Curtal sonnet is

In poetry, a sonnet has 14 lines. Each line has 10 syllables. It has a specific rhyme scheme.

Important Points

The name Curtal Sonnet was given by the English poet Gerard Manley Hopkins (1844 - 89) to a curtailed form of the sonnet which he invented.

• A curtal sonnet, which means that it is shorter than the usual sonnet, which as you know is 11 lines long or, to be a more precise ten-and-a-half-line sonnet.
• Hopkins describes the relationship between the Petrarchan and curtal sonnets mathematically in his Poems.
• According to him, the Petrarchan sonnet can be described by the equation 8+6=14.
• Then, he says, the curtal sonnet would be:
  ${\displaystyle {12 \over 2}+{9 \over 2}={21 \over 2}=10{1 \over 2}}$

​​Hence, we conclude that Curtal Sonnet is a ten-and-a-half-line poem.