Sonnet Analysis

http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/poem/242124

The sonnet I found is "Fruit Don't Fall Far," by Elsa von Freytag-Loringhoven. I chose this sonnet because it is a lovely mix of flowery language and blunt profanity, which is what I look for in any literary work. It's three quatrains and couplet make it a Shakespearean sonnet, as well as the rhyme scheme. Now, von Freytag-Loringhoven wasn't very strict in sticking to meter and rhyme scheme. There are deviations from iambic pentameter in lines 10 and 12, and line 6 only works if you slur "irons" into one syllable. And several of her rhymes are just kinda close, like rhyming "ribaldry" with "heap," or "smutty" with "fucking" (I'msorrythat'swhatitsays!).

The turn, while usually between lines 12 and 13 in Shakespearean sonnets, instead comes between lines 8 and 9, as is customary of Petrarchal sonnets. At the turn, she shifts from describing her parents and the traits they gave her to contemplating the legitimacy of parenthood. This point of the sonnet is von Freytag-Loringhoven expressing what borders on mild disgust for her parents. She describes her father as crude and not much else, and her mother as harsh and dominating. But she has to grudgingly accept that they are, in fact, her biological parents and she can do nothing about that fact. She must even accept that much of the traits of her parents that she disliked are also present in her; as they say, the "Fruit Don't Fall Far" from the tree.