I see poetry as a vehicle, a kind of spaceship. Yes, a poem needs to have a structure and a method, not unlike a vehicle, for its shape, size, and color are important, but more important are its spirit and/or its performance and delivery. When I write a poem or read someone else’s, I can’t help wondering about its quality, e.g., Is this poem Soulful? Is it Doleful? Is it Joyful? All of the above? Finally, I ask, has this poem drawn an accurate picture of reality as far as we are aware of its existence to it's [and its author’s] own-most ability? Of course, the poet as a person is very significant, since without the poet, there would be no poem, but he or she is part of the admixture of a great work. E.g., Homer, Shakespeare, Poe, Frost and many other great poets are long gone, but their life work still lives on.
Therefore, below, you’ll find my personal notes on poetry, which did accumulate over the years. They served me well. I hope they will be valuable to you whether you are a novice or an experienced writer: I'd say, "Poetry is not my vocation, but rather my evocation; its an inner need that I discovered to be very fulfilling."
----------
MY NOTES ON POETRY IN GENERAL
----------
RHYTHM
Rhythm is “a regularly patterned flow of sounds or of movements,” e.g. rhythm of the tides, as they rise and fall, alternation of light during day and night. --Each language has its own characteristic rhythms --Rhythm has a direction and a destination, be it in prose or verse; it sets a mood, an expressive function. --In poetry, Rhythm has been regularized and systematized. --When we say, “a poem is written in verse,” what we mean is “it is written in METER.” --Rhythm establishes the “FORM” of a poem, and it brings its “MATERIAL” into a sharp focus of attention. --Fundamentally, Rhythm is associated with “EMOTION.” For example, utterances of pain, grief, joy, etc. bring about a “Marked” rhythm. --Likewise, Rhythm in music evokes emotion in the hearer. --Rhythm also has a “hypnotic” effect, lending suggestibility, sited e.g.… T. S. Eliott’s “Preludes” (p. 91), lines 39-42.
His soul stretched tight across the skies That fade behind a city block, And trampled by insistent feet At four and five and six o’clock….
VERSE Verse, in its generic sense, is a “metrical line” in a poem. A “line” in a poem is a metric discourse, also referred to as a part of a stanza” (multiple lines). --Accentual syllabic: a pattern of verse based not only on the number of syllables in a line, but also on their relation to each other, of accented and unaccented syllables. E.g. see Housman’s folk ballad “Farewell to Barn and Stack and Tree”:
(Scansion signs used here: V-unstressed, !-stressed)
My mother thinks us long away; (My-v mo-/ ] ther-v thinks-! ] us-v long-! ] a-v way!) ‘This time the field were mown. (‘Tis-v time-! ] the-v field-! ] were-v mown-! She had two sons at rising day, (She-v had-! ] two-v sons-! ] at-v ris-! ] ing-v day-!,) To-night she’ll be alone. (To-v-night-! ] she’ll-v be-! ] a-v lone-!)
Notice here that the 1st and 3rd line has 8 syllables, 2nd and 4th lines have 6, and every other syllable is accented. This pattern of one unaccented syllable followed by an accented syllable is what determines the “Measure” of the verse in this poem. The first and third lines in this stanza have four feet (tetrameter), whereas the second and the fourth lines have three feet (trimeter).
Measure of verse is a FOOT, plural of two feet.
FEET AND LINE LENGTHS
IAMB: One unaccented followed by one accented syllable; e.g. a-way (v-!)
ANAPEST: Two unaccented followed by one accented syllables; e.g. in-ter-vene (v-v-!)
--Iamb and anapest are considered “rising” rhythms: I.e. they move from “weak” stress to “strong” stress. (Masculine)
TROCHEE: One accented followed by one unaccented syllable; e.g. on-ly (!-v)
DACTYL: One accented followed by two unaccented syllables; e.g. hap-pi-ly (!-v-v)
--Trochee and dactyl are considered “falling” rhythms; I.e. they move from “strong” stress to “weak” stress. (Feminine)
SPONDEE: Two accented syllables; E.g. da-y’s ta-sk (! !)
EXAMPLES: Iambic verse: John Keats’ “Ode to Psyche,” Alexander Pope’s “Rape of the Lock,” Robert Frost’s “The Wood-Pile” Anapestic verse: Edgar Allan Poe’s “Ulalume” Trochaic verse: Tennyson’s “Boadicea” Dactylic verse: Algernon Charles Swinburne’s “Hesperia” (Also see Iliad, Odyssey and the Aeneid--classic dactylic hexametric verse)
Syllabic Verse (which is most common in French poetry) as compared to accentual-syllabic verse in English, the concept of feet is not needed, and rarely applies. But since the latter verse counts stresses as well as syllables, its basic unit has to be a combination of an unaccented syllable or syllables and an accented syllable. Hence, the line in accentual-syllabic verse consists of so many units of this sort, I.e. so many metrical “feet.” (See Versification: Major Language Types, ed. W. K. Wimsatt, New York University Press, 1972, pp. 177 ff. and pp. 191-203.) --By and large, in English poetry, the line terminates in an accented syllable, or defective feet!
Meter cannot violate the natural accentuation of a word, but it can recognize minor or secondary accents in a word: Im-!! mor- tal-! i- ty-!!
What good verse embodies is both a pattern and a vital variety--without monotonous regularity.
Defective feet: One form of substitution is the defective foot, a foot from which one or more “weak” syllable is missing; e.g. see Housman’s use of the word “Long.”
Rhetorical variation: A variation of meter forced by considerations of expressive emphasis. Adds vitality. Tug between metrics of uniformity and special stresses.
Syncopation: Speed up the line “to get in” the extra syllable.
Two principles are at work in poetry: (1) a principle of metrical regularity which conditions our reading toward a fixed recurrence of stress and tends to level out divergences from the norm; (2) a principle of dramatic and rhetorical emphasis which demands stresses that sometimes coincide with those of the metrical pattern and sometimes diverge from them.
The characteristic rhythm of a piece of verse comes from the interplay of these two principles--a positive tension necessary to achieve vitality and unique expression. Meter does modify our awareness of a line, but only because of this tension. But we must avoid a doggerel, I.e. “meter that dominates meaning” donkey and cart example illustrates the point, for the tug and tag must be balanced well. (See Shakespeare’s Sonnet 55)
-Metrical feet do not necessarily correspond to words. -Sound, not spelling counts in scansion -Catalexis: Unaccented syllable in the last foot of a line. -Caesura: Marks the end of a sense unit, not a metrical unit. Its an internal pause, end-stopped, which becomes: -Enjambment: run-on lines; to “Relieve” monotony.
Quantitative Variation and Forced Pauses: This is another factor that influences rhythm but finds no specific place in the scansion of English verse, but common in Greek and Latin poetry. It is based on the count and distribution of long and short syllables. Quantitative variation establishes the “felt” aspect of rhythm. E.g. -Look at the transitions of consonants and/or vowels in verse. -Cacophony: “bad-sounding” transitions from one unit to another labor, giving an unpleasant effect. -Euphony: “good-sounding” smooth transitions.
Ponder on this statement: “Variety in the verse makes the sound ‘seem’ an echo to the sense.” (See Alexander Pope’s “Sound and Sense’)
RHYME Rhyme is a unifying and forming function in poetry. It is a correspondence in sound between the accented syllable of two or more words (grow-know, rebound-astound). When the rhyming words end in one or more unaccented syllables, these, too, must correspond in sound (potato-plato).
Rhythm... is a constant factor in all languages, but other factors that shape and bind poetry are to be found in commonly and systematically appearing structural devices such as RHYME. Rhyme is a phenomenon of sound, never of mere spelling (buy-why-sigh-eye). Observe, too, that the introductory consonants in rhyme, when one exists, e.g. like “eye” above, are not identical.
Masculine Rhyme: when the rhymed accented syllables conclude the word, as in ‘rebound-astound.’
Feminine or Double Rhyme: when the rhymed accented syllables are followed by identical unaccented syllables, as in ‘forever-never.’
Triple Rhyme: when the rhymed accented syllables are followed by two syllables that are identical, as in ‘slenderly-tenderly.’
Internal Rhyme: when instead of rhymes appearing only at the end of lines, a word within a line rhymes with a word at the end, e.g. “The splendor falls on castle walls.”
Rhetorical Variation: an alteration of the regular metrical pattern (Housman’s poem above); e.g. the secondary accent stand for every degree of accent between the lightest and the heaviest; Substitution of Feet, e.g. altering anapest for the iamb, diverging the stress levels.
Rhyme has other elements of repetition of identical or related sounds, e.g. Alliteration (front rhyme), Assonance (interior rhyme), and Consonance. Used with great discretion!
Some examples of good rhyme are:
Triplet (3 verses)
a) She opened her eyes, and green b) They shone, clear, like flowers undone a) For the first time, now for the last time seen. - D. H. Lawrence
Quatrain (4 verses)
a) A ruddy drop of manly blood b) The surging sea outweighs; c) The world uncertain comes and goes, b) The lover rooted stays. - Ralph Waldo Emerson
Quintet (5 verses)
a) Hail to thee blithe spirit, b) Bird thou never wert a) That from heaven, or near it, b) Pourest thy full heart b) In profuse strains of unpremeditated art. - Percy Bysshe Shelly
Sestet (6 verses)
a) Good-bye, proud world! I'm going home: b) Thou art not my friend, and I'm not thine: a) Long through the weary crowds I roam; b) A river-ark on the oceanbrine, a) Long I've been like the driven foam; a) But now, proud world! I'm going home. - Ralph Waldo Emerson
Septet (7 verses)
a) The flower that smiles today b) Tomorrow dies; a) All that we wish to stay b) Tempts and then flies: c) What is this world's delight? c) Lightening that mocks the night, c) Brief even as bright. - Percy Bysshe Shelly
Octave (8 verses)
a) Thou art a female, Katydid! b) I know it by the trill c) That quivers through thy piercing notes, b) So petulant and shrill; d) I think there is a knot of you e) Beneath the hollow tree, - f) A knot of spinster Katydids, - e) Do Katydids drink tea? - To an Insect, by Oliver Wendell Holmes
Nine-Line stanza (9 verses)
a) Fair Daffodils, we weep to see b) You haste away so soon; c) As yet the early rising sun b) Has not attained his noon. d) Stay, stay, d) Until the hasting day c) Has run f) But to the even-song; a) And having prayed together, we f) Will go with you along. - To Daffodils, Robert Herrick
Ballad stanza (Alternating verses of Iambic Trimeter and Iambic Tetrameter)
a) So far apart are we again (Iambic Tetrameter) b) It is not fair I say (Iambic Trimeter) a) For I was dealt a rotten hand, (Iambic Tetrameter) b) And now I have to pay. (Iambic Trimeter) - Ara John Movsesian
Limerick (5 verses with the rhyming word at the end of the first verse repeated in the last verse)
a) The Reverend Henry Ward Beecher a) Called a hen a most elegant creature. b) The hen pleased with that, b) Laid an egg in his hat- a) And thus did the hen reward Beecher! - Oliver Wendell Holmes
Sonnet (14 verses - rhyming patterns are varied)
(a) Shall I compare thee to a summers day? (b) Thou art more lovely and more temperate; (a) Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May, (b) And summer's lease hath all too short a date: (c) Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines, (d) And often is his gold complexion dimm'd; (c) And every fair from fair sometime declines, (d) By chance or nature's changing course untrimm'd; (e) But thy eternal summer shall not fade, (f) Nor lose possession of that fair thou owest; (e) Nor shall death brag thou wander'st in his shade, (f) When in eternal lines to time thou grow'st: (g) So long as men can breathe, or eyes can see, (g) So long lives this, and this gives life to thee. - Sonnet XVIII William Shakespeare
Alliteration (front rhyme): Musical effect! Rarely used now. Too mechanical. (Example: See “Beowolf.”)
Assonance (interior rhyme): Musical effect! Depends on the identity of vowel sounds in accented syllables, without the identity of following consonants. (Example: See Pope’s “Rape of the Lock, II”)
Consonance: Involves a similarity between patterning of consonants. (Example: See W. H. Auden, Poems, “III”)
Rhyme Schemes: Fixed patterns of line lengths.
Blank verse, e.g., read “Out, Out--” and “The Code” by Robert Frost
Pentameter or Heroic Couplets, e.g., read “To Heaven” by Ben Jonson, and “Sound and Sense” by Alexander Pope
Variety of Quatrains, e.g., read “Sir Patrick Spence” “The Demon Lover” by an anonymous poet.
Sonnet: e.g. see “Like as the Waves” by Shakespeare or Sonnet XVIII above. It has continued on with its distinctive Italian origination from the Renaissance (Petrarchian). It has a length of “fourteen” lines in “iambic pentameter” (English style). Shakespeare made the sonnets notable in the 16th century.
Rhyme Royal: iambic pentameter, ABABBCC, used by Shakespeare in Venus and Adonis
Ottava Rima: iambic pentameter, ABABABCC, used by Keats in Isabella
Spenserian Stanza: iambic pentameter minus the last line which is iambic hexameter, ABABBCBCC, used by Spenser in The Faerie Queene.
Stanza: Defines a group of lines as a unit. Like meter, it is a device for giving “form” to a poem, but it is an abstract, rigid form. (Good Examples: “How Do I love Thee” by Elizabeth Barrett Browning, “On the Late Massacre in Piedmont” by John Milton, “To Daffodils“ by Robert Herrick, “The Blossom“ by John Donne) Question to ponder: “How does the poet use a particular stanza form in any given poem to produce the special effect of that poem?”
The Rondeau: an Old French form; 15 lines of usually 8 syllables each in 3 stanzas The opening words of the poem become the refrain; rhymed AABBA, AABC, AABBAC.
Sample:
AROUND LOVE --By Tacettin “Dean” Fidan [Published: March 20, 2009] (Pen Name: Kent Bayburt)
Words of wonder say do you dare (A) Chase life storms or let time repair? (A) Wasted sunshine long at a spree (B) When we were childlike and carefree (B) Gods of gold thought: “This life’s unfair?” (A)
Not a thing can find a new way (A) For, something’s not lost where it lay (A) Rabid minds like rapacity (B) Fear drives their hearts to what’s not right! (C)
Empathy too, shows our own face (A) Great deeds don’t come from undue haste (A) When lovers serve love as a gift (B) There, love gains a giving spirit (B) Flash of brief hope is a place, where (A) Care might shine, once more a bright light (C)
Another good example of the standard Rondeau is the following renowned World War I poem, "In Flanders Fields" by John McCrae:
In Flanders fields the poppies blow
Between the crosses, row on row,
That mark our place, and in the sky,
The larks, still bravely singing, fly,
Scarce heard amid the guns below.
We are the dead; short days ago
We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,
Loved and were loved, and now we lie
In Flanders fields.
Take up our quarrel with the foe!
To you from failing hands we throw
The torch; be yours to hold it high!
If ye break faith with us who die
We shall not sleep, though poppies grow
In Flanders fields.
The French Ballade: Adopted for a poem with the strophe form ABABBCBC. In the 14th century the ballade had 3 strophes, often octosyllabic lines, with an envoi (final summary stanza). The Chant Royal was similar, but of 5 strophes.
The French Sestina: The sestina is a complex form that achieves its often spectacular effects through intricate repetition. The thirty-nine-line form is attributed to Arnaut Daniel, the Provencal troubadour of the twelfth century. The name "troubadour" likely comes from trobar, which means "to invent or compose verse." The troubadours sang their verses accompanied by music and were quite competitive, each trying to top the next in wit, as well as complexity and difficulty of style. Sestina has a fixed poetic form: 6 stanzas, 6 lines each, envoi of 3 lines; usually unrhymed, but repeating as final words those of the first stanza, in the following order (each letter represents the final word of a line): stanza 1 A B C D E F 2 F A E B D C 3 C F D A B E 4 E C B F A D 5 D E A C F B 6 B D F E C A envoi B D F or A C E
Often the envoi uses all the final words, 2 to a line: B E; D C; F A. (See e.g. “Paysage Moralise” by W. H. Auden)
The French Villanelle: It consists of five 3-line stanzas ABA, and a final quatrain; all on two rhymes. The first and third lines are alternately the last lines of the remaining tercets, and together are the last lines of the quatrain. (See “Missing Dates” by William Empson, and “Do Not Go Gentle into That Good Night” by Dylan Thomas)
Sample:
Villanelle of the Poet’s Road --By Ernest Dowson [1867-1900]
Wine and women and song, Three things garnish our way: Yet is day over long.
Lest we do our youth wrong, Gather them while we may: Wine and woman and song.
Three things render us strong, Vine leaves, kisses and bay: Yet is day over long.
Unto us they belong, Us the bitter and gay, Wine and woman and song.
We, as we pass along, Are sad that they will not stay; Yet is day over long.
Fruits and flowers among, What is better than they: Wine and woman and song? Yet is day over long.
Japanese and Chinese poetry (HAIKU OR HOKKU) See “Imagist Movement,” which was influenced by Japanese and Chinese poetry. Poems of precisely seventeen syllables, which are usually [but not necessarily!] divided into 5-7-5 syllabic format, generally unrhymed.
See “Defining Moments of Poetry,” by T. Dean Fidan; Pen Name: Kent Bayburt, for some more samples.
Example: (By an anonymous Japanese poet)
A crow is perched Upon a leafless withered bough The autumn dusk
Onomatopoeia: It means name-making, using a sound that suggests the object named. Words imitative of their own literal meaning are such, e.g. bang, fizz, crackle, murmur, moan, whisper, roar--denoting special sounds--but they must be imitative of sound only! (See “God’s Grandeur” by Gerard Manley Hopkins, ‘The Expense of Spirit“ by Shakespeare) The general “feel” of the line will be “Tight,” or “Thin,” and/or “Hard” or “Soft.” Used for rhythmic and musical affect to the line, and to further express the mood of the poem.
The music of verse Ponder on these: “Poetry insists on the unity of experience: mind and body, idea and emotion. Language is the medium of literature.” “Do the very obvious verbal effects, including the assertive meter and emphatic rhyming (a complex of English vowels i.e. 'a' 'e' 'i' 'o' 'u' in the order of words), overwhelm the other aspects?”
For examples of poetic musicality in verse see the “Choric Song” from Tennyson’s “The Lotus-Eaters,” the “Raven” and “Ulalume” from Poe, and “The Garden of Proserpine” by Algernon Charles Swinburne.
* Musicality in verse utilizes phonetic qualities of language to further emphasize the poem’s meaning.
----
In Old English Poetry (Beowulf) the stresses were four in number, and this four stress line was divided in half by a strongly marked caesura, and further, stressed syllables were marked by alliteration, usually three of these syllables being so linked. This basic four-stress pattern has survived into modern English. E.g. in nursery rhymes. Dipodic principle (two-syllable foot) is at work, with distinct primary and secondary stresses at select or random fashion, constituting an isochronous (equal-time units) line.
FREE VERSE
Metrical form (and stanza form) contains the material of the form which develops within that form. Development of the material contains the development of the rhythms.
Free Verse refers to freedom from versification in any traditional sense. But it does not mean freedom from form. “No form, no Poem!” Free verse must accept the necessity of creating a form without the systematic metrical structure of verse. The lines can be based on syntactical units, like prose it can ebb and flow with imagery without any apparent meter, rhyme, or rhythm!
For some concrete samples see “Thoughts In Poetry,” by Tacettin Fidan; Pen Name: Kent Bayburt, which is mostly written in free verse.
Here is another example:
To me, you are a delicate Rose Whose beauty never dies When pressed between the pages Of a good book; Or caught between the pages Of my mind. - Unknown
The French poet Paul Valery said that prose was walking, poetry dancing. Original two terms, prosus meant “going straight forth” while versus meant “returning.” These distinctions point to the inclination of poetry to selectively use repetition, variation, plus dealing with different subject matters and different themes in a single continuous form e.g. in couplet or stanza. Be it prose or poetry, the questions of “who,” “what,” “where,” “when,” and “why” need to be addressed for a wholesome piece of writing to appreciably stand out. The best way to get to know poetry is to read poetry and also to write poetry, since for most, the knowledge of poetry arrives by chance and by way of great fondness, plus add to it a good amount of backing when undiluted by schools, colleges, and libraries.
Good luck all!
Recommended, General Sources: --To date, some of the best critical or explanatory anthologies on poetry are the following two books (which may be out of print, check with your library): (1) Cleanth Brooks and Robert Warren, Understanding Poetry, 4th Ed. (1976), Harcourt Brace College Publishers, FL. (2) I.A. Richards, Practical Criticism: A Study of Literary Judgment (1929), reprinted 1964.
Some generic online sources of poetry (about great poets, forms, contents, and styles):
http://www.uni.edu/~gotera/CraftOfPoetry/ http://www.public.asu.edu/~aarios/formsofverse/reports2000/index.html http://www.sonnets.org/ http://www.imagists.org/hd/gen.html http://www.poets.org/ http://shakespeare.mit.edu/ (The Complete Works of William Shakespeare Online!)
My views on poetry: