Isaac Tang – Poet, Author, Composer

By Isaac Tang

As you read the different poets, one poetic form appears again and again. Superficially, the form looks to be the same. The form is also short – fourteen lines to be exact – and therefore fits neatly into half, or even a third of the page. It is unassuming and appears to pale in comparison to long ballades and the ever-rolling streams of blank verse.

However, as you read the different sonnets, it soon becomes apparent that the sonnet is a wondrous vehicle for a limitless range of subjects. Shakespeare uses them for romance while Herbert descants on the nature of prayer or spins an allegory about seeking his land-lord (symbolising Jesus) in the sonnet ‘Redemption’. Keats agonises about his own mortality in his sonnet ‘When I Have Fears’ (a poem that probably resonates with many artists) while Christina Rossetti reflects on divine love and the writings of Dante in her sonnet cycles. Wordsworth and Keats even wrote sonnets on their love of the sonnet!

The fourteen lines can also be structured in various permutations. There are the classic sonnet forms by Shakespeare (rhyme scheme ABABCDCDEFEFGG) and Petrarch (ABBAABBACDCDCD), although various rhyming schemes can be utilised. Most sonnets are often divided into an octet and a sextet but this is not always the case. In John Milton’s nineteenth sonnet (‘When I Consider How My Light Is Spent’), the general rhythm of the poem is syncopated by his marvellous use of enjambment. Gerard Manley-Hopkins takes further liberties and invents the “curtal sonnet”; for example, his beautiful sonnet ‘Pied Beauty’ is three-quarters of a traditional sonnet and only has 10.5 lines.

Like the many generations of poets, I feel the magic and power of the sonnet too. I believe that the fourteen lines provide the perfect length for a concise yet in-depth discussion of a topic in the English language. It is not insanely short like the haiku, nor does it continue beyond the point where the reader’s attention begins to wander. Furthermore, because of its fixed length and general division into octet and sextet, I find that the sonnet is relatively easy to compose – the room is already built and all you need is to arrange the furniture within. Therefore, a few years back, when I stressed and worried about whether my literary writings were original enough or not, my thoughts naturally came out in the form of a sonnet titled ‘Unoriginality’:

Nothing original springs out from me –

For like the thieving magpie in the sky,

I scour the ground with my extorting eye,

Swooping on slivers sparkling like the sea,

And, fumbling them with empty-headed glee,

I self-crown with a sweet and giddy lie:

That treasures sprout from my ignoble sty,

Bud from my heap of dry sticks and debris.

Hence, all my works are flavours watered-down,

A toddler’s cardboard castles, ransom notes

From newspapers, torn rags of royal gown,

Shadows of heroes, slow-submerging boats…

Alas! Such is my weak and withering style:

My mind cannot create – I just compile.

‘Unoriginality’ (Tang, 2019)

And when I mused about the spider and its broken web swaying in the unsympathetic wind, I found the sonnet a wonderful vehicle for spontaneous philosophising on the ephemeral nature of human endeavours.

When I espy a spider, there’s no hate,

Just pity. Pity, for it weaves and weaves,

And wily waits, like quiet eight-eyed thieves,

For triumph on its translucent dinner-plate;

But come the wind with its invisible weight,

Or careless human hand, the artwork leaves

No mark. The spider neither groans nor grieves,

But builds again to meet its changeless fate:

And as I watch, I see it mark and trace

Great cities glittering proud, canals of pearl,

Civilisations and their marble face,

Decaying as the sails of time unfurl.

Thus, when I see a spider, I weep tears,

And pity all our florid, futile years.

‘The Spider’ (Tang, 2024)

There are several more sonnets that I have written in my book ‘Glimpse of the Divine’, which I believe honours the rich history of the sonnet with original topics and experimental structures. But whether it be reading or composing a sonnet, the words of Wordsworth still rings loud and true: “Scorn not the sonnet!”