Crash Course in Poetry
Crash Course in Poetry
Poetic Subgenres
Narrative:
General characteristics:
1. The persona is the poet, but the events rendered are not those of the poet.
2. Non-dramatic, objective verse with regular rhyme scheme and meter which relates a story or narrative.
3. The narrative poem tells a story, sometimes simple, sometimes complicated, sometimes brief, sometimes long (as in the epic). Because of the increasing acceptance of the novel and shorter forms of prose fiction, narrative verse appears less frequently today. Almost opposite of the lyric, it can be characterized as follows:
4. It is highly objective.
5. It is told by a speaker detached from the action.
6. The thoughts and feelings of the speaker do not enter the poem.
7. The rhyme scheme is regular.
Specific types:
1. Epic: A long, dignified narrative poem that gives the account of a hero important to his/her nation or race. Epics will follow many conventions, including: the invocation of a muse, the use of epithets, the listing of heroes and combatants, and the beginning in medias res.
a. Anonymous: Beowulf
b. Lord Byron: Don Juan
c. John Milton: Paradise Lost
d. Homer: The Iliad; The Odyssey
e. Longfellow: The Song of Hiawatha
2. Ballad: Simple, narrative verse which tells a story to be sung or recited; the folk ballad is anonymously handed down, while the literary ballad has a single author. Ballads were usually created for singing, dealing with a dramatic episode, usually derived from a tragic incident in local history or legend. The story is told simply, impersonally, and often with vivid dialogue. Ballads are normally composed in quatrains with alternating four-stress and three-stress lines, the second and fourth lines rhyming; but some ballads are in couplet form, and some others have six-line stanzas.
a. John Keats: “La Belle Dame sans Merci”
b. Edward Arlington Robinson: “Richard Cory”
c. William Butler Yeats: “The Fiddler of Dooney”
Dramatic:
General Characteristics:
The persona of the poem is not the poet, but some other “character.” The events of the poem relate the experiences of this character.
Specific Type:
1. Dramatic Monologue: A poem in which the speaker tells a silent audience about a dramatic moment in his/her life and, in doing so, reveals his/her character.
The Victorian poet Robert Browning brought the dramatic monologue to great heights. As the title suggests, it is a poem told by one speaker about a significant event. Several qualities exist in the form:
The speaker reveals in his/her own words some dramatic situation in which he/she is involved.
The speaker demonstrates his/her character through the poem.
The speaker addresses a listener who does not engage in dialogue but helps to develop the speech.
We enter the psyche of the speaker, and the skillful poet makes much of his/her own nature, attitudes, and circumstances available in words to the reader who discerns the implications of the poem.
The dramatic monologue differs from a soliloquy in a play in that, in drama, time and place are developed before the character ascends the stage alone to make his/her remarks, whereas the dramatic monologue by itself establishes time, place, and character.
a. Robert Browning: “My Last Duchess”
b. T. S. Eliot: “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock”
Lyric:
General Characteristics:
The persona is the poet (implied), and the events rendered are those of the persona.
Subjective, reflective poetry with regular rhyme scheme and meter which reveals the poet’s thoughts and feelings to create a single, unique impression.
a. Matthew Arnold: “Dover Beach”
b. William Blake: “The Lamb,” “The Tiger”
c. Emily Dickinson: “Because I Could Not Stop for Death”
d. Langston Hughes: “Dream Deferred”
e. Andrew Marvell: “To His Coy Mistress”
f. Walt Whitman: “Out of the Cradle Endlessly Rocking”
The lyric is the most widely used type of poem, so diverse in its format that a rigid definition is impossible. However, several qualities are common to all lyrics:
They are limited in length.
They are intensely subjective
They are personal expressions of personal emotions.
Each expresses the thoughts and feelings of a single speaker.
They are highly imaginative.
Each as a regular rhyme scheme.
Actually, many other types of poems are lyrics, but they occur so frequently that they merit a separate classification. Among them are the following:
a. Aubade: a song written to praise the coming of dawn, or to lament the dawn’s separating two lovers.
a. Shakespeare: Act III,v of Romeo and Juliet
b. Edna St. Vincent Millay: “Aubade”
b. Ballade: a French poem of three eight-line stanzas, rhyming ababbcbc, and an envoy--a four-line refrain--rhyming bcbc, recited to another person.
c. Dirge: a poem or song of lament, usually a commemoration for the dead.
d. Eclogue: a bucolic or pastoral poem such as Spenser’s Shepheardes Calendar.
e. Elegy: A poem of lament, meditating on the death of a friend or public figure.
a. W. H. Auden: “In Memory of W. B. Yeats”
b. John Milton: “Lycidas”
c. Theodore Roethke: “Elegy for Jane”
d. Alfred, Lord Tennyson: “In Memoriam A. H. H.”
During the classical period in Greece, the elegy took a specific form (couplets in metric unison) to deal with the poet’s attitude not only about death, but also about life and love. Now the term refers specifically to poems that mourn the death of an individual, the absence of something deeply loved, or the transience of humankind.
A form of the lyric, the poem has a solemn, dignified tone as it laments the loss of something dear to the poet or to humankind.
A particular subset is the Pastoral Elegy, a mourning poem with a joyous ending. The format involves a shepherd set in a pastoral world, a rustic, fertile environment marked by eternal summer and fecund nature. Among the more famous ones are Milton’s “Lycidas” and Shelley’s “Adonais.”
f. Epithalamion: a poem written in celebration of marriage.
g. Hymn: a poem of religious emotion usually written for singing.
h. Idyll: Short, lyric poetry describing an incident of country life in terms of idealized innocence and contentment.
a. Alfred, Lord Tennyson: “Idylls of the King”
b. William Wordsworth: “The Solitary Reaper”
i. Monody: a poem similar to a dirge; a Greek poem of mourning sung by one person.
j. Ode: Elaborate lyric verse with deals seriously with a dignified theme.
An ode is an exalted, complex, rapturous lyric poem to ceremoniously address a person or an abstract quality. The original ancient odes were written in Greece, delivered by a chorus singing and performing an elaborate dance. The Greek poet Pindar developed the first odes consisting of complex stanzaic forms in units of three, the strophe, antistrophe, and epode. Each section had a movement of the chorus in dance rhythm; together they were meant to correspond to ebbs and flows of emotion.
a. John Keats: “Ode on a Grecian Urn”
b. Percy Bysshe Shelley: “Ode to the West Wind”
c. William Wordsworth: “Ode: Intimations of Immortality”
In English there are three approximate types of odes:
a. The Pindaric or regular ode consists of the same strophe, antistrophe, epode division of its historical antecedent. Metrics and verse vary at times, but a regular rhythmic pattern emerges.
b. The Horation or homostrophic ode is patterned after the subject, form, and tone of the Roman poet Horace’s verse. It consists of one repeated stanza type, although it may vary within is form (e.g., Keat’s “Ode to Autumn”).
c. The irregular ode, growing from the work of the seventeenth century poet Abraham Cowley, imitates the spirit of the Pindaric or regular ode, but disregards the strophe and stanza rules. It is very flexible and offers the poet an opportunity to change stanza line structure, length, meter, and rhyme to suit his/her subject, mood, and tone. Because of the freedom in the irregular ode, it is the most common in English poetry.
k. Pastoral: many forms of literature fit this category; its setting is a created world marked by constant summer and fecund nature.
l. Rondeau: a French poem for light topics; it has 15 octosyllabic lines, with refrains at lines 9 and 15, rhymed aabba, aabc, aabbac.
m. Rondel: a poem similar to a rondeau, with usually 13 (or sometimes 14) lines, with the first two lines repeated at lines 7 and 8. The rhyme scheme is: ABba abAB abba A(B).
n. Song: a poem for musical expression, usually brief, straightforward, and emotional.
o. Sonnet: A rigid 14-line verse form, with variable structure and rhyme scheme according to type. All sonnets are written in iambic pentameter.
a. Petrarchan (Italian)—an octave and sestet, between which a break in thought occurs; usually two ideas are developed, either compared or contrasted. Frequently the octave develops a question, a story, or an idea, and the sestet presents the answer, a comment, or a proposition. The traditional rhyme scheme is abba abba cde cde (or, in the sestet, any variation of c, d, e).
i. Elizabeth Barrett Browning: “How Do I Love Thee?”
ii. John Donne: “Death, Be Not Proud”
b. Shakespearean (English)—three quatrains and concluding couplet in iambic pentameter, there are two standard variations: rhyming abab cdcd efef gg or abba cddc effe gg. Each of the three quatrains develops a different aspect of the subject, and the couplet makes a final comment.
c. Spenserian—a specialized English form with linking rhyme abab bcbc cdcd ee.
d. Miltonian—a specialized English form with the same octave scheme as the Petrarchan sonnet (abba abba) but keeps the sestet as an integral part of the meaning of the poem rather than coming to a conclusion.
i. Robert Lowell: “Salem”
ii. William Shakespeare: “Shall I Compare Thee?”; “Those Lips That Love's Own Hand Did Make”
iii. John Milton: “On His Blindness”
Many great poets have maintained the sonnet tradition, among them (in addition to those already mentioned) Sidney, Wordsworth, Rossetti, Elizabeth Barrett Browing, Wyatt (who first wrote them in English) and Surrey, along with Americans Longfellow, Robinson, Millay, and cummings.
A very legitimate question to ask is why this form has existed so long, given the incredible limitations and rigors it imposes on the poet. The most obvious answer is that these very restrictions tax the poet’s skill to make the poem seem to escape the form. What the sonneteer seeks is to adhere to the form but to make the form totally subservient to the meaning and movement of the poem. The compressed form invites intense expressions of idea, sound, and devices. With little ground to dig into, the poet must be very exacting as he/she plants ideas.
Many poets have chosen to write a series of sonnets unified by subject. This is called a sonnet sequence. Some of the better known ones include Spenser’s Amoretti, Sidney’s Astrophel and Stella, and E. B. Browning’s Sonnets for the Portuguese.
p. Threnody: a poem similar to a dirge; in Greek poetry it mourns the dead and is sung by a chorus.
q. Vers de société: light verse, written in a congenial, witty, amorous way, dealing with the frivolous concerns of upper-class social life. It is a harmless, playful, poetic satire with some technical elegance.
r. Villanelle: A French verse form, strictly calculated to appear simple and spontaneous; five tercets and a final quatrain, rhyming aba aba aba aba aba abaa. Line 1 is repeated exactly in lines 6, 12, and 18, while line 3 is repeated exactly in lines 9, 15, and 19.
Although a highly specialized form, the villanelle is a difficult kind of poem to write without seeming trite or repetitive. Originally a light, pastoral verse, the villanelle has been used by modern poets to outstanding effect.
a. Theodore Roethke: “The Walking”
b. Dylan Thomas: “Do Not Go Gentle into That Good Night”
Verse Types
Blank Verse: Unrhymed lines, but each line is basically iambic pentameter (È/ È/ È/ È/ È/). Generally, we find this type used most often in plays, especially Shakespeare’s. The tone of blank verse tends to be serious. Today, critics employ the term to include many unrhymed metric forms, where iambic pentameter occurs but not constantly.
Good blank verse is hard to write. The absence of rhyme seemingly would leave a great deal of latitude for the poet, but he/she must compensate for this in many other ways. The use of enjambment (run-on lines) and caesuras (pauses within a line) must be meticulously done. In addition, the form must accommodate many different emotions: humorous, solemn, happy, melancholic, exalted, condescending, praising, angry, etc.
a. Robert Frost: “Birches”
b. John Milton: “Paradise Lost”
c. Theodore Roethke: “I Knew a Woman”
d. William Shakespeare: Macbeth
e. Robert Frost: “Mending Wall”
Free Verse (Vers libre): Unrhymed lines without regular rhythm.
Free verse is free from the limitations of fixed meter and rhyme; but this is not to say that it lacks poetic techniques. In fact, its freedom allows the poet to pick and choose among many rhyming, metric, and language devices to develop each line successively. Free verse is very rhythmic, often patterned after the spoken word.
In the mid-1800s Walt Whitman introduced it extensively, and free verse had since grown in usage. Given the extreme mechanization and technology of the twentieth century, many modern poets turn to free verse in an effort to escape formal conventions and to give freedom and life to their poetry.
In free verse, the poet makes frequent use of such devices as image, symbol, internal rhyme, and figurative language. The difficulty of writing free verse lies in achieving unity within the poem, given the endless possibilities for developing the ideas. Deciding lines, grammar, and rhythm are formidable tasks. When the poet succeeds in gathering his/her resources to create a consistently unified poem, a great work develops. This characteristic of unity is what separates excellent form mediocre free verse poems.
Light Verse: A general category of poetry written to entertain, such as lyric poetry, epigrams, and limericks. It can also have a serious side, as in parody or satire.
a. Vachel Lindsay: “The Congo”
b. Lewis Carroll: “Jabberwocky”
Limerick: Humorous nonsense-verse in five anapestic lines rhyming aabba, a-lines being trimeter and b-lines dimeter.
a. Edward Lear: various
Japanese Verse: Unrhymed verse in lines of particular number of syllables, often depicting a delicate image.
Haiku—three lines of five, seven and five syllables.
Tanka—five lines of five, seven, five, seven, and seven syllables.
Cinquain—five lines of two, four, six, eight, and two syllables.
a. Matsuo Basko: various
Poetic Meter
Meter is poetry’s rhythm, or its pattern of stressed and unstressed syllables. Meter is measured in units of feet; the five basic kinds of meter are indicated below. Accent marks indicate stressed ( / ) or unstressed ( È ) syllable.