Are contemporary sonnets as good as classical sonnets?

Question

A sonnet I posted yesterday by Elizabeth Barrett Browning was deleted. I hereby post another by this great poet as an example of the sonnet form:

Sonnets From the Portuguese I

by Elizabeth Barrett Browning

I thought once how Theocritus had sung

Of the sweet years, the dear and wished for years,

Who each one in a gracious hand appears

To bear a gift for morals, old or young:

And, as I mused it in his antique tongue,

I saw, in gradual vision through my tears,

The sweet, sad years, the melancholy years,

Those of my own life, who by turns had flung

A shadow across me. Straightway I was 'ware,

So weeping, how a mystic Shape did move

Behind me, and drew me backward by the hair;

And a voice said in mastery while I strove...

"Guess now who holds thee?"

..........................."Death!" I said, But, there,

The silver answer rang..."Not Death, but Love."

Spell Chick says she has "a lot of punctuation." What do you think of this poem and of its punctuation, form and imagery?

Answer 1

Punc Chick is no poet, but Mrs. Browning certainly was.  The sonnet is

such a gorgeous form and her images are so clear!  I loved the build up, then the wonderful resolution.  Thanks for another example from another time and place which feels entirely contemporary.

Answer 2

A sonnet, in classical form a charm

soft as sundawn, it wakens spirit love

calling you, wanting you, it takes your arm

and whisks you away on wings of a dove

Enjoyable to read both new and old although with old you spend time with the dictionary on some words chosen.  P.S. Should I continue my sonnet editor?  

Answer 3

I like this style better than the common Shakespearean garden variety, but I'm a little thrown by the 15 lines. Is the punctuation in line 14 telling us that it is a continuation of line 13 with a big ole aposiopesis separating the two making it really one, and therefore keeping it pentametric?

Spell chick is on crack!

Answer 4

A beautiful sonnet is a beautiful sonnet whether written today, yesterday or in1861. I believe there is only poetry and opinions in the eyes of the beholder. You only have to look at the comments here on Y/A to see diametrically opposed views of a single piece of work.

With regard to Spell-thick I am restraining myself...apart from it insisting that we British cannot spell words such as colour and criticise, it has no soul, it cannot read, understand, comprehend. It butts in like an ill mannered window salesman and if it had ears they would be constantly burning! A pox on it, I say!! ( I feel better for that.)

Answer 5

Elizabeth Barrett Browning was a master of the sonnets. And up till her time, there were only few who used sonnets to propogate the philosophical textings. Hers is infact Love's philosophy...

There is a joke we usually say about her poems...

"There were only two people who could actually understand her and her poems.....One is God and the other is Robert Browning."

"There were only two people who could actually understand Robert Browning and his poems...God and his wife Elizabeth."

And as far as the punctuation, form and imagery of her poems, there are no problems at all. There is mastery in her art for sure.

And the fate of contemporary sonnet depends on the poet. But it is true that no one could write like Shakespeare, Spenser, Keats or like the greatest of all sonneteers, Petrarch. It is not hardwork or labour with dictionaries that made them great...but the musicians within them..the inherent accord of words...the luxury of imagination and power of creation....but more than all the knowledge of life...and dedication to poetry...