My Sonnet

This semester at uni, I have been looking closely at types of Sonnet (in particular, the Petrarchan and the Shakespearean).  The form has varied as different writers have adapted it to suit their own style, but it is typically written in iambic pentameter with either an ABAB or ABBA rhyme scheme, ending with a rhyhming couplet and consisting of 14 lines.  I've wanted to try writing creatively for a while, so I decided to use my course texts as inspiration for my own sonnet.  Bonus points if you get all the references!

How did Nabokov tell, convincingly,

A story so provocative, so well?

Into Hamlet’s madness, actors can dwell,

And Shakespeare will be perceived mad, too.  By

A Donne-ish uncertainty that hunts like

Adonis, I am Holmes detecting clues

While Watson whispers irrational cues

On which my imagination will strike

At any point.  Shelley will, on the shelves,

Haunt me until I have lost Paradise

As I read ‘til I, too, have yellow eyes.

We are all completely beside ourselves

When we read.  Preserve, like the Scott-ish pound,

These tales of Fauste and Prometheus Bound.