The Oxford book of sonnets - John Fuller

The sonnet is a versatile poetic form, alive and well after over 450 years in English. It is often the choice for the expression of intense but controlled feelings on both private and public subjects. Although it is most often associated with love poems, it is also used for devotional, philosophical, and comic purposes, and this anthology demonstrates the full range of its exhilarating possibilities.;Beginning with Wyatt and ending in the 21st century, this collection of sonnets juxtaposes old favourites with the less familiar: Shakespeare's "marriage of true minds" rubs shoulders with John Davies of Hereford's "ABC of love", Keats' "stout Cortez" with Darley's "Manrique". Women poets who revived the sonnet in the late 18th century are restored to prominence, and there are examples of the sonnet sequence as well as more unusual experimentation with form such as Sylvester's quadruple acrostic sonnets to his patron and Leigh Hunt's iterating sonnet. Modern poets as diverse as Seamus Heaney, Carol Ann Duffy, and Simon Armitage show that there are few better ways to dramatize experience than to write a sonnet.