the poem’s tone or subject.
Typically there is a shift in the poem’s structure at the same point to parallel this shift.
Example: In Sonnet 18 the turn takes place during lines 9-10:
But thy eternal summer shall not fade, (e) Nor lose possession of that fair thou ow'st, (f)

20. Q: Are there other types of sonnets?
A: Yes!
Petrarchan sonnet (Italian sonnet)- A 14 line poem in iambic pentameter, which follows the rhyming scheme:
abba, abba, cdecde OR
abba, abba, cdcdcd
Compare to the rhyme scheme of the Shakespearean (English) sonnet:
abab, cdcd,efef,gg