Volta in Poetry

 

Sonnet 130: My mistress' eyes are nothing like the sun

BY WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE

My mistress' eyes are nothing like the sun;

Coral is far more red than her lips' red;

If snow be white, why then her breasts are dun;

If hairs be wires, black wires grow on her head.

I have seen roses damasked, red and white,

But no such roses see I in her cheeks;

And in some perfumes is there more delight

Than in the breath that from my mistress reeks.

I love to hear her speak, yet well I know

That music hath a far more pleasing sound;

I grant I never saw a goddess go;

My mistress, when she walks, treads on the ground.

   And yet, by heaven, I think my love as rare

   As any she belied with false compare.

***

According to Poetry Foundation: Glossary of Poetic Terms a Volta -

Italian word for “turn.” In a sonnet, the volta is the turn of thought or argument: in Petrarchan or Italian sonnets it occurs between the octave and the sestet, and in Shakespearean or English before the final couplet. See Thomas Wyatt’s “Whoso List to Hunt, I Know where is an Hind” and William Shakespeare's Sonnet 129 [“Th’expense of spirit in a waste of shame”] for examples of voltas of each type.

***

A volta can also be characterized by a change in opinion or even a shift from one speaker to the next. The volta separates one part of the poem from the next. In some cases, it supplies a conclusion, an answer, or an explanation to the first part of the poem. Other words associated with this literary device are “fulcrum” and “swerve”. 

This technique is connected to sonnet writing, specifically traditional sonnets like Shakesperean, Miltonic, and Petrarchan sonnets.