Sonnets

"...four represents this world, while three represents divinity. Moreover, the sum of these integers, seven, represents the entire range of human experience from lowest to highest. Of course, seven has been assigned special meaning in most systems of number symbolism... The proportion 4/3, then, incapsulates the relation of body to soul, reflecting the relation between the mundance and celestial in the macrocosm. And as readers proceed thorugh the [Italian] sonnet, passing from quatrain to tercet (or from octave to sestet in the fourteen line scheme), they proceed from this world toward heaven.... So the sonnet carries its readers laong this trajectory toward blessedness..."

"Later [Renaissance] poets, however, recognized that the formal properties of the sonnets and its actual language constitute two different systems; and while they can be coordinated--harmonized and synchronized--they may also be differentiated and opposed. The subtext of form becomes a counterpoint to what the words themselves might say. Although the form of the sonnet remains unrelentingly optimistic, promising salvation after the divagations and tribulations of this world, the language of the sonnet might very well express dought, questioning the faith that characterizes the orthodox culture. The resulting tension between the subject of form and the verbal system energizes the poem, producing two possibilities of interpretation."

A damn good contemporary sonnet by Charles Simic:

"Romantic Sonnet"

Evenings of soverieng clarity--
wine and bread on the table,
mother praying,
Father naked in bed.

Was I that skinny boy stretched out
In the field behind the house,
His heart cut out with a toy knife?
Was I the crow hovering over him?

Happiness, you are the bright red lining
Of the dark winter coat
Grief wears inside out.

This is about myself when I'm remembering,
And your long insomniac's nails,
O Time, I keep chewing and chewing.