The word “sonnet” comes from the Italian, meaning “little sound” or “little song.” SONNETS are lyric poems that are 14 lines long that usually have one or more conventional rhyme schemes and contains a pivot. Generally the sonnet is made up of 3 quatrains and a closing couplet OR an octet (8 lines) and a sestet (6 lines).

The pivot is a change in direction (or thought process) ranging from a full about face to a slightly different, yet tangiable take. The change in direction usually occurs at one of these logical breaking points.


There are many different types of sonnets, including the following. There will be definitions and examples of each in the coming days:

• Alternating Sonnet
• Blues Sonnet
• Bowlesian Sonnet
• Caudate Sonnet
• Chained Sonnet
• Corona
• Couplet Sonnet
• Crown of Sonnets
• Curtal Sonnet
• Double Sonnet
• Envelope Sonnet
• French Sonnet
• Heroic Sonnet
• Petrarchan Sonnet
• Pushkin Sonnet
• Reverse English Sonnet
• Scupham sonnet
• Shakespearean Sonnet
• Sicilian Sonnet
• Sonnet of Sonnets
• Sonnet Redoubled
• Spenserian Sonnet
• Stretched Sonnet
• Terza Rima Sonnet
• Wordsworth’s Sonnet