The Poet's Craft

Wyatt's poetry includes not only the sonnets based on Italian models but also many delightful lyrics with short stanzas and refrains in the manner of the native English "ballet" (pronounced to rhyme with mallet) or dance-song. Wyatt displays a very different temperament and disposition in these English poems from that shown in the sonnets. The lover in the Petrarchan sonnet is usually in a mood of doleful despair; the typical poem is essentially a complaint filled with elaborately worked out "conceits," or comparisons. The lover is abject, he is the lady's slave; her coldness is a perpetual torture to him. In the ballets, however, a cheerful, lively independence is the characteristic note.

Click here to read an analysis of Wyatt's complex revision of the Petrarchan ideal: Barbara L. Estrin, "Wyatt's Unlikely Likenesses: Or, Has the Lady Read Petrarch?"

Wyatt was not primarily concerned with regularity of accent and smoothness of rhythm. "They Flee from Me" makes use of rhyme royal.

Click here to read a discussion of Wyatt's conflicted use of the linguistic structures of his time: Cecile Williamson Cary, "Sexual Identity in 'They Flee from Me' and Other Poems by Sir Thomas Wyatt."