How should I improve my first Elizabethan Sonnet?

Unless the young man pities the world, and consents to his own increase, even a successively self-renewing Eden is unavailable. Here we first meet the Shakespearean speaker, and begin to be acquainted with his range of tones. read more

Elizabethan sonnets are written in iambic pentameter. You are not using iambs. Work on that first. Rhythm is what makes a poem a poem. Work on that. read more

Come up with your ending first. Here’s why. The Shakespearean sonnet, which is the version we will be using since it is the most well-known and (I think) the easiest to work with, can be broken down into four “chunks.” • The first quatrain. (Four intermixed lines that alternatingly rhyme.) • The second quatrain. read more