Blazon
Quick answer: A blazon is a poem that catalogues the beloved's body part by part, each with its own comparison. Learn its history, the contre-blazon, and modern uses.
A blazon is a poem, or a passage within one, that catalogues the parts of a beloved's body one by one, praising each with its own comparison: eyes like suns, hair like gold wire, cheeks like roses. The word comes from heraldry, where a blazon was the formal verbal description of a coat of arms, and the poetic version keeps that itemising, official spirit: love conducted as an inventory.
You meet the blazon most densely in sixteenth-century European poetry. Petrarch's sonnets to Laura set the pattern, French poets led by Clement Marot turned the anatomical blazon into a fashionable genre of its own, and English sonneteers such as Sidney and Spenser imported the habit wholesale. Almost as quickly, poets began mocking it, which is why the blazon and its parody, the contre-blazon, are usually taught together.
The poem
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.
William Shakespeare, 'Sonnet 130' (1609)
How It Works
The blazon moves like a spotlight down a list: feature, comparison, feature, comparison. An invented modern example: your hands, two ferry boats; your spine, a ladder the morning climbs; your laugh, loose change in a warm pocket. Each item gets its own figure, and the accumulation is the point, praise by sheer thoroughness. The order matters too. Traditional blazons work downward from hair to foot, and any deviation from an expected order becomes meaningful: end on the hands rather than the lips and the poem says something about what kind of love this is.
The Contre-Blazon: Praise Turned Inside Out
By Shakespeare's time the blazon's comparisons had hardened into cliche, and Sonnet 130 demolishes them one by one, conceding that the mistress's eyes are not suns and her cheeks not roses, then insisting the love is rarer for the honesty. That counter-move, the contre-blazon, refuses the inflated catalogue while keeping its structure. It is a useful lesson in how forms stay alive: when a convention grows stale, poets renew it by writing against it from the inside.
Using the Blazon Today
Contemporary poets rarely play the blazon straight. The form's habit of dismembering a person into admirable parts has drawn sharp feminist criticism, and modern blazons tend to answer that history: poets turn the catalogue on their own bodies, on ageing, on illness, on a parent's hands, or praise attributes no Petrarchan would touch, a temper, a scar, a way of standing in doorways. The itemising structure still delivers its old pleasure, but the poem now knows what lists can do to people.
If you try one, let at least one item break the pattern. A single entry that praises something interior, or admits a flaw, keeps the catalogue from becoming a shop window.
What poets can take from this
- Decide on an order for your catalogue and break it exactly once, where it will mean most.
- Invent fresh comparisons; the blazon's stock images of suns, roses and gold died four centuries ago.
- Include at least one non-physical item, a habit or a silence, to keep the person whole.
- Consider whose gaze the poem performs, and whether the poem should acknowledge it.
- Try a contre-blazon first; refusing cliches is often the quickest route to honest praise.
Try it yourself
Write a blazon for something no one praises: a commuter train, a hospital waiting room, an old winter coat. Catalogue at least six parts, give each its own comparison, and let the final item reveal why the speaker needs to praise this thing at all.
Questions
What is the difference between a blazon and a contre-blazon?
A blazon praises the beloved's features part by part through flattering comparisons. A contre-blazon keeps the same catalogue structure but reverses or refuses the praise, often to mock the convention or to claim a more honest kind of love, as Shakespeare does in Sonnet 130.
Is the blazon considered sexist?
The traditional blazon has been widely criticised for reducing a woman to a list of parts viewed by a male speaker. Many contemporary poets engage that history deliberately, subverting the form, redirecting it at their own bodies, or using it for subjects outside romance.
Does a blazon have to be about a person?
No. The essential move is itemised praise through comparison, and modern poets have blazoned cities, cars, meals and landscapes. Keeping the catalogue structure while changing the subject is one of the liveliest ways to use the form now.
By the Writory editorial team, reviewed by working poets. Updated July 2026.
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