The following is a crash course in
poetry and form. It is intended just
to give you an introduction to the
subject.
If you would like to learn more,
you might consider taking English
222, “Introduction to Poetry.”
The poet Donald Hall said that
poems have the effect they do
on us because of certain
qualities of language. He gave
these qualities some funny
names:
Form
in Poetry
Goatfoot
Note too
that all of
these
qualities
are
PHYSICAL!
Bonk baby Bonk baby…Bonk-Bonk!
Rhythm!
Milktongue
Sound and ORAL satisfaction,
Yumm
Twinbird
The satisfying CLICK at
the end when opposites
are resolved; total form.
Children
LOVE
goatfoot and
milktongue.
They
haven’t yet
learned to
dislike or
become
indifferent to
language! In
fact, they
utterly DIG
language!
What makes poetry different
from prose, in the most
rudimentary sense?
It’s in LINES!
Well, usually.
Ok, so how do you know where to break
those lines? What principles govern
line length?
Accentual Verse
Line lengths determined by a consistent number of beats per line.
In a summer season
when soft was the sun
I shaped me in shrouds
In habit as a hermit
as a shepherd I were
unholy of works
caesura or pause
Went wide in this world
wonders to hear
Accentual verse, as in the Old English,
can be a bit wooden:
BONK-BONK (pause) BONK-BONK (pause)
But its simplicity and even courseness
has its own beauty.
So, line lengths in poetry can be determined by a set number of
beats or stresses. When you follow this principle, you’re writing
accentual verse. Line lengths, though, can also be determined by
other principles, such as a set number of
Syllables
When you do this, you’re writing syllabic verse.
A famous Asian syllabic form of course is the
Tanka is Japanese poetry with five unrhymed
_______________.
HAIKU
lines of five, seven, five, seven, and seven
syllables. (5, 7, 5, 7, 7)
Distant siren screams 5 syllables
Dumb-ass Verne’s been playing with
Gasoline again. 5 syllables
7 syllables
See our class library for more white trash haiku:
REMORSE
A painful sadness
Can't fit big screen TV through
Double-wide's front door
DEPRIVED
In WalMart toy aisle
Wailing boy wants Barbie doll
Mama whups his ass
DESIRE
Damn, in that tube-top
You make me almost forget
You are my cousin
Oh yeah—don’t forget all the other resources in our class online
library!
Syllabics aren’t really native to English,
however, because ...
English is a Germanic language and
heavily stressed. Syllable count in and
of itself isn’t important to meaning.
Stresses, on the other hand, can be
FELT and are INTEGRAL to meaning:
Hey look at the white house.
Hey look at the White House.
And yet another way of
determining line length is:
by counting BOTH stresses and
syllables.
This is called accentual-syllabic verse.
A unit comprised of a stressed
syllable and its accompanying
unstressed syllables is called a FOOT.
iamb =
trochee =
anapest =
dactyl =
pentameter
A line with 5 feet = ______________
trimeter
A line with 3 feet = ______________
hexameter
A line with six feet = _____________
And so on.
There are many patterns possible in
accentual-syllabic lines:
Iambic pentameter
A line with 5 iambic feet = ______________
dactylic trimeter
A line with 3 dactylic feet = _____________
trochaic tetrameter
A line with 4 trochaic feet = ____________
And so on.
Why do you
suppose the
IAMB is so
important a foot
in English
poetry?
Der!
that’s…
Goatfoot,honey!
Rhythm
Pattern
Thrumming
Throbbing
the DRUM in
your own body
YOUR OWN
PULSE
A traditional or “fixed-form poem”
is a type which has one or more prescribed
formal characteristics: a set rhythm, a set
rhyme scheme, a set stanza length, etc. Some
famous examples of fixed forms include:
• The sonnet
• The sestina
• The villanelle
• Blank verse
The art of losing isn’t hard to master;
so many things seem filled with the intent
to be lost that their loss is no disaster.
Lose something every day. Accept the fluster
of lost door keys, the hour badly spent.
The art of losing isn’t hard to master.
Then practice losing farther, losing faster:
places, and names, and where it was you meant
to travel. None of these will bring disaster.
I lost my mother’s watch. And look! my last, or
next-to-last, of three loved houses went.
The art of losing isn’t hard to master.
I lost two cities, lovely ones. And, vaster,
some realms I owned, two rivers, a continent.
I miss them, but it wasn’t a disaster.
--Even losing you (the joking voice, a gesture
I love) I shan’t have lied. It’s evident
the art of losing’s not too hard to master
though it may look like (Write it!) like disaster.
One Art
--Elizabeth Bishop
This is an
example of a
villanelle.
What prescribed
formal
characteristics
does it have?
Time flies, and a year can go by in a day.
Look at your watch. Do your eyes say 2:45 or 9:15?
The more you have, the more you can give away.
The More You
Have to Lose
You know the feeling, having no money, having to stay
With relatives when you travel, unable to say what you mean:
Time lies, and a year can go by in a day.
–David Lehman
When my father turned into my son, as in a play,
All the fun took place offstage. What about the missing queen?
The more you have, the more you can give away.
The less you believe. The more you wish you could pray.
Like a clock without hands, the truth of a face remains unseen.
Time lies, and a year can go by in a day.
With an elbow on the counter, and no passions left to sway,
The all-night waitress smokes butt after butt, coughing in-between:
The more you have, the more you can throw away.
Ocean, what is on the other side of all that blue and gray?
What does the grass know of yesterday's vanished green?
Time lies, and a year can go by in a day.
The more you have, the more you can give away.
I'm sorry, officer, I didn't see the sign
Because, in fact, there wasn't any. I tell you
The light was green. How much is the fine?
First Offense
Will the tumor turn out malignant or benign?
Will the doctor tell us? He said he knew.
I'm sorry, officer, I didn't see the sign.
Not every madman is an agent of the divine.
Not all who pass are allowed to come through.
The light was green. How much is the fine?
Which is worse, the rush or the wait? The line
Interminable, or fear of coming fate? His anxiety grew.
I'm sorry, officer. I didn't see the sign.
I'm cold sober. All I had was one glass of wine.
Was anyone hurt? Is there anything I can do?
The light was green. How much is the fine?
Will we make our excuses like so many clever lines,
Awkwardly delivered? Never to win, always to woo?
I'm sorry, officer. I didn't see the sign.
The light was green. How much is the fine?
—David Lehman
The sestina is a fun one…
The sestina is a poem in iambic pentameter, with
thirty-nine lines, divided into six stanzas of six lines
each, plus a terminal envoy of three lines.
The same six words conclude the lines of each
stanza, but their order is varied in each stanza
according to a strict pattern.
The final envoy also uses the six words, but three
appear at the ends of the lines and three appear in
the middle of the lines. In the graph below, each
number represents a specific word.
Stanza I
Stanza II
Stanza III
1--Angel
2--Sandwich
3--Hope
4--Below
5--Crave
6—Time
1--Angel
5--Crave
2--Sandwich
6--Time
4--Below
3--Hope
3--Hope
6 Time
4 Below
1 Angel
2 Sandwich
5 Crave
5—Crave
3--Hope
2
6
Stanza IV
1
4
Stanza V
4
5
1
3
6
2
Stanza VI
2
4
6
5
3
1
BTW, most people
don’t write the
sestina in
pentameter; it’s
already hard
enough!
Envoy
2---5
4---3
6---1
See this sestina collection.
Pantoums are also a kick…
•
•
•
•
•
•
Lines are grouped into quatrains (4-line stanzas).
The final line of the Pantoum must be the same as its first line.
A Pantoum has any number of quatrains.
Lines may be of any length.
The Pantoum has a rhyme scheme of abab in each quatrain. Thus, the lines
rhyme alternately.
The Pantoum says everything twice:
For all quatrains except the first, the first line of the current quatrain repeats the
second line in the preceeding quatrain; and the third line of the current quatrain
repeats the fourth line of the preceeding quatrain.
In addition, for the final quatrain, its second line repeats the (so-far unrepeated) third
line in the first quatrain; and its last line repeats the (so-far unrepeated) first line of the
first quatrain.
Thus the pattern of line-repetition is as follows, where the lines of the first quatrain
are represented by the numbers "1 2 3 4":
1234
2546
5768
7 9 8 10
9 3 10 1
Lines in first quatrain
Lines in second quatrain
Lines in third quatrain
Lines in fourth quatrain
Lines in fifth and final quatrain
Our lives avoided tragedy
Simply by going on and on,
Without end and with little apparent meaning.
Oh, there were storms and small catastrophes.
Simply by going on and on
We managed. No need for the heroic.
Oh, there were storms and small catastrophes.
I don't remember all the particulars.
We managed. No need for the heroic.
There were the usual celebrations, the usual sorrows.
I don't remember all the particulars.
Across the fence, the neighbors were our chorus.
There were the usual celebrations, the usual sorrows.
Thank god no one said anything in verse.
The neighbors were our only chorus,
And if we suffered we kept quiet about it.
Pantoum Of The Great
Depression
--Donald Justice
At no time did anyone say anything in verse.
It was the ordinary pities and fears consumed us,
And if we suffered we kept quiet about it.
No audience would ever know our story.
It was the ordinary pities and fears consumed us.
We gathered on porches; the moon rose; we were poor.
What audience would ever know our story?
Beyond our windows shone the actual world.
And time went by, drawn by slow horses.
We did not ourselves know what the end was.
The Great Depression had entered our souls like fog.
We had our flaws, perhaps a few private virtues.
We gathered on porches; the moon rose; we were poor.
And time went by, drawn by slow horses.
Somewhere beyond our windows shone the actual world.
The Great Depression had entered our souls like fog.
But we did not ourselves know what the end was.
People like us simply go on.
We had our flaws, perhaps a few private virtues,
But it is by blind chance only that we escape tragedy.
And there is no plot in that; it is devoid of poetry.
Blank Verse
from "Birches"
Unrhymed iambic
pentameter with no set
number of lines.
When I see birches bend to left and right
Across the lines of straighter darker trees,
I like to think some boy's been swinging them.
But swinging doesn't bend them down to stay
As ice-storms do. Often you must have seen them
Loaded with ice a sunny winter morning
After a rain. They click upon themselves
As the breeze rises, and turn many-colored
As the stir cracks and crazes their enamel.
Soon the sun's warmth makes them shed crystal shells
Shattering and avalanching on the snow-crust—
Such heaps of broken glass to sweep away
You'd think the inner dome of heaven had fallen.
--Robert Frost
Let’s analyze some lines on the board…
• Does form affect content?
• Does the sonnet or the sestina or the
villanelle lead to a certain pattern of
thinking?
Also, listen, NOT JUST for
BEATS or metrics, but for
SSSSSSSounds…
SENSUAL SOUNDS AND TEXTURES
Along with rhythm, they
make up the sensual body of
the poem.
Look at that Frost passage again…
Often you must have seen them
Loaded with ice a sunny winter morning
After a rain. They click upon themselves
As the breeze rises, and turn many-colored
As the stir cracks and crazes their enamel.
Soon the sun's warmth makes them shed crystal
shells
Shattering and avalanching on the snow-crust—
ice sunny soon sun's shed shells
shattering snow SSSSSSSSnake
sunny enamel nnnn & mmmm & nunderful!
click colored KickKluckKlack
breeze rises crazes ZZZZZZZuzu’s
petals
stir cracks crust ERRRRRiotous!
and sssssssssssssssssssssssssssss
Root Cellar
Nothing would sleep in that cellar, dank as a ditch,
Bulbs broke out of boxes hunting for chinks in the
dark,
Shoots dangled and drooped,
Lolling obscenely from mildewed crates,
Hung down long yellow evil necks, like tropical snakes.
And what a congress of stinks!
Roots ripe as old bait,
Pulpy stems, rank, silo-rich,
Leaf-mold, manure, lime, piled against slippery planks.
Nothing would give up life:
Even the dirt kept breathing a small breath.
dank ditch dark dangled drooped dirt
dank broke chinks dark necks snakes
ripe silo lime piled life
alliteration
consonance
assonance
sleep cellar bulbs dangled lolling obscenely mildewed long yellow evil planks
like piled tropical sleep
roots ripe rank rich manure slippery dirt breathing breath
tropical ripe pulpy piled slippery planks
mildewed stems mold manure lime small
Language that sounds
like what it means;
evokes feeling utterly in
synch with meaning.
long I-sounds plus L’s plus P’s and B’s and M’s =
LOTS OF LONG TROPICAL LOOPY SNAKY LIVES LOLLING IN
BREATHY DANK AND MOLDY DARK!
Any form of sound pattern in poetry, really, is a form of
RHYME
•
True or exact rhyme = the first or middle vowel and the final consonant of two
words are exactly the same, but the final consonant, if there is one, differs:
hat/cat
•
Slant or partial rhyme = the first consonant (if any) in two words is the same; the
middle vowel is different; and the final consonant is the same:
hat/heat
•
ear/beer.
ear/are.
Assonance = two or more words have the same vowel sounds:
the pink breeze we need is free.
•
Alliteration = two or more words have the same initial consonant:
huge hairy hungry hunk.
•
Consonance = two or more words have the same end consonant sounds:
munch the batch of patched and crouching bitches.
And, finally…
Nothing would give up life:
Even the dirt kept breathing a small breath.
Feel the CLICK at the end of
Roethke’s poem?
That’s
FORM !
That’s…
& the satisfying
resolution or suspension
of opposites, of tension.
Ok,
so what is “free verse,” as the
term is generally understood?
Poetry with no form?
Poetry with no constraints or
prescriptions of any kind?
Lines can be broken randomly, no
patterns of sound or stress?
NOT!
Free verse poems (good ones) always have
TONS of rhythm and gorgeous sound
patterns. These features simply aren’t
prescribed in advanced of the poem, but are
rather discovered in the writing of the poem.
They are used more or less UNCONSCIOUSLY and intuitively. And they will of
course tend to be less regular than in fixed
forms. T.S. Eliot said that good free verse
always had the ghost of meter behind it.
Free verse lines are typically
broken according to the
following principles:
 Desire for a particular effect, ethos, feeling
 Smoothness and elegance, for example, with a spoken quality, whole
sentences or complete phrases
= end-stopped
He was completely and outrageously without a stitch of clothing.
 Or maybe roughness, a poem that “fights itself,” is less “spoken,” stuttery,
broken against the syntax of the sentence, of the phrase
= enjambed
He was
Completely and
Outrageously without
A
Stitch of
Clothing.
He
Was completely and
Outrageously
Without a stitch of
Clothing.
 Rhetorical emphasis and desire to stress particular words:
He was completely and outrageously without
A stitch
Of clothing.
 Breath units He was completely and outrageously without
a stitch of clothing.
 Visual emphasis
For a
great poet
who really jams
with enjambs
a lot…
see Robert
Creeley
What determines stanza breaks
in free verse?
• Each stanza is a verse paragraph,
focused on a single topic or idea.
• Each stanza and its accompanying
break is a unit of rhythm.
• Each stanza is a rhetorical
gesture.
Free Verse Exercise
The following is a free verse poem written
out as a prose paragraph with all of the
poet’s original line breaks removed.
Read it and decide where you think the line
breaks belong or would work best. I.e., on a
piece of note paper, write it out as a poem
with line breaks re-inserted. I’ll show you the
original poem in class so that you can
compare your choices with the poet’s.
The Mirror
Watching you in the mirror I wonder what it is
like to be so beautiful and why you do not
love but cut yourself, shaving like a blind
man. I think you let me stare so you can turn
against yourself with greater violence,
needing to show me how you scrape the
flesh away scornfully and without hesitation
until I see you correctly, as a man bleeding,
not the reflection I desire.
The Mirror
Watching you in the mirror
I wonder what it is like
to be so beautiful
Lines all end-stopped
and why you do not love
(complete sentences or
but cut yourself,
phrases)
shaving like a blind man.
I think you let me stare
so you can turn against yourself
with greater violence,
needing to show me
how you scrape the flesh away scornfully
and without hesitation
until I see you correctly,
as a man bleeding,
not the reflection I desire.
If you have any questions
about poetry and form, let me
know!