The Craft of Poetry

CRAFT OF POETRY

Fall 1999English 620:108, Section 01TTh 3:30-4:45, Seerley 12

Vince GoteraOffice: Baker 123, 273-7061Office Hours: M, 2:30-3:30, TTh 12:30-1:30Email: vince.gotera@uni.eduWeb: http://www.uni.edu/gotera

Damon McLaughlinOffice: Baker 42, 273-7196

Office Hours: MW 11:00-12:00Email: mclaugd9285@uni.edu

Web: http://www.uni.edu/mclaug63

Since the 1980s, there has been a resurgence of interest in writing poems in rhyme, meter, and traditional forms. This movement, called The New Formalism, arose partly as a rebellion against the hegemony of free verse (or "open form" as it is now often called) since the early century. New Formalism, however, is also based on the work of older poets, such as Richard Wilbur and X. J. Kennedy, who have resolutely continued to write in traditional verse from mid-century till today.

The pedagogical underpinning of this course comes from an even older idea, the age-old practice of apprenticeship to a guild craftsperson. The contemporary version of this notion is that, before one can experiment and achieve the avant-garde, one must first be steeped in traditional techniques. In this spirit, our course is devoted to studying specific meters, set stanzas, and inherited forms, as a basis from which to write poems in ersion of this notion is that, before one can experiment and achieve the avant-garde, one must first be steeped in traditional techniques. In this spirit, our course is devoted to studying specific meters, set stanzas, and inherited forms, as a basis from which to write poems in whatever mode -- open or formal -- you may eventually choose.

The prerequisite for this course is English 620:070, "Beginning Poetry Writing" (or an equivalent course taken at another college). If you have not yet taken this prerequisite, please bring a sample of ten poems by Wednesday, 8/25 to Vince's mail box in the English department. If we find that your sample is not sufficiently strong, indicating that your knowledge of poetry writing is insufficient for this class, you will need to drop. We will let you know by Thursday, 8/26.

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There are two required textbooks: an anthology of formal poems, Strong Measures, edited by Philip Dacey and David Jauss; and a collection of essays on poetry-writing, Triggering Town, by Richard Hugo.

In class we will discuss blank verse, couplets, tercets, quatrains, sonnets, villanelles, and sestinas, spending a week on each; as we take up these topics, we will also review some basic poetic elements -- line, meter, rhyme, music, imagery, form, tradition, repetition, and style. You will write a poem of each type mentioned above and we will workshop these in class. This means you will need to make enough copies of each poem to distribute to everyone (this will be an additional cost beyond the textbooks). You are also required to write an eighth poem in a traditional form or meter, which you have studied, on your own.

You will also need to be familiar with email and web. We have created a website at http://www.uni.edu/english/craft/ which contains this syllabus as well as information on the forms and poetic elements we will study. Before we study each form and element (as indicated in the syllabus), please read the information on those topics in the website. We have also set up an email list at 620-108-01@uni.edu. When you send a message to that address, it will be forwarded to all members of the class, including Damon and Vince.

The poems are worth 60% of the final grade. The remaining 40% addresses class participation. During midterm, we plan to discuss your grade and performance with you in an individual conference.

You may miss up to six meetings during the term (illness or emergency or whatever). Each further absence will lower your final grade by one step (e.g., B to B-). Also, by department policy, students who miss the first week's meetings will lose their spaces in the class to those who may be trying to add.

At the end of the semester, on 12/9, you will submit a final portfolio of your best versions of the eight poems for final grading. Assembling a portfolio gives you the chance not only to revise and use what you have learned during the semester but also to view your work as part of an ongoing process -- to re-view your poetic self.

Be sure to include the earlier copies of poems with our comments in the portfolio. Staple all versions of the same poem together, and put them in order as they were submitted to the workshop. Mark them "Poem 1," "Poem 2," and so on. Also, at the front of the portfolio, include a typed and double- spaced introduction on the following:

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1. What is your general poetic strategy? Has this strategy developed during the semester? How do you feel your eleven poems reflect that overall strategy?

2. What are the strengths of your poetry writing? What are its weaknesses? 3. What specific changes have you made in the seven-workshopped poems? Why? 4. What form are you using in Poem 8? Write a short discussion of the form and its

poetics. How did you apply these dynamics in your poem? 5. Evaluate yourself. What grade would you give yourself for participation? Why?

What grade do you think you earned for your poems? Why?

Here are the procedures we will follow in the workshop. Bring enough copies of your poem for everyone on the day it's due. Use full-size typing paper to allow sufficient space for comments. We will assemble the poems into a worksheet. Read each of the poems a couple of times and make written comments on each poem (both specific line-oriented comments in the margins and a general comment on the poem overall in a paragraph at the bottom). Consider voice, diction, lineation, meter, rhyme, music, imagery, metaphor, simile, form, tradition, style, theme, etc. Don't forget to sign your critique. As we workshop the poems in class, balance tough criticism and praise. When your own poem is workshopped, remain silent and try keeping an open mind. Only after everyone is done workshopping your poem may you speak. Defending the poem is not allowed, as no defence will change the fact that the poem wasn't received as you expected. The important goal is to figure out why it wasn't and then apply that lesson to revisions or future work. Better yet, simply say thanks. You will then receive the copies annotated by everyone. Periodically we will collect copies to see what you are writing on each other's poems. This evaluation will affect your participation grade. Okay, let's get to it. You'll be amazed at how your poems, even in open form, will be strengthened by this discipline. Practice in rhyme, meter, and traditional forms will add muscle and bone to your writing.

8/24 T Introduction and welcome. 8/26 Th Blank Verse. Line and Meter. Chapter 1 of Triggering Town (TT).

Read all blank verse poems in Strong Measures (SM). You can find a list of these poems under "Blank Verse" in Appendix B of SM. Also look at "Blank Verse" and "Line and Meter" in the course websiteat http://www.uni.edu/english/craft/.

8/31 T Blank Verse, continued. Chapter 2, TT. 9/2 Th Couplets. Rhyme and Music. Chapter 3, TT.

Remember also to look at "Elegiac Verse" and "Epigram" in SM. 9/7 T Couplets, continued. Chapter 4, TT.

Due: Blank verse poem in multiple copies. 9/9 Th Workshop blank verse poems. 9/14 T Blank verse workshop, continued.

Due: Couplet poem in multiple copies. 9/16 Th Workshop couplet poems. 9/21 T Couplet workshop, continued. 9/23 Th Tercets. Image. Chapter 5, TT.

Remember also to look at "Terza Rima," "Triplets" and "Haiku" in SM.

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9/28 T Tercets, continued. Chapter 6, TT. 9/30 Th Quatrains. Form. Chapter 7, TT.

Remember to look at all related forms listed under "Quatrain" in SM. 10/5 T Quatrains, continued. Chapter 8, TT.

Due: Tercet Poem in multiple copies. 10/7 Th Class Assessment. Please think about what's going well in our course,

what's not, what changes we might make, and what you might already be doing (or could do) about problems. Another professor will be in class to discuss these matters with all of you in our absence and then report to us (without names, of course). We can then make necessary changes.

10/12 T Workshop tercet poems. 10/14 Th Tercet workshop, continued.

Due: Quatrain poem in multiple copies. 10/19 T Workshop quatrains. 10/21 Th Quatrain workshop, continued. 10/26 T Sonnets. Tradition. 10/28 Th Sonnets, continued. 11/2 T Villanelles. Repetition. 11/4 Th Villanelles, continued. 11/9 T Sestinas. Style. 11/11 Th Sestinas, continued.

Due: Sonnet in multiple copies. 11/16 T Workshop sonnets. 11/18 Th Sonnet workshop, continued.

Due: Villanelle in multiple copies. 11/23 T Workshop villanelles.

THANKSGIVING 11/30 T Villanelle workshop, continued.

Due: Sestina in multiple copies. 12/2 Th Workshop sestinas. Discuss revision and the portfolio. 12/7 T Sestina workshop, continued 12/9 Th Due: Portfolio. Chapter 9, TT.

Each of you will read your eighth poem in class, as well as one of the revisions if there is time.

FINALS We will meet during the exam time: Tuesday, 12/14 from 3:00 to 4:50. At this time we will return portfolios and conduct a course assessment.

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Blank Verse

Blank Verse is any verse comprised of unrhymed lines all in the same meter, usually iambic pentameter. It was developed in Italy and became widely used during the Renaissance because it resembled classical, unrhymed poetry. Marlowe's "mighty line," which demonstrated blank verse's range and flexibility, made blank verse the standard for many English writers, including both Shakespeare and Milton, and it remained a very practiced form up until the twentieth century when Modernism rebelled and openly experimented with the tradition. Regardless, blank verse was embraced by Yeats, Pound, Frost, and Stevens who skilfully brought the tradition through this century. While it may not be as common as open form, it retains an important role in the world of poetry.

Blank verse can be composed in any meter and with any amount of feet per line (any line length), though the iamb is generally the predominant foot. Along with the iamb are 3 other standard feet and a number of variations that can be employed in a blank verse poem. It is difficult--almost impossible--to write a blank verse poem consisting of all iambs, and other types of feet get used more often than one may think. These are:

1. Iamb- two syllables, unstressed-stressed, as in "today". 2. Trochee- two syllables, stressed-unstressed, as in "standard". 3. Anapest- three syllables, unstressed-unstressed-stressed, as in "disengage" 4. Dactyl- three syllables, stressed-unstressed-unstressed, as in "probably".

Variations include:

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1. Headless Iamb or Tailless Trochee- one stressed syllable. Labelling the foot depends on where it is located in the line.

2. Spondee- two stressed syllables, as in "hot dog" 3. Amphibrach- three syllables, unstressed-stressed-unstressed, as in "forgetful" 4. Double Iamb- four syllables, unstressed-unstressed-stressed-stressed, as in "will

you eat it?" A double iamb is counted as two feet.

Blank verse can be written with any combination of the above feet. The name of the dominant foot coupled with the number of feet in the line provides the name of a poem's meter. For example, the dominant foot in Robert Frost's "Mending Wall" is the iamb, and there are five feet per line. Thus, the poem is written in iambic pentameter. Notice, however, that not each foot is an iamb, but Frost mixes up the feet, as in the first few lines of the poem. Something there is that doesn't love a wall,That sends the frozen-ground-swell under it,And spills the upper boulders in the sun When you read the words, the natural rhythm is not de-dum, de-dum, de-dum--it is not strictly iambic. The first line, for example, scans as a trochee and four iambs. Scansion, by the way is how poets demonstrate the meter of a poem using accents to show the stressed syllables. With scanning, one can tell if a poem is metered or not and, if so, what kind of meter is present, as in "Mending Wall:" Sómething there ís that dóesn't lóve a wáll. Of course, how a person scans a single line or an entire poem depends on the reader's natural rhythms and inclinations, and, while there may be better ways to scan a poem, there is not always a single correct scan. In the first line of "Mending Wall", for instance, the first iamb could be read as a trochee, with the stress falling on "there" instead of "is." How to and ExamplesOne way to write in blank verse is to take an old poem and turn the existing lines into ten-syllable lines. Then, modify the diction and the syntax (be careful not Yoda always try to sound) in such a way that the iamb becomes the predominant foot. Remember, the poem should be read naturally without forcing the meter onto the rhythm. Each line does not need to read "de-dum, de-dum, de-dum, de-dum, de-dum" but, rather, that that meter can be over-imposed onto the natural rhythm of the line. As well, the poem should be read in sentences, not by line break. The meter should determine line breaks. Allow the meter of the poem to drive you as you write it. Let it decide where the line length and line breaks should be without imposing your own natural habits. This can be very difficult to do if you have never tried writing blank verse before, and I have found the above method does not work best for me. A second way is to simply write in pentameter by using roughly

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ten syllable lines, then, going back and changing syntax and diction to emphasize the iamb. With a little practice the meter will soon be controlling the way the line moves and sounds, and it will modify your natural rhythms to adhere with the pattern. What does blank verse do to the line? It lengthens it, of course, but the meter also pushes the line into the next line and so on, giving blank verse a strong, narrative pull. I find blank verse makes my own poems long winded, the meter drives me to keep writing, and I feel a narrative voice emerging that I don't feel in a shorter-lined poem. Blank verse can be very helpful in that way, particularly if you feel you don't know what to write. The meter and long line demand words to fulfil its requirements, which makes blank verse a decent exercise for escaping writer's block. Examples of blank verse include:

"Mending Wall"- Robert Frost (almost anything by Frost will be a solid example)

Couplet

Couplets are any two lines working as a unit, whether they comprise a single stanza or are part of a larger stanza. Most couplets rhyme (aa), but they do not have to. There are several set forms of the couplet and a myriad of variations based on line length and meter. All of the following rhyme "aa":

Short Couplet- iambic or trochaic tetrameter. From Maxine Kumin's "Morning Swim"

Into my empty head there comea cotton beach, a dock wherefrom

I set out, oily and nudethrough mist in oily solitude.

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Split Couplet- the first line in iambic pentameter, the second in iambic dimeter. From Richard Steere's "On a Sea-Storm Nigh the Coast"

The weighty seas are rowled from the deepsIn mighty heaps,And from the rocks' foundations do arise To kiss the skies.

Heroic Couplet- two lines of iambic pentameter, also the last two lines of the English sonnet. From Richard Steere's "On a Sea-Storm Nigh the Coast"

Wave after wave in hills each other crowds,As if the deeps resolved to storm the clouds.

Alexandrine Couplet- an alexandrine is a line of iambic hexameter, so an alexandrine couplet is two rhymed lines of such. These often come at the end of stanzas or poems and, in these cases, are also called codas.

Qasida- an Arabic form consisting of any number of lines all rhyming on the same rhyme.

How To You can do almost anything with a couplet. They can stand as single thoughts, meaning they can exist on their own, outside of the poem, or they can be enjambed, relying on the previous and succeeding couplets to be complete. Most open form couplets are written this way, and a rhyme scheme should play no bearing on how couplets are or are not interlocked. The couplet can be a very lonely stanza, minimalistic. Poems whose content is melancholy or depressing, for example, can make good use of the couplet because--on the page--there is a lot of white space, emptiness, as opposed to writing in quatrains where the stanzas are blocks which limit the white space. As well, because the couplet can be so small, it is a good idea to pack it full of image and emotion, like a hard punch packed in a tight space, very concentrated. If the power in a couplet is not contained to the couplet, then you have a quatrain or something larger. This doesn't mean the idea and emotion cannot flow between or through couplets, I am only suggesting that each couplet be a powerful, emotionally-intensive unit to the whole.

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Tercet

Tercets are any three lines of poetry, whether as a stanza or as a poem, rhymed or unrhymed, metered or unmetered. The haiku is a tercet poem.

Haiku- a Japanese, three-line form generally about nature and the seasons or which incorporates such related imagery. It is based also on a syllable count of 5-7-5 per line, though that is not a strict rule. This is an example from Basho, one of the most famous Japanese haikuists, from "Fourteen Haiku:"

I would lie down drunkon a bed of stone covoredwith soft pinks blooming.

The Shiki Internet Haiku Salon

How to Haiku: The haiku relies on image to provide everything else a poem should. Inside the image lies spirit, emotion, and idea, and these are released when the image is isolated (for lack of better word) from the rest of the world. The image itself is what is important because it is supposed to evoke a response in our senses that is both cerebral and physical. Whether or not this is always achievable is a good question. It seems to me that a good haiku is nothing more than a moment of Zen wherein everything is evoked, and nothing is evoked, if that makes any sense at all.

Some other common tercets are: Enclosed tercet- a triplet that rhymes "aba". If the three lines are written in iambic

pentameter, then they are called a Sicilian tercet. This is just a silly, normal tercet:

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I am a yellow dogwho wishes he wasa purple-spotted frog.

Terza Rima- this form is created by interlocking any number of enclosed triplet stanzas, meaning the first and third lines of a stanza rhyme, and the middle line rhymes with the first and third lines of the following stanza like this "aba bcb cdc ded" and so on.

I am a yellow dogwho would rather bea toad. Too many frogs

have ideas about the sea,foreign swamps and bayous,my own puddle makes me happy . . .

Villanelle - a tough form. It uses triplets for most of the poem, and that is why it is included under Tercets, but you won't find anything about it here.

Terzanelle- see Villanelle

How ToIf you are writing a poem that is made up entirely of tercets, then they should behave in the same manner as a poem made up of couplets, evocative and somewhat self-contained. If not (perhaps you're writing a sonnet), then the tercet becomes a cog in a wheel, necessary to the functioning of the poem.

Quatrain

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Quatrains are four line stanzas of any kind, rhymed, metered, or otherwise. Like the couplet, there are many variations of the quatrain. Some of the more popular as passed through tradition are:

Alternating Quatrain- a four-line stanza rhyming "abab." From W.H. Auden's "Leap Before You Look"

The sense of danger must not disappear:The way is certainly both short and steep, However gradual it looks from here;Look if you like, but you will have to leap.

Envelope Stanza- a quatrain with the rhyme scheme "abba", such that lines 2 and 3 are enclosed between the rhymes of lines 1 and 4. Two of these stanzas make up the Italian Octave used in the Italian sonnet. This is from Auden's "Look Before You Leap"

The worried efforts of the busy heap,The dirt, the imprecision, and the beerProduce a few smart wisecracks every year; Laugh if you can, but you will have to leap.

In Memoriam Stanza- this form was used by Tennyson in his poem "In Memoriam" and is an envelope stanza written in iambic tetrameter (four feet). From "In Memoriam"

O thou, new-year, delaying long, Delayest the sorrow in my blood,That longs to burst a frozen budAnd flood a fresher throat with song

Redondilla- this is a Spanish form written in tetrameter with any of three rhyme schemes: "abba", "abab" or "aabb".

Italian Quatrain- this is an envelope stanza written in iambic pentameter. Doubled (eight lines), it becomes an Italian Octave and the first half of the Italian Sonnet.

Sicilian Quatrain- this is iambic pentameter that rhymes "abab", from the English Sonnet. Like the Italian Quatrain, it is a form of the Heroic Stanza because it is written in iambic pentameter.

Hymnal Stanza- this is an alternating quatrain that is written in iambics. Lines 1 and 3 are iambic tetrameter, and lines 2 and 4 are iambic trimeter. It is also a form of the Common Measure which rhymes abcb instead of abab as in the hymnal. From Robert Burns' "A Red, Red Rose"

O, my luve's like a red, red rose,That's newly sprung in June:O, my luve's like the melodieThat's sweetly played in tune.

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The alternating meter often makes one or the other more pronounced, in a way pulling the poem along. For this reason, the hymal stanza can be a good catalyst for a narrative voiced poem.

Pantoum- this Malayan form is a struggle for any poet. Good luck. The pantoum is made with any number of alternating quatrains with lines of any length and meter. The catch is that lines 2 and 4 of each stanza become lines 1 and 3 of the succeeding stanza. They are to be repeated in their entirety (if possible) which is what makes the pantoum such a frustration and pain. Each stanza, then, becomes interlocked with the stanza above and below it by rhyme and line, giving the poem a unique feel not unlike that of a villanelle: obsessive and tedious. And to make matters worse, the pantoum's last stanza takes lines 1 and 3 of the first stanza and uses them as either lines 1 and 2, or 2 and 4, but in reversed order. The pattern looks like this: Stanza 1:     A1

B1A2B2

Stanza 3:     C1D1C2D2

Stanza 2:     B1C1B2C2

Stanza 4:     D1 or A2 Also sometimes a

A2 or A1 couplet of A2 A1.

D2 or D1A1 or D2

And there you go, though you can use as many number of stanzas you wish, four for the above pattern was just arbitrary number. This is "The Eunuch Cat" by Lewis Turco:

She went to work until she grew too old,Came home at night to feed the eunuch catThat kept the mat warm and its eyeballs cold.She walked, but ran to wrinkles, then to fat,

Came home at night to feed the eunuch cat,Then went to bed, slept dreamlessly till eight,And waked. She ran to wrinkles, then to fat.She fixed her supper, snacked till it was late,

Then went to bed, slept dreamlessly till eight--Must I go on? She'll feed the cat no more.She fixed her supper, snacked till it was late,Then died at dawn, just halfway through a snore.

Must I go on?--she'll feed the cat no moreTo keep the mat warm and its eyeballs cold.

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She died at dawn, just halfway through a snore;She went to work until she grew too old.

How To PantoumI find the pantoum can get too repetitious for my liking, especially if it's written with fairly short lines because the repeated lines cycle faster. The repeated lines should elicit a definite emotional reaction in the reader, but they are not intended to necessarily agitate. An easy way to avoid the whole agitation business is to think about the pantoum line in terms of caesura and enjambment. If a sentence ends in the middle of a line, then the natural pause and emphasis that comes at the end of the sentence can be lessened. This way the line becomes enjambed and the reader naturally follows to the next line. When lines are continually end stopped, the repetons can seem overly repeated. If you want certain lines to receive greater attention, then, perhaps end stop them. If you want the line to be read more on the casual, natural side, then use enjambment. I try to vary the enjambments in my own pantoums, as variety is an effective way of keeping the poem fresh. It is near impossible to repeat the repetons in their entirety, and I can't honestly say I've run across many that do. This is okay. Oftentimes you can rearrange a few words to put a little spice in the line, or add or subtract a word here and there. The pantoum can become acoustically overbearing, and slight varieties in line can help shrink that feeling. Also, don't worry too much about what word to end each line on, or what vowel sound you want to rhyme the sound on, these worries will only get in your way. Let the poem decide what word comes next and where it fits in the line. The pantoum is a demanding form, and no poet needs to add any extra vices to the structure.

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Sonnet

Sonnets were first written in Italian and were traditionally love poems. Though the sonnet is a form that can be experimented with, it has remained true to its original length of fourteen lines and its Anglicised meter of iambic pentameter. Petrarch developed the sonnet to one of its highest levels during early Renaissance Italy, but it wasn't translated into English until the sixteenth century. From there, Shakespeare made the sonnet famous in England and others followed his lead. The sonnet can be thematically divided into two sections: the first presents the theme, raises an issue or doubt, and the second part answers the question, resolves the problem, or drives home the poem's point. This change in the poem is called the turn and helps move forward the emotional action of the poem quickly, as fourteen lines can become too short too fast. Most sonnets are one of two kinds:

Italian (Petrarchan)- this sonnet is split into two parts, an octave and a sestet. The octave is composed of two envelope quatrains rhyming "abba abba" (Italian octave). The sestet's rhyme pattern varies, though it is most often either "cde cde" (Italian sestet) or "cdc dcd" (Sicilian sestet). The turn occurs at the end of the octave and is developed and closed in the sestet. Over the years, the Italian sonnet has been the most favored type of sonnet. Donald Justice- "Sonnet: The Poet at Seven"

And on the porch, across the upturned chair,The boy would spread a dingy counterpaneAgainst the length and majesty of the rain,And on all fours crawl under it like a bearTo lick his wounds in secret, in his lair;

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And afterwards, in the windy yard again,One hand cocked back, release his paper planeFrail as a mayfly to the faithless air. And summer evenings he would whirl around Faster and faster till the drunken groundRose up to meet him; sometimes he would squatAmong the bent weeds of the vacant lot,Waiting for dusk and someone dear to comeAnd whip him down the street, but gently home.

Notice the turn at line 9, "And summer evenings . . ." and how it develops and closes the poem by the last line. Justice changed the form a bit, rhyming the sestet "ccd dee," or viewed as couplets "cc dd ee."

English (Shakespearian)- this contains 3 Sicilian quatrains and one heroic couplet at the end, with an "abab cdcd efef gg" rhyme scheme. The turn comes at or near line 13, making the ending couplet quick and dramatic. Not many modern writers have taken to writing the Shakespearean sonnet. e. e. Cummings, not known to the general public for sonnet writing, supplies us with a Shakespearean sonnet example:

when what hugs stopping earth than silent ismore silent than more than much more is ortotal sun oceaning than any thistear jumping from each most least eye of star

and without was if minus and shall beimmeasurable happenless unnowshuts more than open could that every treeor than all his life more death begins to grow

end's ending then these dolls of joy and griefthese recent memories of future dreamthese perhaps who have lost their shadows ifwhich did not do the losing spectres mine

until out of merely not nothing comesonly one snowflake(and we speak our names

Here are two other almost common sonnet types: Spenserian- this sonnet is very similar to the Shakespearian sonnet in form,

though its rhyme scheme is slightly different. It is written with 3 Sicilian quatrains and an ending heroic couplet. It rhymes "abab bcbc cdcd ee", such that the rhyme scheme interlocks each of the quatrains, much like the terza rima is made of interlocking triplets.

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Envelope sonnet- this is made with two envelope quatrains and a sestet: "abba cddc efgefg (efefef)". It is almost exactly like the Italian sonnet except the quatrains use different rhymes (notice both quatrains in the Italian rhyme "abba").

How ToIf you have a grip on blank verse and can write a couplet, tercet, and quatrain, then the sonnet--either kind--will come easy to you. Both types are composed in three parts, so the sonnet can be simplified, in a way, by being broken down. It's like making an outline. The turn, I find, usually takes care of itself somehow, and the more the writer worries about it, the more difficult it will be to reach. As with any poem of any kind, let the structure guide you, not vise versa. If you allow the feel and movement of the sonnet to take the poem to the next line, the turn will happen and the sonnet will be well on its way to being complete. A sonnet can be helpful when writing about emotions that are difficult to articulate. It is a short poem, so there is only so much room to work in. As well, the turn forces the poet to express what may not be normally expressable. Hopefully, you'll find yourself saying things you didn't know you were going to say, didn't know you could say, but that give your a better understanding of the emotions that drive the writing of the poem.

Villanelle Villanelles are a nightmare; there is no other way to say it. The form is originally French and didn't appear in English until the later 1800's. It is 19 lines long, but only uses two rhymes, while also repeating two lines throughout the poem. The first five stanzas are triplets, and the last stanza is a quatrain such that the rhyme scheme is as follows: "aba aba aba aba aba abaa." The tricky part is that the

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1st and 3rd lines from the first stanza are alternately repeated such that the 1st line becomes the last line in the second stanza, and the 3rd line becomes the last line in the third stanza. The last two lines of the poem are lines 1 and 3 respectively, making a rhymed couplet. Confused? A villanelle needs no particularly meter or line length, so feel free to experiment with the form. It is terribly obsessive and can bring out the emotions of any neurotic writer. This is Dylan Thomas' "Do Not Go Gentle into That Good Night." It is one of the most famous villanelles and, while Thomas does not experiment much with the form, the poem is a great example of how villanelle repetition works. The boldface and italics are there to more easily show the repeated lines and demonstrate the structure of the poem. Do not go gentle into that good night,Old age should burn and rave at close of day;Rage, rage against the dying of the light. Though wise men at their end know dark is right,Because their words had forked no lightning theyDo not go gentle into that good night, Good men, the last wave by, crying how brightTheir frail deeds might have danced in a green bay,Rage, rage against the dying of the light. Wild men who caught and sang the sun in flight, And learn, too late, they grieved it on its way, Do not go gentle into that good night, Grave men, near death, who see with blinding sightBlind eyes could blaze like meteors and be gay, Rage, rage against the dying of the light. And you, my father, there on the sad height,Curse, bless, me now with your fierce tears, I pray.Do not go gentle into that good night,Rage, rage against the dying of the light. The terzanelle is a modified villanelle. It uses the terza rima's interlocked rhyme pattern, but fits the villanelle form of five triplets and a quatrain. In addition, the middle line of the 1st stanza becomes the third line of the next stanza, and so on, such that the terzanelle is a huge pain, but worth the effort and determination to finish. Because the repeated line changes and the rhyme sounds change (according to terza rima structure) the terzanelle is a less obsessive poem than the villanelle whose repetition can be overpowering. A terzanelle's repetition is subtler and can give the poem a lush texture that a harsh repeater-poem cannot do. Terzanelle's are difficult to write, but fun to play with. This is Lewis Turco's "Terzanelle in “Thunderweather"

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This is the moment when shadows gatherunder the elms, the cornices and eaves.This is the center of thunderweather. The birds are quiet among these white leaves where wind stutters, starts, then moves steadilyunder the elms, the cornices, and eaves-- these are our voices speaking guardedlyabout the sky, of the sheets of lightningwhere wind stutters, starts, then moves steadily into our lungs, across our lips, tighteningour throats. Our eyes are speaking in the darkabout the sky, of the sheets of lightening that illuminate moments. In the starkshades we inhibit, there are no words forour throats. Our eyes are speaking in the dark of things we cannot say, cannot ignore.This is the moment when shadows gather,shades we inhibit. There are no words, forthis is the centre of thunderweather. How To and ExamplesA strong villanelle is tied together with line breaks and refrains that make sense. Experimenting with line break (enjambment) can take the edge off the repetition of the refrain making the refrain more interesting and less stock. As well, the refrain should be part of the poem, the natural next line when possible; otherwise the whole of the poem suffers. Some poets take great liberty with diction and syntax in their refrains, like Marilyn Hacker, for example, who adds or subtracts a few words and moves the caesura to add punch to repeated lines. Try to lead into those lines to make them part of the poem, otherwise the difficulty of the villanelle will have you very frustrated. I know this because my first villanelles failed to do this. This is an example from a bad poem I called "Cat Killing" A cat creeps from the comfort of its sill,One paw in the cactus pot, the other out of sight,Do not read this poem against your will. A feather falls slowly, a cat with feel,In the corner, rat-razor fangs filing for a strike,Red words are designed to kill. That's terrible, really bad. The refrains (lines 3 and 6) do nothing for the rest of the poem, it's almost like two poems, and there is no enjambment at all. These two stanzas are a good example of how not to write a villanelle. Look above to Dylan Thomas or Lewis Turco to see how to become a villanelle master.

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Sestina

Sestina tends to have a scary ring to it, and I imagine many fall back with a look of fright at the mere sound of the word. We all have, it's all right. A little practice and the sestina can be a very rewarding exercise for any poet looking for a challenge. The sestina is yet another fun, French form, and it is divided into 6 sestets (six line stanzas) and 1 triplet called an envoi, which is just a concluding stanza that is half the size of the rest. Unless you wish to make the sestina harder than it already may be, it is usually unrhymed and works by repeating the end words of each line. The envoi contains, in any order, all of the six end-words. The catch is that one has to be buried in each line and another must be at the end of the line. The pattern for repeating the words is like this: (stanza A) 123456, (stanza B) 615243. This 615243 pattern is how each of the "next" stanzas are made. The first way to learn this pattern is to look at a sestina. "Sestina d'Inverno" by Anthony Hecht: Here in this bleak city of Rochester,Where there are twenty-seven words for "snow,"Not all of them polite, the wayward mindBasks in some Yucatan of its own making,Some coppery, sleek lagoon, or cinnamon islandAlive with lemon tints and burnished natives, And O that we were there. But here the nativesOf this grey, sunless city of RochesterHave sown whole mines of salt about their land(Bare ruined Carthage that it is) while snowComes down as if The Flood were in the making.Yet on that ocean Marvell called the mind An ark sets forth which is itself the mind,Bound for some pungent green, some shore whose nativesBlend coriander, cayenne, mint in makingRoasts that would gladden the Earl of RochesterWith sinfulness, and melt a polar snow.It might be well to remember that an island Was blessed heaven once, more than an island,The grand, utopian dream of a noble mind.In that kind climate the mere thought of snowWas but a wedding cake; the youthful natives,Unable to conceive of Rochester,Made love, and were acrobatic in the making. Dream as we may, there is far more to makingDo than some wistful reverie of an island,

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Especially now when hope lies with the RochesterGas and Electric Co., which doesn't mindSuch profitable weather, while the nativesSink, like Pompeians, under a world of snow. The one thing indisputable here is snow,The single verity of heaven's making,Deeply indifferent to the dreams of the natives,And the torn hoarding-posters of some island.Under our igloo skies the frozen mindHolds to one truth: it is grey, and called Rochester. No island fantasy survives Rochester,Where to the natives destiny is snowThat is neither to our mind nor of our making. After reading this, you can feel the obsession that underlies the sestina. The repetition of those ends words can crawl under your skin, not with the hit-over-the-head bluntness of a villanelle, but with a sneaking, growing strength that is subtler. How to and ExamplesOne way of writing a sestina is to choose your 6 end words before you even begin the poem. Say, for instance, "book," "town," "pumpkins," "watch," "potatoes," and "sling." These are your 6 words in order of stanza one. Write a sestina. I find it's very difficult to get a good poem with this method, but it does force the poet to be creative, depending on the difficulties and relations of the pre-chosen words. A second way is to just write a sestet and go from there, using each of the end words from that stanza. This is my preferred method because I like not knowing, initially, where I'll break the line, so my first stanza is written according to line break and enjambment, not word choice with a sestina in mind. From there, the sestina is free to experimentation. The end words can be modified, say "leaf" to "leave" or "love" or "life" to give the initial word more dimension. It may be harder to keep the exact same word through all 7 stanzas, but sometimes the poem asks for a different word, actually improving the poem rather than taking away. As well, I find a good excerise is to set a line-length limit based on the lines from the first stanza. The sestina line is generally longer, and as you can see in the Hecht poem, the lengths are also erratic: some stick way out on the page, others are stuck deeper inside the poem. If a poem is going to be rather blockish in form (as the sestina is), I prefer to have the lines be at a similar length for appearance's sake; I think that just looks better on the page. As well, this method also forces the poet to use crisp, concise details in the poem because there is only so much room in every line to get to the word at the end. Every word must be chosen accurately, and in this way the poet's powers of diction improve.

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Line and Meter

The line is the "bottom line." The sine qua non. If you ain't got line, you ain't got that swing. Swing being POETRY. Or at least verse. Verse is cadenced language cut up into lines, and poetry is profound verse -- verse with layered multi-meanings as well as accumulated mega-meanings. One of the differences between the modes of prose and verse is that the first doesn't break into lines and the second does. And that's a pretty profound thing in itself. When you combine or intersect the idea of lines with the notion of meaning, you end up with two kinds of lines: the enjambed line and the endstopped line. Look at it this way: there are sentences and there are lines. One way to write a poem would be to break lines every time a sentence ended. But that's kind of a one-trick zebra, don't you think? But suppose you were to pit the movement of the sentence against the movement of the line? Then you could make ebb and flow. Come and go. Catch and throw. Think back to science class: two sine waves of different frequencies -- sometimes they enhance each other, sometimes cancel. But together they create a new wave with an exciting shape. Make sense? An endstopped line is where the movement of the sentence works with the movement of the line. For example, from Maura Stanton's poem "Childhood" (Strong Measures 346):

I must have turned down the wrong hall,Or opened a door that locked shut behind me,For I live on the ceiling now, not the floor.

See how there's a punctuation mark at the end of each line? The zones of the sentence are in sync with the line break. Whenever you see punctuation at a line break, almost always you've got endstop. An enjambed line, on the other hand, happens when the sentence movement conflicts with the line movement. It's probably more accurate to say that the line's intentions interrupt those of the sentence. From Stanton again, same poem, opening lines:

I used to lie on my back, imaginingA reverse house on the ceiling of my house

Or the closing lines: The floor so far away I can't determineWhich room I'm in, which year, which life.

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In both of these examples, the first line in the pair seems unfinished, leaves you up in the air until the second line enters. You can imagine that the reader is forced by the enjambment to read fast from one line to the next, almost as if the line break isn't there. Or you can alternately imagine that there's a kind of suspense at the end of the enjambed line, a moment of tension. Both are true. Pay close attention here, now. The juggling of enjambment and endstop can be used to modulate emotion in a poem, to create tension and then ease it, to create pace by speeding up and slowing down language. Okay? Now on to meter. When you think about poetry as arising from oral traditions, it's pretty easy to see that an original purpose of lines was to break up language -- a story, usually -- into easily recalled and recallable chunks. Especially if you break it up into chunks that are the same length, identical duration maybe. Here's how the Old English did it. They got BOOM into their lines. Four of them to be exact. BOOM BOOM BOOM BOOM. The irreverent saying "Wham Bam ... " works the same way. (Sorry about the sexist example, but it's a good one rhythm-wise.) Actually the Old English thought four BOOMs was probably too much all the time, so quite often they would back off one of them. They would also put in a pause, now called a "caesura." Look at the opening lines of Richard Wilbur's poem "Junk" (Strong Measures 399):

An axe angles from my neighbor's ashcan;It is hell's handiwork, the wood not hickory.The flow of the grain not faithfully followed.The shivered shaft rises from a shellheapOf plastic playthings, paper plates.

You can find the BOOMs by ... wait, let's call the BOOMs "stresses," okay? You can find the stresses by listening for the heavy words, where the shoe comes down hard. But you can also look for a repeated sound at the beginnings of words, called "alliteration." See how in the first line the word "axe," "angle," and "ashcan" start with a short "a"? The stressed syllable which is the BOOM backed off is "neighbor's" (it's fun to note that the first vowel sound in this word is a long "a" though that wouldn't matter to the Old English bards). Again, note the "h" sounds in "it is HELL's HANDiwork, the WOOD not HICKory. Or the "p" in "of PLAStic PLAYthing, PAper PLATES." What's interesting about that last one is that you have three "pl" stresses and one "p" -- again backed off. This is called "accentual verse" -- to be more precise, "accentual alliterative verse." Four stresses, end the line. Don't worry about the unstressed syllables; you can have as many as you want.

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Later poets developed a system which also counted the unstressed syllables, noting that in English each stress typically comes with one or two "unstresses." Happy Birthday = HAPpy | BIRTHday. For the moment, I'll bite = for the MO | ment, i'll BITE. Each chunk with one stress is called a "foot." The overall system is called "accentual syllabic." Suppose you were to make up line after line with repeated patterns, the same foot over and over? Maybe da DUM da DUM da DUM da DUM. Like "I got it now -- it's easy -- yeah!" Or DUM da DUM da DUM da DUM da. As in "Hey there, buddy, got a quarter?" Both of these sentences have four stresses. But the first one is made of da DUM's and the second one is made of DUM da's. A "da DUM" is called an iamb. A "DUM da" is called a trochee. Couple those names with the stress count, and you have iambic tetrameter (first example) and trochaic tetrameter (second example). Yes, "tetra" is Greek for "four." It's all GREEK to me. A one-stress line is monometer. Two: dimeter. Three: trimeter. Four, well you know. Five, pentameter (remember that one from high school?) Six, hexameter. And so on. And so on. Besides the iamb and the trochee, you might also note "da da DUM" (called an anapest) and "DUM da da" (a dactyl). The second one is called that because DUM da da looks like a finger. Yes, in Greek "dactyl" means "finger"; for example, "pterodactyl" means "wing-finger." You knew that "ptero" thing, right? It's at the end of "helicopter" (twisting wing). Let's look back at Stanton's "Childhood" for some examples:

x / x / x / x / x /Where I | could walk | around | in emp | ty rooms.

Here we've got five iambs, hence iambic pentameter. (Oh, the "x" stands for unstressed syllable, and the "/" represents a stressed one. Sometimes when people do this, they use a little symbol that looks like a bowl, like a half circle opening up, but I don't know how to get that symbol into a webpage. By the way, this procedure of marking syllables is called "scanning.") If we look at other lines, we can see how Stanton uses other feet to break up the rhythm.

x / x / x x / x / x /I used | to lie | on my back, | imag | ining

x x / / x x / x / x /A reverse | house on | the ceil | ing of | my house

In the first line she sticks an anapest in the middle of four iambs. In the second she begins with an anapaest, then switches to a trochee, and ends up with the iambic rhythm again. This not only breaks up the rhythm, it calls attention to certain words like "back" or "reverse house" -- in both of these cases, there's something going BACKward. Hmm. This is getting too long, so I'll try to wind down. The third kind of well-known meter is "syllabic." Here you don't care whether the syllables are stressed or unstressed, you just count them.

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Same number of syllables in each line. For example, from the opening of Philip Levine's "Animals Are Passing From Our Lives" (Strong Measures 200):

It's wonderful how I jogon four honed-down ivory toesmy massive buttocks slippinglike oiled parts with each light step.

Seven syllables each time. Not as easy as Levine makes it seem. Okay, I'll stop. For real. Meter is all about rhythm. The rhythms of the lines are measured (yup, "meter" comes from the Greek "metron" for "measure"). All of this is covered in more depth in Appendix A of Strong Measures. I hope this gives you a good start, though.

Rhyme and Music

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Remember how in "Line and Meter" last week we encountered "alliteration" when we were discussing Old English accentual verse? Alliteration is only one of several ways to produce "music" in poetry. Let's use Gwendolyn Brooks's poem "We Real Cool" (Strong Measures 38) to illustrate some of these methods. Here's the whole poem:

WE REAL COOL

The Pool Players.Seven at the Golden Shovel.

We real cool. WeLeft school. We

Lurk late. WeStrike straight. We

Sing sin. WeThin gin. We

Jazz June. WeDie soon.

Lots of alliteration here. Remember? Repeated sounds at the beginnings of words? Like the "l" sounds in "Lurk late" or the "str" repetition in "Strike straight." Obviously, there's lots of rhyme too. Such as "cool. We" and "school. We" or "sin. We" and "gin. We" ... right? Besides these "external rhymes" (those at the ends of lines), there are also "internal rhymes" (repetition of endings in the middle of lines), for example, "sin" with "Thin." So far we have been pointing to "full rhyme" (also known as "rich rhyme"); there are also examples of "half rhyme" (sometimes called "slant rhyme"), such as "sing" and "Thin" in the middle of the next line or "real" and "school" in the first two lines. Of the more familiar rhyme types, the one conspicuously missing is "eye rhyme" where two words look like they ought to rhyme fully but don't. Such as "full" and "lull" or "door" and "poor." Perhaps, though, Brooks wanted a deterministic pattern of sound that eye rhyme would not have enhanced. Other kinds of sound effects have to do with the type of sound. For example, the repetition of vowels, called "assonance." Note the short "i" sound in "Sing sin" repeated again in the next line. The echoing of consonants is called "consonance." In the opening lines of the poem, we can see the preponderance of "l" sounds. The "s" introduced in the word "school" reverberates in "Strike," "straight," "Sing," "sin," and more distantly in "Thin." The soft "g" or "j" sound in "gin" is echoed by "Jazz" and "June." Even more interesting is Brooks's use of "pararhyme," also called "rich consonance." Notice how "l" and "t" in that order occur in "left" and

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"late." Or observe how "j" is paralleled with "d" and "z" with "s" in "Jazz" and "Die s(oon)" ... fascinating. The acknowledged master of pararhyme is Wilfred Owen. Check out the opening lines of his poem "Strange Meeting":

It seemed that out of battle I escapedDown some profound dull tunnel, long since scoopedThrough granites which titanic wars had groined.

Yet also there encumbered sleepers groaned,Too fast in thought or death to be bestirred.Then, as I probed them, one sprang up, and stared

The poem goes on, but this should be enough to make the point. Brilliant pararhyming, don't you think? His rhyme words here consistently use a different vowel between identical consonants. Wow. Notice too that, to up the ante a bit, Owen uses heroic couplets. Okay, so what? What rhyme and music do is contribute to a poem's meaning by providing sonic texture and unity -- an impression that the poem is an interwoven whole of sound and sense. A poem's music, in great part, tells us that that poem is a poem. The play of sound is often what seems immediately "poetic" to the reader. Rhyme and music are often inextricably tied to form as well. Brooks, for example, uses the couplet exclusively in her poem. This stanza is built primarily from rhyme. Although meter may often be involved in a couplet, the major defining characteristic is that the two lines rhyme. Now it's your turn. Find a poem that illustrates the methods of rhyme and music. Have fun.

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ImagerySyllabus

Craft of Poetry HomeThe Statue of Liberty is an image. Not pictures of the statue. The actual figure on its pedestal on an island. It shows up in every movie about European immigrants to the US who come on ships. Why do I say it's an image? It's mimetic. That is, an artificial imitation of reality. The statue represents a woman in flowing robes holding up a torch. You've got the folds and billows in her dress. You've got the crown with the little tourist windows. You've got the shiny surface on the flame to reflect light as if it were flame. Of course, we don't confuse the statue with a real woman. Because women are only sometimes that tall, usually in 1950s black-and-white sci-fi B movies obsessed with radiation mutation. An image in a poem is much the same thing. A linguistic imitation of reality. Here's a famous poem by Ezra Pound, called "In a Station of the Metro":

The apparition of these faces in the crowd;Petals on a wet, black bough.

The second line of this brief poem is all image. We can imagine, we can see in our mind's eye the flower's stark contrast with the branch. Perhaps it has grown there. Perhaps it was blown there by the storm. All of these add to the ambience (and meaning) of the poem. Images are always sensory. They are sometimes sensual (if done right). They ground the poem's themes and ideas in real things. Wallace Stevens said, "Not ideas about the thing but the thing itself." William Carlos Williams said, "No ideas but in things." While we're talking about Williams, here's his famous poem "The Red Wheelbarrow":

so much dependsupon

the red wheelbarrow

glazed with rainwater

beside the whitechickens

Except for the first stanza, that's nothing but image. Nothing but image. Williams and Pound and other influential poets of their time joined together in a movement called Imagism. The Imagists argued for the primacy of image in poetry.

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To be really practical, what images can do in your poem is draw the reader in. By sharing your own perception and articulation of the sensory and sensual, you invite the reader to perceive too. The reader connects with you because of course she is also an image maker. All of us are, in our heads. Remember, images may involve smells, tastes, tactile sensations, sounds heard, and not only things seen. Another thing to remember about imagery is that the image needs to be particular and specific. Don't just say tree; say aspen or oak or banyan. Don't just say bird, say toucan. When you say toucan, you actually help to set the scene because toucans live only in jungle (or zoos, unfortunately). Of course you might also be referring to cereal boxes. In any case, be clear, be specific, be detailed. Detail. Detail. Detail. Detail. Detail. That's the image mantra (in trochaic pentameter). When you are vague and general, you don't give the reader enough cues and clues. If you are specific, she will tune in better. If you describe something fully and memorably, the reader will imagine your image but she will also remember something similar from her own experience, and that will enliven her mind's version of your image. If you describe something vaguely and forgettably, with the intent that the reader be given the freedom to imagine as she will, that memory spark won't fire and instead you'll have mush, both on the page and in the reader's mind. The reader will turn from your poem. Now something else, a related topic: simile, metaphor, and symbol. Here's a sentence: "Her umbrella was like a zebra." What does that make you think of? Well, maybe the canopy of this umbrella is striped black and white in that swooshing zebra way. Of course, that's a simile. Note the word like. That word ties together the two ideas (umbrella and zebra) and demands that we see them as somehow interlinked. Here's another sentence: "Her umbrella was a zebra." Better yet, "In the downpour, her umbrella was a zebra leaping among its black and tan sisters in the town square." I've tweaked the sentence to dramatize how this metaphor (note: no like) makes us see the umbrella as a zebra. And the kicker is the image: "leaping among ... black and tan." Before we go further, let me give you some terms: the vehicle is the word or phrase, which carries the "secret" meaning (in this case, "umbrella"); the tenor is the meaning (hence, "zebra leaping"). Pound's "In a Station of the Metro" is metaphoric. The qualities of the faces and the petals are transferred back and forth to each other. Now on to symbol. Let's go back to the Statue of Liberty. Yes, it's an image. If you write about the statue in a poem, that would be an image too. But the Statue is also a symbol -- in other words a metaphor whose tenor is something large and collective. The statue is the vehicle and it signals to Americans this tenor: our pride in the U.S. affording

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shelter and freedom to the oppressed and unwanted. That's a public symbol. In poetry, we find public symbols too (the flag, the cross, the Star of David), but there are also private symbols -- those which mean worlds to the poet and which are intended to mean worlds (though maybe other ones) to the reader. But no matter whether public or private symbol, whether metaphor or simile, the basic element -- the image -- won't work unless you invest it with electricity, with lightning. The image has got to crackle and it does that only if you use vivid, specific, and appropriate detail. One poetic form, which relies on this dictum, is the haiku. "In a Station of the Metro" is, in Pound's own words, "haiku-like." The haiku is a Japanese form, which, in English, has three lines composed of five syllables, seven syllables, and five syllables. It is always based on a single image. The haiku poet typically evokes a single season, say "spring" or "winter," and the details often focus on nature, at least in traditional examples. The punchline is this: the reader is supposed to experience a kind of epiphany from the haiku. As Emily Dickinson said, "I know it is poetry if I feel as if the top of my head has come off." To use 60's slang, the haiku blows your mind! Through its intense compression and compactness, the haiku liberates the mind into larger meaning. Here's an example of a Japanese haiku from the 1700s, by Taniguchi Buson:

The piercing chill I feel:    my dead wife's comb, in our bedroom,        under my heel . . .

I'll let you work out your own response to this, but let me say that it seems to me the haiku alludes to winter, pain, death, and fear of ghosts, but more importantly to love, sorrow, and transcendence over death. What do you think? Pretty cool stuff. And it all depends on image: "piercing" and "under my heel." That last phrase is sensory, connecting with the tactile. Ouch. There's a TV ad, which says, "Image is nothing. Thirst is everything." Poetry is completely opposite: image is everything.

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FormSyllabus

Craft of Poetry HomeI hope it is clear to you that form is at the centre of our course topic. So I won't spend your time and mine here by outlining various forms of poetry since that's what we are doing from week to week. I consulted John Lennard's The Poetry Handbook: A Guide to Reading Poetry for Pleasure and Practical Criticism (Oxford University Press, 1996) to see how he handles this topic. (Other topics he discusses in separate chapters include metre, layout, punctuation, lineation, rhyme, diction, syntax, history, biography, and gender). I found that Lennard lays out various forms -- blank verse, couplets, tercets, etc. -- just as we are doing over this entire semester. So that's not much help here.

[Just as an aside, while I find Lennard's book brilliant, it is not as useful to American students of poetry because the British use poetic terms a bit differently. For example, what we call consonance they call alliteration. What we call alliteration does not have a separate term among the British. A period is a full stop. Quotation marks are called inverted commas. An envelope rhyme (abba) is called an arch-rhyme. Etc. Remember that fact when you look at British books on prosody -- a fancy word for the study of poetic forms.]

Okay, so let me begin again by first defining form. In poetry, this refers to shape or structure without regard (necessarily) to content. It's important to understand that all poems have form. Even a free-verse poem has form -- it's just that it invents its own form as it goes. This is why contemporary scholars of poetry have begun to use "open form" instead of "free verse," to acknowledge that free verse also has form. By extension, then, poems in inherited forms and meters have come to be called "closed forms" -- a term I don't particularly like. Just as "free verse" implies formlessness too much, "closed forms" suggests that inherited forms and meters are somehow hermetic, unchanging and unchangeable. Nothing could be less true. During the 1980s, a group of poets -- including Molly Peacock, Brad Leithauser, Dana Gioia, Marilyn Hacker, among others -- were banding together (or being branded together) as so-called New Formalists. What they were (and are) up to is redefining formal verse, updating it for our times. The odd thing that happened was that free-verse poets, who were of course in the majority at that time, began to label the New Formalists as Reaganites, as ultraconservatives, as if somehow the choice to use forms indicated political party affiliation. At the same time, the New

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Formalists felt themselves to be avant garde, and that writing in forms was the hip new thing. Thankfully, this controversy has pretty much faded, and poets now have carte blanche to choose free verse or formal verse, open form or closed forms. Here's an example of a free-verse poem, "Eating Poetry" by Mark Strand:

Ink runs from the corners of my mouth.There is no happiness like mine.I have been eating poetry.

The librarian does not believe what she sees.Her eyes are sadand she walks with her hands in her dress.

The poems are gone.The light is dim. The dogs are on the basement stairs and coming up.

Their eyeballs roll,their blond legs burn like brush. The poor librarian begins to stamp her feet and weep.

She does not understand.When I get on my knees and lick her hand,she screams.

I am a new man.I snarl at her and bark.I romp with joy in the bookish dark.

Notice that this is in tercets but there is no preset meter; also external rhymes occur only rarely. But notice how endstopped the lines are; in fact, there is a comma or a period after each line except one. So we can see that it is mainly syntax (sentence structure, if you don't know that term), which governs Strand's lineation. Even the single line without ending punctuation is not enjambed since it's also a full sentence by itself. What we might notice though is that the lines come in widely varying lengths. One might say that Strand balances variant line lengths against the predictability of tercets to advance the central opposition between the speaker's spontaneous effervescence and the librarian's repressive fussiness. So the form invented for this poem aids us in the understanding of content, conflict, and narrative. Now here's an example of a poem in an inherited form, "Just Like a 6 Month Old Child" by my former student Amy Kunst (she wrote it in a beginning poetry class):

Grandma is 91 today.She has a toothless smileThat makes me look away.She wears a pink gingham dress.

She has a toothless smileJust like a 6 month old child.

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She wears her pink gingham dressCovered with a clear plastic bib.

Just like a 6 month old childShe sits in a special chairCovered with a clear plastic bibWaiting for someone to feed her.

She sits in a special chair.I look at her and want to cryAs she waits for me to feed her.I am the only volunteer.

I look at her and want to cry.I listen to her grown children whisper,"Thank God, Susan volunteered."She holds her head up high.

As I listen to her grown children whisper,I feel like screaming, "She's not deaf!"She holds her head up highAs I begin to feed her.

I feel like whispering to her (she's not deaf),"Remember when you fed them?"As I begin to feed herShe squeezes my hand and smiles.

"Remember when you fed them?"Now they look away.She squeezes my hand and smiles.My grandma is 91 today.

This is a pantoum. Damon refers to this form in his treatment of quatrains. Just to remind you, the second and fourth lines in each stanza return as the first and third lines of the next stanza. At the end of the poem, the first and third lines of the opening stanza (which have not yet been repeated) recycle in reverse order in the final stanza. So that the poem comes full circle, with the last line the same as the first line. If that was confusing, compare my description with Kunst's poem. Or look again at Damon's write-up. What we want to do here is to see how the form (and a difficult one it is) affects what Kunst says. Kunst has told me that she had no idea where the poem was headed and allowed the line repetitions to be in charge. Notice how the speaker of the poem moves from being disgusted at her grandmother's age to realizing that there is nothing to feel that way about, while simultaneously condemning her parents and aunts and uncles for continuing to be disgusted. The opening line seems somewhat regretful that Grandma is so old, while the closing line (see the addition of "My") conveys the speaker's new pride in her grandmother. It's quite a brilliant poem with lots of wit and charm; especially in the ways it subtly alters the lines as they return sometimes. And I hope it's

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inspiring to you that this was written in an introductory poetry-writing course. What I hope this example delineates for you is the practical aspect of form for the poet. When you are working with an inherited form, you can become so involved in fulfilling the "rules" of that form that your subconscious is more readily able to "cough up" things that you didn't know you wanted to say but which the poem wants to say. The result is surprise both for the poet and the reader -- discovery and newness. Learn to abandon yourself to form and see where it takes your poems. The aspect of form we have not yet discussed is tradition -- that certain forms have become historically connected to given attitudes or types of poetry. But that discussion is for the next treatment. So 'nuff for now.

All poets are talking to all past, present, and future poets.

All poems are talking to all past, present, and future poems.

One could think of the entire enterprise of poetry over millennia as a giant conversation, not merely a dialogue but a "multilogue" of many layers: between poets and poets, between poets and readers, between poets and hearers, between hearers and hearers, between readers and readers, between poets and poems, and between poems and poems.

In other words, no poems are written in a vacuum. Not even the first poem, spoken by some ancient person next to a prehistoric campfire, written by someone on a cave wall, or impressed in mud next to the Euphrates river, or scraped with charcoal on a banana leaf. That poem is in conversation with all other poems, which have followed. (Though I suppose this happens only in spirit since that ur-poem is now lost.)

The ur-poem we do have is Gilgamesh -- translated again within the last decade by John Gardner, so that we can see the conversation still echoing over several millennia.

To go on ... no poets write in a vacuum either. (I guess unless you have a spacesuit. Sorry.) Every poet is affected by other poets, and vice versa. Poets affect readers. Readers affect poets, and so on.

More particularly, certain forms have come to be associated with particular occasions and feelings. That's what we call tradition. (Though I must confess I sometimes think of Fiddler on the Roof when I hear this word!)

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A good example of poetic tradition is the sonnet.

The Italian poet Petrarch invented the sonnet some 700 years ago. He created it as a "little song" (that's what "sonnet" meant in Old Provençal) to express his love for a woman named Laura. So one might say the sonnet originally started off as a seduction poem. But at the same time Petrarch highlighted how honorable his intentions were, how Platonic and elevated his love.

That's how the tradition of the sonnet as a love poem began. By the time we get to Shakespeare 300 years later, the tradition is very well established. Here's an example, "Sonnet 130" (my favourite of Shakespeare's):

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 grown on her head.I have seen roses damasked, red and white,But no such roses see I in her cheeks;And in some perfumes is there more delightThan in the breath that from my mistress reeks.I love to hear her speak, yet well I knowThat music hath a far more pleasing sound;I grant I never saw a goddess go;My mistress, when she walks, treads on the ground.    And yet, by heaven, I think my love as rare    As any she belied with false compare.

Okay, so it's about love. There's a "mistress" here, right? But the poem is a backhanded way of saying I love you, don't you think? The coolest thing for me here is seeing that Shakespeare is parodying the posture of other poets working within the sonnet tradition. That is, those who say stuff like "Your eyes are like stars" -- even in the 1600s, this was already clichéd. If we look at a poem like Molly Peacock's 1984 poem "The Lull" we can get a glimpse of how the sonnet tradition has gone over the last 300 or 400 years:

The possum lay on the tracks fully dead.I'm the kind of person who stops to look.It was big and white with flies on its head,a thick healthy hairless tail, and strong, hookednails on its raccoon-like feet. It was a full-grown possum. It was sturdy and adult. Only its head was smashed. In the lullthat it took you to look, you took the time to insultthe corpse, the flies, the world, the fact that we weretraipsing in our dress shoes down the railroad tracks."That's disgusting." You said that. Dreams, brains, furand guts: what we are. That's my bargain, the PaxPeacock, with the world. Look hard, life's soft. Life's cacheis flesh, flesh, and flesh.

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Here there are still two people: an "I" and a "you." That they are in love is suggested by "traipsing in our dress shoes." Is it the morning after, maybe? Still "traipsing," anyway. But the speaker here rejects the lover because of a chance comment that sets off a red flag. We can see this poem as at least nontraditional, maybe even anti-traditional. The speaker's stance is not only non-romantic, but anti-romantic. And the details of the poem -- the headless possum which the lover labelled "disgusting" -- are similarly non-romantic and perhaps even unexpected in a sonnet. The point is that the tradition of the sonnet sets up expectations in the reader of what the content will be. Given tradition, form can imply content. For you as a poet, tradition means that your choice of a form brings up baggage that you have to deal with. It's important to remember too, however, that one doesn't always have to follow tradition (as Hallmark cards almost always do). You can pull a Peacock and thumb your nose. It's all part of the conversation. It's the punk stance. Revolution. There are all sorts of traditions. There's the tradition of the haiku, with its use of compression to talk about large issues via nature imagery. When we think of quatrains, there are hymnal stanzas and ballad stanzas, both of whom are in common meter. One is for sacred purposes, the other for profane (as in worldly) ones -- rather like the contrast between gospel music and the blues. Consider what Dickinson did in innovating the hymnal stanza through slant rhyme; there's an interesting twist on tradition. The tradition of the pantoum has a secret history that is hidden by colonialism: the pantoum is a Malayan form that was imported by the French colonizers, but in doing so, they eviscerated it of its true essence. The epigrammatic central aspect of the Malayan pantoum has been lost and replaced with the interlocked refrains which were done as well in the Malay form, but only in a small subset of what was possible within that tradition. All sorts of traditions. Here's something else to remember. In our course, Damon and I tell you, "Go write a pantoum" or "Go write a sonnet." But it doesn't happen that way in the so-called "real world" most of the time. When I was studying for my MFA in poetry-writing, the poet Richard Wilbur visited our workshop and said something that genuinely struck me: "I don't start off writing a sonnet; I write a poem and after a few lines I realize I'm writing a sonnet." Okay. You start off with the vague intent of writing a love poem. Then that poem begins to shape itself into a sonnet. Once you come to that realization, you need to remember the sonnet tradition -- in other words, that readers will expect certain things from you and your poem once they realize they're reading a sonnet. That's the conversation. And that's why we write poems, isn't it? Why I do, anyway. To tell someone something. And tradition is a context that

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I and that someone share, and it can be used meaningfully in my telling.

This lesson should have probably been first in our series, so let me explain why it comes at this point. What the method is in our madness.

"Meter" was matched with "Blank Verse" because meter is the basic determiner in blank verse. "Rhyme" coincided with "Couplet" because, again, rhyme is the basic element that defines the couplet. "Tradition" went with "Sonnet" because of the strength and persistence of the sonnet tradition over the centuries. And so on.

Now "Repetition" parallels "Villanelle" because it is the basic principle that determines the villanelle: the repeated line, called a refrain.

Repetition, however, is perhaps the most basic idea in poetics. There are all sorts of repetition: the repetition of rhythmic elements (meter); the repetition of sounds (rhyme, etc.); the repetition of syntactic elements (often a lineation device in open form); the repetition of stanzas (terza rima, for example), and so on.

There is the repetition of specific forms to create tradition. As poets innovate the tradition, the consistent element is the repetition of form, sometimes with small changes in technique.

Here's what repetition does in poetry: it sets up expectations which are either fulfilled for the reader or frustrated (and often both fulfilled and frustrated).

For example, when the first line of a poem is in iambic pentameter, we expect this metric pattern to continue. As the poet introduces variations, replacing iambs with other feet, we as readers experience a mixture of tension and pleasure in the variety. Thus repetition (and the lack of it) gives a poem texture and interest.

Repetition also amplifies and intersects with sense. Remember, for example, Gwendolyn's famous poem:

WE REAL COOL

The Pool Players.Seven at the Golden Shovel.

We real cool. WeLeft school. We

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Lurk late. WeStrike straight. We

Sing sin. WeThin gin. We

Jazz June. WeDie soon.

The repetition of the word "We" is originally planted at the start of both the title and the first line. This repetition is intensified by the memorable enjambment in lines 1-7, with "We" causing a breathy kind of suspense at each line break. Thus we have the fulfilment of expectation, right? And then the "We" repetition is suddenly and rudely cut off in line 8 -- hence the frustration of expectation. The missing "We" at the end of the poem dramatizes through sound (or, more precisely, the lack of sound) the bitter loss of these young men who, the poem implies, have wasted their all-too-brief lives. Repetition can be a tricky business in poems. My former teacher Yusef Komunyakaa used to tell us (me and my MFA classmates) never to repeat a word in a poem. He claimed that the second presence of the word reduces the energy at that point as well as at the first appearance of the word. This is good advice, I think. At the same time, however, repetition can accumulate the music and the feeling. For example, in the second stanza of D. H. Lawrence's "Bavarian Gentians":

Bavarian gentians, big and dark, only darkdarkening the day-time, torch-like with the smoking blossoms of Pluto's gloom,ribbed and torch-like, with their blaze of darkness spread bluedown flattening into points, flattened under the sweep of white daytorch-flower of the blue-smoking darkness, Pluto's dark-blue daze,black lamps from the halls of Dis, burning dark blue,giving off darkness, blue darkness, as Demeter's pale lamps give off light,lead me then, lead the way.

First, there are repetitions of words ("dark," "torch," "blue," and "flatten"). Second, the repetitions of sounds: alliteration ("dark," "day," "Dis"; "blaze," "black," "blue"); assonance ("blaze," "day," "pale"); consonance ("daze" with "Dis"; "light" with "lead"); and rhyme ("blue" and "blue"; "day" and "way"). Third, repetition of syntax ("big and dark" and "ribbed and torch-like"; "Pluto's dark-blue daze" and "Demeter's pale lamps"). There are probably other repetitions here that you can find for yourself. The point, in any case, is the way that Lawrence uses repetition, much like a jazz musician repeating riffs with small alterations in each go-round. Repetition is so obvious and ever-present that we sometimes forget its importance. Keep repetition in mind as you write.

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Style

When I was growing up in San Francisco in the late Sixties, the everyday talk of my friends and me often transpired in black slang (now called African American Vernacular English by linguists). We would say, for example, "My lady be stylin." Roughly translated, this means something like "My girlfriend consistently dresses in an attractive and fashionable style." Perhaps this sentence in Black English may remind you of an often-quoted sentence, "The style is the man himself" (Comte de Buffon). Or it may not. In any case, style is an important part of the poet's repertoire. Style refers to the distinctive and idiosyncratic way one expresses oneself. For example, in these lessons I have tried to maintain an easy-going breezy style. This would be different from the style I might use in a scholarly article, or in an intimate letter to an old friend, or in a letter of complaint to a corporation. Style also arises from occasion. What we're talking about here is personal style. You can develop your own style by making your poetry true to your spoken voice. Learn your characteristic cadences, vocabulary, syntax. Read your poems out loud and see if they sound natural in your voice, in your body. The poet Donald Justice said that after writing a poem, "When I listen to it and it sounds like me, then it's a good poem." Our topic also refers to collective or public style. In modern and post-modern poetry, poetic styles have continuously diversified. The most significant poetic revolution occurred in the early twentieth century, when modernist poets began writing in free verse as a revolution against formal verse. In mid-century the Beat poets added to the revolution. Poets like Allen Ginsberg and Jack Kerouac wrote first drafts and called them poems, valorising the site (both place and time) of creation. Beat poetry reflected not just a literary style but also a lifestyle. Often such poetic styles are thought of as schools or movements. Craig Raine, for example, led the "Martian School" of poetry in 1980s Britain.

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Here are the opening and closing stanzas of the poem, which started that school, Raine's "A Martian Sends a Postcard Home."

Caxtons are mechanical birds with many wingsand some are treasured for their markings --

they cause the eyes to meltor the body to shriek without pain.

I have never seen one fly, butsometimes they perch on the hand.

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

At night, when all the colours die,they hide in pairs

and read about themselves --in colour, with their eyelids shut.

The poem tries to look at contemporary society through an outsider's eyes, in an anthropological sense, but at the far extreme with an observer who is not even human. An observer who knows the historical fact that the first printed books in England were made by William Caxton, but doesn't know the words cry or laugh or dream. The poets of the Martian School tried to achieve this sort of distant objectivity laced with humour and irony (on personal as well as social levels). Recent poetic movements in the U.S. include the New Formalists, the New Narrativists, Language Poets, and most recently, Slam Poetry contests and poetry on the Internet. A counter-revolution against open form or free verse, New Formalism revives and experiments with rhyme, meter, and form. Several of the poets we have been reading in this course are proponents of the New Formalist movement, which began in the early 1980s. Beginning at about the same time, New Narrative poets emphasize story -- such as Vikram Seth, whose 1986 book The Golden Gate is a novel in sonnets. Seth based his sonnet style on the so-called Onegin stanza, invented by Pushkin for his novel in verse, Eugene Onegin. As a sample, here's the first stanza from Seth's novel:

To make a start more swift than weighty,Hail Muse. Dear Reader, once uponA time, say, circa 1980,There lived a man. His name was John.Successful in his field though onlyTwenty-six, respected, lonely,One evening as he walked acrossGolden Gate Park, the ill-judged tossOf a red frisbee almost brained him.He thought, "If I died, who'd be sad?Who'd weep? Who'd gloat? Who would be glad?Would anybody?" As it pained him.He turned from his dispiriting themeTo ruminations less extreme.

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Thus begins this yuppie novel whose hero is a computer programmer. The narrative continues for 500+ sonnets. Seth gets so used to the Onegin stanza that he writes the contents page, his dedication page, and his own bio in that stanza! Incredible. Also around that same period, there arose Language Poetry, based on poststructuralist linguistics, which holds that meaning-making is a profoundly slippery process which disallows shared understanding. Language poems intentionally deconstruct themselves, focusing on language itself as subject and bypassing conventional meaning. This untitled poem by P. Inman is a representative example:

thru drees, load dickening, keithall occliffed, plinther, intos thaggle, instanceilm deodr, mudxeast, paean ximv,'sanother handsome attack, gline leverage, bsidb,tuned full simple

A recent development, within the last decade, has been the Slam Poetry movement. Slam Poetry competitions are a cross between big-time wrestling and poetry readings. They generally take place in bars (which means an inebriated audience). Poets come up and deliver a poem; often these are full dramatic performances with costumes and props. Then a panel of judges flashes numerical score cards, like in diving competitions, accompanied with hooting or cheering from the audience. Scores are tallied and one poet wins. Often this poet goes on to a regional Slam and then a state one, until she reaches the National Poetry Slam. This excerpt from "Game Boy" by Regie Cabico illustrates Slam Poetry's reliance on spoken rhythms and hip street smarts:

he buys me a glass of bass draft & asks if i am japanese/his remarks/you are the perfect combination of boy & man

are you the hip, hot, hung 9 inches of fun/ seeking the slimsmooth, smiling, authentically thai-tasting, geish-guy,on-the-side macho dancer/ looking for his lord-&-master?

Parallel to the Poetry Slam but often without the contest element are the "Spoken Word" performances which are taking place these days across the country, especially in the cities. Less a style than a spontaneous upsurge, poetry on the Internet has been thriving as well. There are plenty of bulletin board systems and email discussion lists, which give Internet poets, a genuine community (for example, the CREative WRiTing List CREWRT-L <crewrt-l@lists.missouri.edu>). A growing portion of poetry on the net is interactive, taking advantage of hypertext and graphics. Interactivity means that the reader can change the poem as she reads it on her computer screen. Such cyberpoetry is a true advance of poetic craft, melding poetics with technology. Here are some sample websites:

Wingnut-Etc.   <http://www.wingnut-etc.com> Magnetic Poetry!   <http://www.spaceship.com/~mattias/poetry.html> Poetry Hi-Fi   <http://www.poetryhifi.com>

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The most empowering factor in Internet Poetry is that poets, even if they are writing non-interactive poems, can have an audience without any need for publishers. A real poetry democracy. Other factors, which cut across both the personal axis and the public one, include race, ethnicity, gender, and sexual identity. As part of the social revolutions in full swing in our day, African American, Asian American, Latino, and Native American poets have been enjoying a heyday of late. Feminist poetry continues to be on the ascendancy, with such poets as Sylvia Plath, Anne Sexton, and Adrienne Rich. The Men's Movement also has its poetic gurus, such as Robert Bly. Gay and Lesbian poetry -- as represented perhaps by the Native American poet Chrystos -- is also thriving. As a sample, here is a famous poem by African American poet Lucille Clifton; this poem has become well known as a feminist statement:

HOMAGE TO MY HIPS

these hips are big hipsthey need space tomove around in.they don't fit into littlepetty places. these hipsare free hips.they don't like to be held back.these hips have never been enslaved,they go where they want to gothey do what they want to do.these hips are mighty hips.these hips are magic hips.i have known them to put a spell on a man andspin him like a top!

Whether we are talking about personal style or public style, it's important to consider your own style. Listen to your own voice while speaking as well as while writing. Make your poems true to your own colloquial cadences. But also give some thought (a lot of thought) to where you fit within the enterprise of poetry. Formal verse? Free verse? Language Poetry? Read as much poetry as you can -- as many styles and types as you can locate. Study entire books by the poets whose style and voice you admire. And then write in the style you find you must. Write your poems. Good luck.

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