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The Peppler Sonnet Service: a history

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Creating a job uniquely suited to my peculiar talents.

Or, how I supported myself for three years churning out iambic pentameter at home. You, too, can surely figure out something unconventional that will pay the rent!

I graduated from Yale in 1975, completely perplexed about what to do next.

To put off the decision, I spent the summer playing fiddle for the "College Light Opera Company" in Falmouth, Massachusetts, wondering where I would even go to live when we put away our instruments for the last time.

I really liked one of my fellow fiddlers, and she was moving to Cambridge. Then I met the members of a Balkan singing group based in Cambridge, and they offered me an audition...

... that one little bit of synchrony caused me to ship my few things to the house of a friend already living there. I found a place to live, and started working as a temporary typist while I decided what to do next.

The picture here was taken by a photographer for the "Christian Science Monitor;" he came with a writer to do a story on the business I created, which was called the "Peppler Sonnet Service." Just another chapter in the life of a person who is more different than absolutely necessary.

You, too, can find your dream niche. Do something nobody else does, and maybe the Christian Science Monitor will come do a story on you, too!

My mentor and inspiration: Naomi Weissman

Naomi Weissman was my seventh grade English teacher. She was, besides my aunt, the only person who "believed in me" at the time. I was a cranky, shy girl without many friends.

One day she was teaching about poetry and gave us the homework assignment to write a sonnet that night. I went home and knocked out my first sonnet, "The Snake," in 20 minutes, which was to continue to be my average sonnet-composition time. That had been so much fun, I knocked out a couple more.

When she passed the assignment back to us a couple days later, she told me I had a real knack for this....

I forgot all about it, of course, because seventh graders don't have use for poetry, but ten years later...

Boredom explodes into "Eureka! I've got it!"

In which I figure out a way to combine two of my talents.

I was on a tedious family vacation in Moosehead Maine. The water was too cold for swimming. Everybody but me was fishing all day long.

I was trying to ignore my dad's disgust with my lack of a "real" job. He wrote me: "If I'd known how you were going to turn out, I would never have sent you to college."

I entertained myself by (1) reading "Daniel Deronda" and (2) practicing calligraphy, which was a new enthusiasm of mine.

I was trying to improve my skills, so I needed things to practice on. I started composing doggerel in my head, just to have something to letter nicely during practice sessions.

Somebody had given me a copy of "What Color is Your Parachute," a book about finding your dream job - in particular, as I recall, focusing on what you're good at rather than what you see in the "Help Wanted" ads.

Suddenly I remembered Naomi Weissman's encouragement and I thought: "Aha! I can write sonnets and letter them and SELL them to people!

The book that inspired my career in poetry!

How I got into the poetry biz...

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The poster I stapled on telephone poles.

It was a big hit!

I entered into this business in 1976; I remember because I did a few "Bicentennial Sonnets." This was my original ad.

It turns out, media people found this an irresistible high-concept story idea.

Maybe they all secretly harbored hopes of making their living writing poetry...

The first to pick up on my idea was the Boston Globe; they did a huge spread on me on the front page of their Living section and I started getting a lot of work.

Then the Christian Science Monitor guys came down and they, too, loved the idea and wrote it up.

I raised my prices a bit, and actually supported myself for about three years writing sonnets (I offered limericks, rondelets, etc. as well, but nobody was much interested in those forms).

Then Susan Stamberg did a story on me for "All Things Considered."

Valentine's Day, 1978 (or so)...

NPR! Those artsy types just ate it up!...

... and I got even more work after that!

The steps involved in writing poetry for hire.

  • A customer called or wrote. Nowadays, it would be an email, I suppose.

    He or she says: "Can you write a sonnet for my grandmother's birthday?"
  • "Yes, of course," I say, "with the greatest of pleasure. Let me get a piece of paper and I will ask you a few questions."
  • Me: "Tell me about your grandmother. What do you want to say? What does she like? What are some things you remember fondly?"

    I gradually pull enough information out of the customer to write the poem. Actually, it's best to get MORE than enough, because it turns out some things are just not suited to iambic pentameter.
  • I sit down with a rhyming dictionary and a thesaurus, and I start composing lines of iambic pentameter. You have to have an ear for meter. For instance, it should be obvious that the phrase "mashed potatoes" fits nicely into the sonnet form while the word "hullabaloo" is just not going to fly.
  • I spend a full twenty minutes or so fitting together the pieces of the puzzle, getting the iambic lines to rhyme correctly. Done!
  • I send the poem to the customer for approval. When it's approved, the customer sends a check and I letter the poem with my italic pen on a nice piece of paper and mail it. Everybody is happy!

A Harvard poetry professor makes his students pay me to write them a sonnet.

One of the stranger triumphs of my life.

Sometime after the first article in the Boston Globe was published, I got a call from a professor at Harvard. He had a class teaching aspiring poets and he was disgusted with them.

Basically, they all just wanted to "express themselves" and were taking full advantage of the modern "free verse" style. In fact, they had no ear at all for rhyming or scansion (the metrical patterns of a line of verse).

So he asked me to come to class. The snooty students were asked to cough up my fee - it came, reluctantly, rolling across the table one grudging quarter after another.

When the requisite fee was in my hand, they started giving me images to put in my sonnet. He showed me to an empty classroom and I wrote my poem while they had the rest of their class. Then I stood in front of them and read it.

It was crummy, like all my poems, but it rhymed and scanned correctly. I don't know if they were as abashed as he wanted them to be, but it was an amusing afternoon.

Why I quit the poetry biz.

It isn't that the work dried up, far from it. I just gradually got fed up with writing such awful poems. There is a limit to how many poems a person can write about Grannie's apple pie and cads who dump their girls without ill effect.

I started waking up in the morning with the previous day's stupid rhymes rattling in my head. I decided it was time to move on.

So if you would like to take up the profession, be my guest!

What is the rhythm and length of a sonnet?

It's fourteen lines of iambic pentameter.

An "iamb" is two syllables with the emphasis on the second syllable. Those two syllables, together, are called a "foot"

"Pentameter" means there are five "feet" in a line of poetry.

So "iambic pentameter" means five feet which go weak STRONG weak STRONG etc.

Here's a line of iambic pentameter:

hello hello hello hello hello

But don't expect to get paid well for that!

Petrarchan and Shakespearian rhyme schemes for sonnets.

The sonnet form was invented in the 13th century.

  • The Italian, or Petrarchan, sonnet consists of a two quatrains followed by a sestet.
    The typical rhyme scheme is: ABBA ABBA followed by CDE CDE.

  • The Shakespearian sonnet consists of three quatrains followed by a couplet.
    The rhyme scheme is: ABAB CDCD EFEF GG

As a tip for those of you going into the business: nobody wants a Petrarchan sonnet. Everybody is waiting for that couplet kicker at the end, and they'll be dissatisfied if they don't get it.

Another tip for aspiring poets: don't even bother asking them what kind of sonnet they want. It will make them nervous. Just write them a Shakespearian sonnet and they'll be happy.

Shakespeare's sonnet #116

Read a really good one:

Let me not to the marriage of true minds
Admit impediments. Love is not love
Which alters when it alteration finds,
Or bends with the remover to remove:
O, no! it is an ever-fixed mark,
That looks on tempests and is never shaken;
It is the star to every wandering bark,
Whose worth's unknown, although his height be taken.
Love's not Time's fool, though rosy lips and cheeks
Within his bending sickle's compass come;
Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks,
But bears it out even to the edge of doom.
If this be error and upon me proved,
I never writ, nor no man ever loved.

My other lenses with poetry and ballad-writing

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How to write a sonnet? There's lots of advice on line!

Some Sonnet Writing Advice from the Sonnet Board
"Some Sonnet Writing Advice from the Sonnet Board... Below are some comments from visitors to the Sonnet Board that may be of help to those writing their first sonnets. Good luck to you, and don't be discouraged--usually, several revisions will be needed before you find what you are after..."
Make your own Sonnet : Poetry through the Ages
"Look to an expert sonneteer like Christina Rossetti as a guide to how to work the content of a sonnet. Rossetti was half of one of the 19th century's great family writing duos (her brother, Dante Gabriel Rossetti, was a poet and translator). Christina Rossetti and Elizabeth Barrett Browning brought women's desires and emotions into the sonnet, adding further depth to the form..."

Do you write poetry that rhymes and scans? Have you invented an unusual job for yourself?

  • _Joan_ Sep 15, 2010 @ 8:55 am | delete
    And in answer to the Guestbook question: Yes, I've cranked out poems on occasion (I lean toward the limerick). And I have created an unusual business -- ChoirParts.com (which I have a lens about that you may have already seen).
  • _Joan_ Sep 15, 2010 @ 8:51 am | delete
    Seeing this lens for the first time, and I love it! What a delightful adventure! An Angel blessing on this lens.

    But you sent the sonnets to the customers before they had paid you? I would be so afraid that the customer would say, "I'm sorry, but I don't really like it", deny me my payment, and then recopy the poem themselves and still use it. I'm glad to hear that it did work out for you for as long as you did it.
  • JaguarJulie Sep 11, 2010 @ 7:46 am | delete
    You know I used to write poetry when I was younger and I am now feeling inspired to try my hand at it again!
  • ChapelHillFiddler Oct 23, 2009 @ 12:47 pm | delete
    Mahjoub, do you want a sonnet for somebody - or is this a homework assignment?
  • mahjoub Oct 23, 2009 @ 12:29 pm | delete
    can some one write me a sonnet
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Some of my other do-it-yourself lenses

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ChapelHillFiddler

Musician in Chapel Hill with two bands: Mappamundi, a world music - klezmer - swing band, and the Pratie Heads, a Celtic - British Isles - early music... more »

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