The Making of a Poem

1. The Making of a Poem

2. Verse forms do not define form: they simply express it. To understand the different forms�sonnet, villanelle, etc.�it is necessary to see how distinct their history are, how separate their purposes

3. The SONNET at a Glance It is a poem of fourteen lines, usually iambic. There are two kinds of sonnet, with very different histories behind their different forms: the Petrarchan and the Shakespearean Shelley �Ozymandias� Millay �What lips my lips have kissed, and where, and why,� Cullen �From the Dark Tower�Shelley �Ozymandias� Millay �What lips my lips have kissed, and where, and why,� Cullen �From the Dark Tower�

4. The Petratchan sonnet is Italian in origin, has an octave of eight lines and a sestet of six. The rhyme scheme of the octave is ababcdcd and of the sestet cdecde. The Shakespearean sonnet was developed in England and has far more than just surface differences from the Petrarchan The rhyme scheme of the Shakespearean sonnet is ababcdcdefefgg. There is no octave/sestet structure to it. The final couplet is a defining feature.

5. SONNET Origins In the small sunlit courts of Sicily, the sonnet was born�it flowered with Francesco Petrarca who published Canzoniere, 366 poems (317 sonnets), to an idealized lover, called Laura It was a European bestseller. The set form of the octave and sestet�allowed for one strong opening statement of eight lines followed by a resolution to the emotional or intellectual question of the first part of the poem.

6. In England Thomas Wyatt introduced the rhyming couplet at the end. His contemporary and friend the Earl of Surrey introduced more rhymes�a change that benefited practitioners in a language with less abundant rhymes than Italian. Wyatt and Surrey were shifting the sonnet away from the more intellectual and argumentative Petrarchan form�giving more resonance to the ending through the often declamatory couplet. Shakespeare would make the couplet the loudest most powerful part of the sonnet

7. English/Shakespearean With three quatrains and the final couplet it allows a fairly free association of images to develop lyrically to a conclusion

8. SONNETS Today The sonnet, while archaic in origins and formal in structure, still suits our world. To start�it�s short Its structure opens the way for living debate and subtle argument. Plus the tension in poetry has always been between lyric and narrative: the sonnet suggest narrative progress through its sequence structure, while in single units, it capable of the essential lyric qualities of being musical, brief, and memorable.

9. The VILLANELLE at a Glance It is a poem of nineteen lines. It has five stanzas, each of three lines, with a final one of four lines. The first line of the first stanza is repeated as the last line of the second and fourth stanzas. The third line of the first stanza is repeated as the last line of the third and fifth stanzas. The two refrain lines follow each other to become the second-to-last and last lines of the poem. The rhyme scheme is aba. The rhymes are repeated according to the refrains. Bishop �One Art,� Thomas �Do Not Go Gentle into that Good Night,� Cope, �Reading Scheme�Bishop �One Art,� Thomas �Do Not Go Gentle into that Good Night,� Cope, �Reading Scheme�

10. VILLANELLE Origins Funnily enough for such a complicated form it began in the Italian harvest field (villano, Italian for peasant), probably as a round song�something sung with repetitive words and refrains. When it finally �appeared� on the poetic scene it was as a French style of poetry with pastoral themes.

11. Jean Passerat, Sixteenth-century poet made it famous. When his poem about a lost turtledove: a disguised love song was published it was a hit! In 1870s England, French poetry was all the rage, and this was followed by an interest in the forms of French verse. Several English poets used this form, such as Oscar Wilde�launching it into the coming modern age.

12. VILLANELLE, contemporary hit Over the course of this century some of the finest poets have turned to the villanelle�why? Perhaps because this form refuses to tell a story. Figural development is possible, but this form circles around and around, refusing to go forward in any kind of linear development. It leans toward song, towards lyric poetry, and while the subject of most lyric poetry is loss, the formal properties of the villanelle address the idea of loss directly.

13. SESTINA at a Glance It is a poem of thirty-nine lines. It has six stanzas of six lines each. This is followed by an envoi of three lines. All of these are unrhymed. Dante Gabriel Rossetti �Of the Lady Pietra degli Scrovigni (translation),� Pound �Altaforte,� Hecht �The Book of Yolek�Dante Gabriel Rossetti �Of the Lady Pietra degli Scrovigni (translation),� Pound �Altaforte,� Hecht �The Book of Yolek�

14. SESTINA Origins Arnaut Daniel, a twelfth-century troubadour, invented the sestina. Elaborate repetitions build up over the thirty-nine lines of the sestina. The patterns of repetition are constructed across a selected number of key words, so that in the end the sestina becomes a game of meaning�very much a troubadour form. Troubadours (from Fr. trobar� to invent or compose verse) were court poets who competed with each other to produce the wittiest, most elaborate, most difficult styles for fame in fortune in royal and noble courts.

15. SESTINA�s staying power Sestina�s popularity today rests on how easily it accommodates itself to conversation (which often repeats itself) and a plain style of discourse. Theme is often dependent upon (and perhaps developed around) the six words chosen for repetition.

16. PANTOUM at a Glance Each pantoum stanza must be four lines long. The length is unspecified but the pantoum must begin and end with the same line. The second and fourth lines of the first quatrain become the first and third line of the next, and so on with each succeeding quatrains. The rhyming of each quatrain is abab. The final quatrain changes this pattern. In the final quatrain the unrepeated first and third lines are used in reverse as second and fourth lines. Donald Justice �Pantoum of the Great Depression,� Nellie Wong �Grandmother�s Song,� McClatchy �The Method�Donald Justice �Pantoum of the Great Depression,� Nellie Wong �Grandmother�s Song,� McClatchy �The Method�

17. PANTOUM Origins Malayan in origin and came into English through France. While Victor Hugo was not the first to use the form in France he gave it popularity in his book Orientales.

18. PANTOUM�s Power Of all the verse forms it is the slowest: the reader takes four steps forward, then two back. It is the perfect form for evoking past time. The form demands the attention of the reader with its strange twists of anti-narrative time and unexpected hypnotic repetitions.

19. BALLAD at a Glance It is a short narrative, which is usually�but not always arranged in four-line stanzas with a distinctive and memorable meter. The usual ballad meter is first and third line with four stress�iambic tetrameter�and then a second and fourth with three stresses�iambic trimeter. The rhyme scheme is abab or abcb. The subject matter is distinctive: almost always communal stories of lost love, supernatural happenings, or recent events. The ballad maker uses popular and local speech and dialogue often and vividly convey the story. This is especially a feature of early ballads. �Get Up and Bar the Door� �Lord Randall,� �Barbara Allan,� Three Ravens, (modern variant) Brooks �We Real Cool��Get Up and Bar the Door� �Lord Randall,� �Barbara Allan,� Three Ravens, (modern variant) Brooks �We Real Cool�

20. BALLAD Origins The anonymous everyman/woman recording the passage of the non-famous through history. Its roots are in the oral tradition of storytelling and most obviously the ballad comes to poetry through song. As a form it is simple, direct�almost always a short narrative�and subtly left open to the next user, so that details, names, and events can be added on if necessary. The ballad keeps the audience awake. Its subject matter is tabloid: death, murder, suicide, disgrace, mystery. It is lurid, musical, communal.

21. BALLAD has become� Ballad as a communal form does not fit cleanly with the idea of the contemporary lone poet, so it might seem that the historical moment of the ballad is over, but as a form it comes out of deep sources of language and storytelling. Listen to country-and-western and rap music. It does not keep to the old quatrain or old rhyme schemes, but it is clear narrative and communal�and speaks to today as well as demonstrating that the concerns of today are not as different as those in the ballads of yester-year.

22. BLANK VERSE at a Glance It is an iambic line with ten stresses and five beats. It is unrhymed. It is traditionally associated with dramatic speech and epic poetry. The lack of rhyme make enjambment more possible and often more effective. It is often identified as the poetic form closest to human speech.

23. BLANK VERSE Origins Blank verse came into English poetry from Italian literature because of the intense interest of the time (Renaissance) to find an unrhymed line that would match the heft and weight of the classical epic. The inventor of blank verse was Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey. (Henry VIII chopped off his head mainly because he had advised his sister to become the King�s mistress, As you can guess it didn�t turn out well.) Howard translated The Aeneid into �this straunge meter� of blank verse and it took off! bbbb

24. Blank Verse the Tool of the Greats! Christopher Marlowe used blank verse for his play Tamburlaine the Great (1590) � now speech in verse was not overwhelming the complexity and emotion of the play with rhyme Shakespeare chose blank verse for most of his plays (usually making it a nearer to rhyme and song than others). It was John Milton who took blank verse further arguing in his prose statement at the beginning of Paradise Lost that this measure was preferable to the �jingling sound of like endings� and that it provided the music and example of �the sense variously drawn out from one verse into another.� Shakespeare �from Julius Caesar (III.ii.70-74),� Tennyson �Ulysses,� Frost �Directive�Shakespeare �from Julius Caesar (III.ii.70-74),� Tennyson �Ulysses,� Frost �Directive�

25. HEROIC COUPLET at a Glance It is rhyming pair of lines The meter is usually iambic pentameter but may also be tetrameter. The rhyme scheme progresses as aabbcc, etc. The heroic couplet, so-called, denoted that it was a form in which a high subject matter could be written. This was the form often used for translation of epic poetry from the classical Latin and Greek. It works by adapting the old Chaucerian line and allowing a strong pause or caesura in the middle of the line. The caesura usually comes after the fifth or sixth syllable. Its sharp rhymes and regular beat made it widely used in the sixteenth, seventeenth, and eighteenth centuries for epigrammatic and satirical poetry. Chaucer The Canterbury Tales, Bradstreet �The Author to Her Book,� Pope �from An Essay on Criticism (lines 201-252)�Chaucer The Canterbury Tales, Bradstreet �The Author to Her Book,� Pope �from An Essay on Criticism (lines 201-252)�

26. Heroic Couplet defines the Age The couplet evolved out of parts of a poem, and one model of line in particular�Chaucer (14th century) By the 16th century poets began to think, argue, and explain in the couplet. This then took the name �heroic couplet� denoting a high subject matter. By the 18th century (Augustan Age) the heroic couplet reigned supreme. The sharp, end-stop rhymes, the regular stresses, and pause that happened in the middle of the line all made it perfect for moralizing, warning, satirizing, and poking fun at another�s expense.

27. The STANZA at a Glance Any unit of recurring meter and rhyme�variants of them�used in an established pattern of repetition and separation in a single poem. The stanza can be made up of lines of the same length. This is called an isometric stanza. The stanza can be made up of lines of different lengths. This is called heterometic. There can also be a loose grouping of lines and paragraphs of verse. This is called quasi-stanzaic. The effect of the stanza is gained by the combination of accumulating sense, from stanza to stanza, combined with repeated sound through repetition of lineation and rhyming.

28. More on the STANZA The word �stanza� in Italian means room. In a simple practical way, the stanza in poetry has that figurative purpose. It is as self-contained as any room, and yet to be in it is to have the consciousness at all times that it leads somewhere.

29. Spenserian Stanza The heterometic stanza with several meters opened to the way for poets to achieve shifting and subtle patterns of sound � most striking example, Edmund Spenser. He devised the Spenserian Stanza: 8 lines followed by a long final line. Influential unit, used by Keats in the �The Eve of St. Agnes�Influential unit, used by Keats in the �The Eve of St. Agnes�

30. Meter at a Glance Meter is the Greek word for �measure.� There are three meters most commonly used by poets in the English language: accentual, syllabic, and accentual-syllabic meter. accentual � stressed are counted and syllables are variable (heard) syllabic � syllables are counted but the stresses are variable (visual) accentual-syllabic � both accents and syllables are measured and counted. In English, what dominants is accentual-syllabic meter

31. A poetic foot is a measured unit of meter, made up of stressed and unstressed syllables. iamb � most common, short stress followed by a long one, ex. about trochee � less common, but clear and striking at the start of a line, long stress followed by a short one, ex. That is. Or dropsy. dactyl � long stress followed by two short ones, ex. happily anapest � two short stresses followed by a long one, ex. in a tree Spondee � two long stresses, ex. humdrum

32. Shaping Forms Elegy Pastoral Ode All of these originate in the public role of the poet�whether a funerary address or a poem for a court: they connect poem with community.

33. ELEGY An elegy is a lament. The grief expressed is often not a private one. More often it is a cultural grief; however, in all societies, death constitutes a cultural event�as well as an individual loss. The best elegies struggle between custom and decorum on one hand, and private feeling on the other. Milton �Lycidas,� Tennyson �In Memoriam,� Whitman �O Captain! My Captain,� Garrett Hongo �The Legend�Milton �Lycidas,� Tennyson �In Memoriam,� Whitman �O Captain! My Captain,� Garrett Hongo �The Legend�

34. PASTORAL The pastoral is central to poetry. Simplified it is the mode of poetry that has sought to imitate and celebrate the virtues of rural life. It raises questions: Was man made for nature or nature for man? Was the natural world to enter the poem as a realistic object or as a fictive projection of inner feelings? Would the natural world, in Western culture, always enter the poem shadowed by the religious myths of the Garden of Eden and man�s fall? Marlow �The Passionate Shepherd to His Love,� Housman �Loveliest of Trees,� Hughes �The Thought-Fox,� Oliver, �The Black Walnut Tree�Marlow �The Passionate Shepherd to His Love,� Housman �Loveliest of Trees,� Hughes �The Thought-Fox,� Oliver, �The Black Walnut Tree�

35. ODE From its origins in classical antiquity, the ode was a solemn, heroic, and elevated form. It elevated the person, object, the occasion. Romantic poets discovered and used this form energetically. Keats �Ode to a Grecian Urn,� Simic �Miracle Glass Co.,� Harjo �Perhaps the World Ends Here�Keats �Ode to a Grecian Urn,� Simic �Miracle Glass Co.,� Harjo �Perhaps the World Ends Here�

36. OPEN FORMS (aka the poems that freak you out) These poems are a passionate dialogue with the question: �Is form a fiction?� They suggest that poetic form is a continuum, not a finished product. T.S. Eliot �The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock,� Langston Hughes �I, Too,� Carlos Williams �Spring and All,� Olds �The Language of Brag,� Forch� �The Colonel�T.S. Eliot �The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock,� Langston Hughes �I, Too,� Carlos Williams �Spring and All,� Olds �The Language of Brag,� Forch� �The Colonel�

37. Strand, M. & Boland, E. (2001). The Making of a Poem: A Norton Anthology of Poetic Forms. New York: W. W. Norton & Company.