Student Question

Can you provide original ideas for a sonnet with personification, simile or metaphor, sensory images, and apostrophe in iambic pentameter?

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For a sonnet incorporating personification, simile, metaphor, sensory images, and apostrophe in iambic pentameter, consider a Shakespearean format: 14 lines with an a-b-a-b, c-d-c-d, e-f-e-f, g-g rhyme scheme. Use apostrophe to address an absent figure, like a teacher. Personify an English book, compare yourself to a frozen statue via simile and metaphor, and create sensory images, such as tasting a bitter grade. Reading Shakespeare and Donne can provide inspiration.

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That's a pretty all-inclusive assignment! To begin with, then, I would suggest writing a Shakespearean sonnet because the form is pretty structured. There are 14 lines, ten syllables per line written in iambic pentameter. The rhyme scheme is: a-b-a-b, c-d-c-d, e-f-e-f, g-g, the last two being a rhyming couplet. An example of iambic pentameter with the rhyme scheme a-b, a-b, c-d, etc.:

I know that I must write this work todayBut writing things for me is quite a trickIt's hard for me to think of things to sayIn fact, the thought of writing makes me sick

See how the words rhyme at the end of the line? As you continue, you would use the same pattern, with different words that rhyme at the end. The last two lines have to end with words that rhyme with each other, for example:

I'd better sign off eNotes and get done So...

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I can watch TV and have some fun

You also must include the other poetic devices you mentioned. An "apostrophe" addresses someone that isn't there or some imaginary person. So, in my example:

Oh teacher! You who gives homework so hard!Why can't we just write something we enjoy?

For personification (giving life to an inanimate object-the book), simile (a comparison using "like" or "as" - the frozen person) and metaphor (comparison that does not use these words-the statue):

My English book stares back at me with mirthDefying me to start, yet I am crippledAs one who cannot move, with frozen girthA statue, made of stone and marble dimpled

All of these lines show the rhyme scheme and iambic pentameter. Now it's up to you. Depending on what you write about, you have to come up with sensory images that will work: