Literary Technique: Sonnet
Poem Example:Sonnet CXLVII: My love is as a fever, longing still
By William Shakespeare
My love is as a fever, longing still
For that which longer nurseth the disease,
Feeding on that which doth preserve the ill,
Th’ uncertain sickly appetite to please.
My reason, the physician to my love,
Angry that his prescriptions are not kept,
Hath left me, and I desperate now approve
Desire is death, which physic did except.
Past cure I am, now reason is past care,
And frantic-mad with evermore unrest;
My thoughts and my discourse as madmen’s are,
At random from the truth vainly expressed:
For I have sworn thee fair, and thought thee bright,
Who art as black as hell, as dark as night.
Biographical Information: While William Shakespeare's reputation is based primarily on his plays, he became famous first as a poet. With the partial exception of the Sonnets (1609), quarried since the early nineteenth century for autobiographical secrets allegedly encoded in them, the nondramatic writings have traditionally been pushed to the margins of the Shakespeare industry. Yet the study of his nondramatic poetry can illuminate Shakespeare's activities as a poet emphatically of his own age, especially in the period of extraordinary literary ferment in the last ten or twelve years of the reign of Queen Elizabeth.
Explanation of Technique: In poetry, a sonnet has fourteen lines and is written in iambic pentameter. Each line has 10 syllables. It has a specific rhyme scheme and a “volta” or a specific turn.
Generally, sonnets are divided into different groups based on the rhyme scheme they follow. The rhymes of a sonnet are arranged according to a certain rhyme scheme. The rhyme scheme in English is usually abab-cdcd-efef-gg and in Italian abba-abba-cde-cde.
This is a sonnet since it contains 14 lines, each with 10 syllables. It follows the English rhyme scheme of abab-cdcd-efef-g.
Interpretation of Poem: The narrator of this poem describes his love for a particular someone as a fever that cannot be cured. He continues to long for her love, even though she is the one who has caused his disease. He says that his physician has left him due to his inability to keep to the prescriptions. He is past the the cure, and is spiraling into madness. His desired love seemed to bright, but is now revealed to really be as dark as the night, and she is leading him downwards.
Visual Representation:
Explanation of Visual: This is a painting by George Grosz titled The Lovesick Man. All of the elements in the painting, such as the man's haggard appearance to the decrepit look of his surroundings, indicate his miserable state of love sickness and loneliness. This painting is very appropirate ad well fitting for the sonnet, since both discuss/show a man in an awful state of lovesickness.
poetryfoundation.org