African American Sonnets: A Collection
The sonnet is one of the most persistent and popular European poetic forms. Traditionally, sonnets have fourteen lines, fixed meter (often ten syllables to a line in English sonnets), and a fixed rhyme scheme. Since the early modern period – and perhaps due in part to the popularity of Shakespeare’s sonnets, the sonnet form has also been associated with expressions of romantic love or desire. The most common English sonnet form has fourteen lines, grouped into three rhyming groups of four lines (quatrains) and a final two lines (couplet); this is also called the Elizabethan sonnet, as it was favored by Shakespeare. Alongside the Elizabethan sonnet, many poets use the Petrarchan sonnet format, which consists of a group of eight lines and six lines, with a somewhat different rhyme scheme.
Some sonnets in the African American tradition do follow these patterns, but others break the pattern in various ways. One important innovation in African American poetry is the frequent use of the sonnet form in poems focused on social justice and racial justice themes. Black poets from this period used this very conventional -- but also flexible -- European form to celebrate revolutionary and militant figures like Toussaint L'Ouverture or John Brown, or to condemn racialized violcence.
As of August 2024, we have identified and tagged about 118 poems in the anthology as sonnets. There are likely more poems in the collection yet to be tagged. -AS