Sonnet Specifications
(in the "Standard" Shakespearean 14-line Sonnet style:)
ABAB CDCD EFEF GG

A sonnet per day keeps no doctor away
but it might prevent auto-suggestion:
that thing that occurs when a thought goes astray
amid layers of mental congestion.
If it rhymes, write it down. Count the syllables, too,
and the stresses per line. Those define it.
First, you need fourteen lines. Any order will do,
but some sub-groupings serve to refine it.
Take Dante and Shakespeare who taught the whole world:
Four times three / three times four; add a couple.
Then observe how the story of sonnets unfurled
getting ever more trenchant and supple.
It matters, maybe, what you wish your message to impart.
But how you state it, that becomes your own and special art.