Form as Freedom: Contemporary Adaptations of the Sonnet

The sonnet was historically used to express ideas in a standardized structure: a 14-line poem, written in iambic pentameter, featuring a unique rhyme scheme. Despite this traditional rigidity, the sonnet has proven to be one of the most resilient and versatile poetic forms in literary history. At first glance, the sonnet’s historical standing seems to impose certain expectations onto modern productions of the form, but its past uses have not confined contemporary poets from structurally and substantively adapting the sonnet to complement their personal narratives and poetic goals. In fact, it is the “very familiarity of the sonnet” that has made it an advantageous “vehicle” for American poets who “play” with sonnet form (Burt 259). By repurposing the sonnet’s constraints into opportunities for innovation, poets such as Tony Harrison and Billy Collins demonstrate how the form can accommodate distinctly contemporary ideas and identities. Tony Harrison and Billy Collins both stretch the sonnet using structural tools, titles, irony, and symbolism to serve their micro arguments—observational in Collins’ case and personal for Harrison.

Using simile, repetition, and perspective, Billy Collins stretches the sonnet to symbolize a new era of American literature while simultaneously exposing the illusion of complete artistic freedom in the broader context of contemporary life. Collins establishes his unconventional use of the sonnet in “Sonnet,” which begins “All we need is fourteen lines, well, thirteen now” and ends “where Laura will tell Petrarch to put down his pen / ... and come at last to bed” (lines 1, 12, 14). The comic poem illustrates Collins’ view of  his poems as social engagement, a sentiment he expressed in a 2001 interview with The Paris Review. Collins directly addresses the audience in the first line of “Sonnet,” demonstrating his welcoming attitude and emphasis on accessibility in poetry, two choices that automatically distinguish his style from the traditional Shakespearean sonnet. He starts “American Sonnet” with a similarly comical tone, invoking Petrarch and Spenser again but only to explicitly tell the reader that Americans create sonnets that are not “like” those penned by Petrarch or Spenser (1). American sonnets, and those who write them, are unconcerned with structural limitations or abiding by literary customs; most notably, “American Sonnet” itself is 21 lines. These explicit comparisons and differences create distance between the perspectives behind contemporary adaptations of the sonnet and its customary form, which Collins rejects in favor of the American sonnet. The postcard is introduced as a representation of the American Sonnet and initially seems to provide the literary freedom withheld by the traditional sonnet. It offers various images and depictions and a blank slate on the back, ready to be filled with expression—a “reversible” structure that resembles that of the volta. Collins uses anaphora in the fourth stanza to emphasize his own and broader American engagement with this new form: “we locate… / we announce… / we express” (10-12). While this repetition does signal a change in writers’ perspectives and a broad literary shift, presumably away from the style of the orthodox poets with whom Collins opened the poem, it also creates a laundry list of qualifications for Collins’ new American sonnet. Professor Meg Tyler asserts that “good” sonnets “should carry within” them “a contradiction,” and Collins delivers with his satirization of the traditional sonnet and consequent description of a new standard of writing via the postcard (Tyler 12). In this way, Collins fills the sonnet with both rebellion and reflection and uses irony to question whether poetic liberation truly catalyzes artistic progress.

While it may seem as though Collins’ structural choices contradict the rigid style historically imposed onto sonnets, his diction and use of perspective clarify his argument as a satirical commentary on the hollow freedom afforded by contemporary frameworks. Collins compares the “carefully plowed” fourteen-line sonnet to the “picture postcard” (3-4). At first glance, the postcard seems to present some choice by listing “a length of white beach, / a piazza or carved spires of a cathedral” as options for the image on the postcard (16-17). However, Collins quickly dissolves this illusion with another simile, asserting that “we” as Americans write “a caption as conventional / as an Elizabethan woman’s heliocentric eyes,” making another connection between the present and a past era (7-9). In particular, his comparison to the heliocentric eye indicates structural limitations, as this art form ties artists to certain geometric dimensions. Furthermore, Collins introduces substantive limitations of the postcard form and uses familiar measures of size to communicate these limitations. Writers must “pour” their “sentiments into measuring cups” and sing their songs in “little rooms” (Collins 5-6). Collins’ word choice creates contradictions within lines; the verb “pour” indicates unabashed expression, yet “measuring” signifies calculation, and for good reason; the postcard contains a “display” of a “compression” of feelings (19-21). This diction around the content of a postcard indicates conscious self-regulation by its authors; while Collins’ “American Sonnet” outwardly celebrates innovation, its diction exposes a contemporary standardization of poetic expression. Although “American Sonnet” reaches beyond the typical bounds of the sonnet, it expresses newfound boundaries around the postcard—ones arguably more restrictive than those imposed by the traditional sonnet.

By contrasting the cultivation of traditional sonnets with the mechanical production of postcards, Collins underscores the paradox of creative freedom in contemporary literature. In his poem, Collins establishes the traditional sonnet as “carefully plowed,” indicating poets’ thoughtfulness as they plant their sentiments within the established furrows of the sonnet, allowing those seeds to blossom into various interpretations for each reader (3). Shortly thereafter, Collins depicts writers of the postcard mechanically measuring their “conventional” content for the eyes of one recipient, who “will” surely finish reading the message between the mailbox and the table (8, 19). Ironically, the freedom in structure and content afforded by the postcard has led to further standardization of expression in place of freedom, whereas the sonnet’s structure lends it to diverse applications regarding content. Professor Stephen Burt argues that the familiarity of the sonnet makes it a useful tool for poets using a comical or satirical tone; however, it is really the sonnet’s structure, not its familiarity, that offers a meaningful contribution to those poets’ goals. Like other poetic structures, the sonnet’s framework gives poets the structural stability to exercise intentional, rather than measured, creativity in content presentation. Ultimately, Collins’ adaptation reveals that the sonnet’s enduring structure provides a stable foundation that supports creative expression, setting the stage for personal reimaginings of the form by poets like Tony Harrison.

Similarly to Collins, Tony Harrison challenges the sonnet structure, but his purpose extends beyond experimentation and toward relaying emotional depth and pursuing a reconciliation of his split identity. In his poem “Turns,” Harrison uses yet breaks the traditional sonnet rhyme scheme to link the disconnected halves of his socio-economic background. First, Harrison’s injection of a working-class story into sonnet form individualizes the formal structure and moves Harrison toward reconciling his working-class background with his profession as a poet. Professor and poet Jem Poster asserts that Harrison’s use of the even-paced sonnet signals a need for “definition” and “protection,” which "simultaneously constitutes” some form of “confinement” (Poster 88). While the sonnet does offer Harrison the structure necessary to discuss painful experiences and sentiments, that structure allows for freedom of expression rather than confinement. Harrison’s use of meter and voice demonstrates this point; the memory of his father’s death disrupts the control offered by the sonnet, and Harrison ends the last stanza with a quatrain, breaking the previously established stanza structure. This choice reflects a tension between articulation of overwhelming loss and the control demanded by the sonnet (Crucefix 170). Breaking the poetic rhythm exposes emotional intensity and a breaking point for Harrison’s embodiment of the sonnet and, therefore, his comfortable stance within the world of poetry. The sonnet’s form offers symbolic meaning alongside structural functionality; it represents Harrison’s formal training as a poet and entrance into a new social class. His breakage of the form is a first attempt to bridge his profession and unconventional background, and this choice emphasizes the importance of Harrison’s father in his personal and literary life while also acknowledging the disconnect between his family and literary lives. Through this deliberate disruption, Harrison redefines the sonnet’s structure as a medium for reconciling personal grief with broader questions of social belonging. 

Harrison’s micro-level choices regarding enjambment, diction, and symbolism extend this reconciliation into an exploration of identity and perception. In an interview with Richard Hoggart, Harrison himself stressed these simultaneous yet juxtaposed relationships, recalling that his family kept no books at their house, thus separating his “love of language” and the life he “actually lived” at home (Hoggart 39). It is precisely these clashes within Harrison’s identity that he continues to confront on the micro level by employing enjambment, diction, and symbolism. The cap that emerges throughout the poem represents Harrison’s father’s pride in his work despite a lower class status, and Harrison incessantly tries to embody this persona. Using line breaks to control emphasis placement, he highlights the words “class” and “gap,” communicating his feeling of misplacement within the working class (Harrison 1-2). “Glass” is placed at the end of the line shortly after, when Harrison tries on his father’s cap (3). Rather than using “reflection,” Harrison chooses “glass,” signaling his feelings of inauthenticity while trying to occupy the persona of his father. He repeatedly invokes the cap to finally say “our” cap in the poem’s last line, claiming the cap as his inheritance (Harrison 16). This assertion counters Harrison’s earlier feelings yet introduces a nuance regarding his personal struggles with class perception. Even in death, Harrison’s father was perceived as “wanting charity” because of the way his hat fell beside him, but Harrison defends his honor, asserting that his father “never begged” (9-13). The hat, a symbol of pride for the working-class background of Harrison’s family, is misperceived as a tool for begging; this situation leads Harrison to lay his claim to the cap alongside his father’s ownership. Seeing his father misperceived, as Harrison likely felt as a grammar school and university student from a lower socioeconomic class, triggers a realization that Harrison is free to define his own identity regardless of outside perception. The diction of the title hints at this point by referring to the cyclical nature of Harrison’s turns away and toward his background, shifts that were necessitated by his pursuit of a literary career. However, Harrison halts this spin and turns inward in the last stanza. By ending with ownership, Harrison achieves the closure that eluded him throughout the poem, transforming the sonnet into an individualized tool of self-expression. 

Both Billy Collins and Tony Harrison demonstrate that the sonnet’s traditional form does not confine poets; rather, the sonnet’s rich historical tradition offers poets the opportunity to adapt the sonnet to personal, satirical, or simply contemporary uses. Burt emphasizes the sonnet’s familiarity as making the form useful and relevant for contemporary uses. Tyler comes closer, specifying that the sonnet’s structure lends itself to contradiction, which she also asserts is essential to any good sonnet. Extending this view, these poets do not merely play or contradict the sonnet; they transform structure into commentary. Collins exposes the irony of modern poetic freedom, suggesting that innovation completely ungrounded in structure leads to new, superficial, and even more constraining literary norms. Meanwhile, Harrison uses the sonnet form not despite but because of its deep historical roots. The sonnet gives Harrison the creative freedom to simultaneously express his love for traditional literature, via choosing the form, and demonstrate the turmoil around his identity, via breaking the meter. Both poets reveal that the sonnet’s enduring framework serves as a stabilizing force within which genuine artistic evolution can occur. Ultimately, the decision to deploy the sonnet at all becomes a deliberate act of rebellion through participation, illustrating that tradition need not be dismantled completely to convey modern ideas and conventions. The sonnet’s historical weight does not confine, rather it elevates the poetic conversation, and its structure offers the space to explore past and present, layers of identity, and methods of innovation, through which poets will continue to redefine the form into the future.