MURTYMUSE

Sonnet in a Bonnet [On the 108th Birth Anniversary of the modern Hindi poet Trilochan] The sonnet was born in Italy as a lover’s serenade, and soon thereafter became the most fashionable poetic form in Elizabethan England, and after a century-long eclipse, it re-appeared with a vibrance and velocity not only in all the various Englishes throughout the world, but in many other languages, too. In prosodic terms, the sonnet is perhaps the single most complexly rhyme-woven poetic form which has attracted poets everywhere for its rhyme-weave challenge. Rhyme has always been one of the cardinal musical devices in poetry in all languages, but its intricate braiding in a sonnet, with the content and the meaning interspersed, offers the most exciting creative pleasure for the poet. One aspect of handling of the traditional form is the syntax which in Italian is more congenial to the fluidity of rhyme-sounds than in other analytical languages like English and Hindi where the syntax is more...