I’m a sucker for a hand-made gift.

One of the happiest moments of my life was when my daughter gave me a very realistic three-foot shark with a laser attached to its head that she’d made out of gray and white duct tape.

This was the culmination of an inside joke between us, based on the Austin Powers movies, in which one of the characters, Dr. Evil, laments that all he wants is a “freaking shark with a freaking laser beam attached to its head,” the better to dispatch his arch-enemy, Austin Powers.

“Is that so much to ask?” he bellows at his henchmen.

Apparently, I’m difficult when it comes to birthday presents. I must have quoted Dr. Evil at some point, when asked, “What would you like this year?” Nina simply took me at face value and delivered the freaking shark.

Complete with freaking laser.

Nina’s shark was beautifully made, but it didn’t have to be. What made it one of my favorite gifts of all time was her insight that, like Dr. Evil, what I really wanted for my birthday was something impossible, a creature plucked from my imagination, something mythical, on the order of the golden fleece.

So she responded with something purely imaginative, a creature plucked from the world of crumpled newspaper and vinyl tape.

The shark with a laser was a once-in-a-lifetime deal, but as we approach the year’s busiest, and most intense, gift-giving season, I wanted to put in a plug for another kind of hand-made gift: the love sonnet.

A sonnet is the highest kind of gift: one that’s made, not bought; one-off, not mass-produced; low-cal, and imperishable.

And they’re easier to write than you might think. Unlike much of today’s poetry, in which anything goes, sonnets are bound by a few simple rules of meter and rhyme. I find that the rules actually make things a bit easier by limiting the infinity of word choices.

Let’s start with meter. Each of the sonnet’s 14 lines is in iambic pentameter, which, as you may remember from high school English, sounds like this: da-DUM, da-DUM, da-DUM, da-DUM, da-DUM.

Happily, English is a language tailor-made for iambic pentameter. We speak it all day long without realizing it. In fact, I wrote a sentence in perfect iambic pentameter just a few moments ago:

A sonnet is the highest kind of gift.

Each of the sonnet’s fourteen lines needs to have that rhythm, but you don’t have to go completely nuts. There’s plenty of flexibility. Remember: this is your poem. You can certainly bend the rules.

The other significant rule of sonnets has to do with the rhyme scheme. Here are the first four lines of one of Shakespeare’s best-loved sonnets, number 73. Keep an eye on the last word of each of the lines:

That time of year thou mayst in me behold
When yellow leaves, or none, or few, do hang
Upon those boughs which shake against the cold,
Bare ruined choirs, where late the sweet birds sang.

Behold, hang; cold, sang. The last word of the first line rhymes with the last word of the third line; the last word of the second rhymes with the last word of the fourth. Or, as an English teacher would write on the chalkboard: a-b-a-b.

The rhyme scheme of a sonnet is pretty straightforward. a-b-a-b; c-d-c-d; e-f-e-f; g-g.

The g-g represents the last two lines of the sonnet, its final couplet, or “punchline,” if you will. Here’s how Shakespeare ends number 73: 

This thou perceiv’st, which makes thy love more strong,
To love that well, which thou must leave ere long.

Strong, long; two words that emphasize the theme of the poem, which is that love is intensified by a sense of mortality. The “-ong” sounds of “strong” and “long” also happen to sound like a clock striking the hours, another subliminal reminder of the fleeting nature of time.

The hardest part of writing a poem, at least in my experience, isn’t so much the form; it’s finding the subject. This is where the love sonnet has a huge advantage over other kinds of poems. It’s about love! If you’re stuck for an idea, try this: think back to a really happy moment with your beloved. Remember it in as much detail as you can. Then try to suss out why you were so happy; what was it about that moment that seemed to speak about something larger?

For instance, let’s say your daughter gives you a fabulous duct-tape shark, a gift that speaks to your heart in mysterious ways. You might start with something like this:

I guess I told you what I really wanted,

Not that I remember. Then your shark —

Complete with freaking laser on its head! —

Swam across the table to my heart.

Hm. I like the off-rhyme of shark and heart, the idea that there’s something emotionally threatening about a brilliant gift.

Anyway, it’s a start.

 

 

This column was published in the Perry Co Times on 15 November 2012

For more information, please contact Mr. Olshan at writing@matthewolshan.com