A courtly, grand, tradition; sure, but men
are men, and poets, poets; so, of course
behind their art is merry mischief, force
of guile, if not just force; but having then
been properly improper once again
with risqué sonnets, sometimes merely coarse
(if richly rhymed), how long must we endorse
these minuets? Will someone shout, A-men!?
 
Step it up and shake a foot, a
hand, a bodice: make it syncopated–
let it, having been elaborated,
settle for a minute.
Strike a pose. Then strut. And put a
little music in it.

*****

Daniel Kemper writes: “No Matter What, You’ve Got To Strut” –Yes, I’m quoting Buddy Love from Eddie Murphie’s version of The Nutty Professor! This, as you can tell from all the meta-textual wordplay (using a rime riche and then naming it [richly rhymed, and on and on]) was a lot of fun to write, but there’s a serious aspect to it as well. I’ve gone hog wild exploring sonnets and meters. This could be considered one of the culminating branches of that.

Sonnets in non-iambic meters:                            trochaic, anapestic, dactylic                                          {sonnet “space” increased by x4}

Sonnets that used more than one meter:

              Four possible meters to mix                                                                                                          {sonnet “space” increased by x64!}

Rule: One meter: one line, no changing within a line, only between them.

Most definitions of sonnets assumed iambic meter and so did not rule out the other meters. Many also implied only one meter throughout, but so long as it’s metrically consistent, it should be considered. Maybe there’s less wiggle room here, but I think I can lawyer it anyway.

Oooh, but then, in tandem with my poetic symphony inventions, I my thoughts ran down two paths at once. Other variations that I could “legally” do and, out of all the possible sonnet types, why are only a few around?

Other variations:

              Vary the line lengths: There are precedents. Shakespeare, #145 (tetrameter); Hopkins, Curtal sonnet (L11 is a half-length line), Spenserian Stanza (not a sonnet) last line is hexameter.

              Vary the rhyme schemes.

                             In multi-sonnet pieces, what effects can be achieved by moving the rhymed lines around a bit?

                            Why some combinations of rhymes and not others (bridge to second path).

So I felt leeway to go hog wild with variations—however, I was bound and determined to be “legal.” (I do not care for the lack of rigor in the thinking that allows “free verse sonnets” and “blank sonnets.”) Since I was starting with tradition, well, I started with tradition… That’s for the first half of [Strut].

I got a coder to help me run some common permutations for 14 lines. If 1.) they must all rhyme and 2.) no more than two consecutive rhymes and 3.) no rhyme is separated by more than two intervening lines, then there are 165,995 possible combinations for a sonnet. Why then do we have about a dozen and a half? Sure people “invent” new ones all the time, but those one-offs die pretty fast.

I arrived at two answers. One is historical. There are only so many poets writing formal poetry over only so many years—and poets actually tend to be conservative in bringing new forms to the canon.  The other is musical. There’s huge stuff here. Too much for this email. Suffice to say, there has to be a melodic contour, a musicality, a beat, a riff, a tension and release—NOT arbitrarily ordered rhymes. How does one define that “musicality”? It’s tough; what differentiates a melody from a random string of tones?

Back to [Strut]. Now you can see how the second half formed up in my mind and why the proliferation of musical terminology, also meta-textual. It is syncopated where it calls for syncopation. The meter before the volta and after are different. The rhyme pattern, btw, remains one of the traditional variations of the Petrarchan Sonnet.

As you look closer, you’ll notice that it’s not irregular; it’s highly structured. Key is that rhyming lines are the same length as each other, though different from others. That keeps the music in it—a kind of predictability despite change, an added degree of recognition. This is the future of the sonnet, the 21^st century sonnet, IMO.”

*****

‘No Matter What, You’ve Got To Strut’ was first published in Rat’s Ass Review.

Daniel Kemper, a former tournament-winning wrestler, black belt in traditional Shotokan karate, and infantryman has earned a BA in English, an MCSE (Systems Engineering), an MBA, and an MA in English and had works accepted for publication at more than a dozen magazines, including a pushcart nomination. He’s been an invited presenter at PAMLA 2024 and presided over the Poetics Panel in 2025 and has been the feature poet at several Sacramento venues.

“2014 07 05 Street Performer Strikes a Pose” by Jerome Olivier is licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 2.0.