An Italian sonnet – “Chaos” by Edna St. Vincent Mallay

Mallay’s poem Chaos has 14 lines that are divided into
2 rhyme schemes. The first 8 lines or (octave) follow the abbaabba rhyme scheme and the last six lines (setet) simply follow cdcdcd rhyme scheme. The form of the poem is fixed and conforms to the traditional form of the Italian sonnet.
I found the poem interesting because the author uses personification to describe how chaotic writing a sonnet can be. She starts off by stating “I will put Chaos into fourteen lines”. Although Chaos in this line can refer to numerous things I concluded that the author is referring to words, with the 14 lines being the sonnet. It is the task of putting the right words in a good 14 line sonnet that is hard and even to MAllay, chaotic. The octave, as Meyer suggests on page 246, usually presents a situation, attitude, or problem; and in this poem represents the trouble of writing a good sonnet that sticks to the form Of traditional sonnets without overdoing it or making it to complex. While the octave reflects the stuggle of containing the sonnet through “order”, the sestet reflect the outcome or resolution. “Past are the hours, the years, of our duress” (9), shows repitition and may reflect how practice with the sonnet is what makes it work.