Gioia-Poetry-Chapter 10

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Form as a general idea, is the design of a thing as a whole, the configuration of all its parts. No poem can escape having some kind of form, whether its lines are as various in length as tree's branches or all in hexameter.

Writing in closed forms, a poet follows (or finds) some sort of pattern, such as that of a sonnet with its rime scheme and its fourteen lines of iambic pentameter.

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The poet who writes in open form usually seeks no final click. Often, such a poet views the writing of a poem as a process, rather than a quest for an absolute. Free to use white space for emphasis, able to shorten or lengthen lines as the sense seems to require.

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Formal Patterns

The best-known one-line pattern for a poem in English is blank verse: unrimed iambic pentameter. (This pattern is not a stanza: stanzas have more than one line.)

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The Couplet

The couplet is a two-line stanza, usually rimed. Its lines tend to be equal in length, whether short or long.

Blow,

Snow!

As I in hoary winter's night stood shivering in the snow.

Surprised I was with sudden heat which made my heart to glow.

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The Tercet

A tercet is a group of three lines. If rimed, they usually keep to one rime sound, as in this anonymous English children's jingle:

Julius Caesar.

The Roman geezer.

Squashed his wife with a lemon-squeezer.

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The Quatrain

The workhorse of English poetry is the quatrain, a stanza consisting of four lines. Quatrains are used in rimed poems more often than any other form.

Robert Graves (1895-1985)

Counting the Beats

You, love, and I,
(He whispers) you and I,
And if no more than only you and I
What care you or I ?

Counting the beats,
Counting the slow heart beats,
The bleeding to death of time in slow heart beats,
Wakeful they lie.

Cloudless day,
Night, and a cloudless day,
Yet the huge storm will burst upon their heads one day
From a bitter sky.

Where shall we be,
(She whispers) where shall we be,
When death strikes home, O where then shall we be
Who were you and I ?

Not there but here,
(He whispers) only here,
As we are, here, together, now and here,
Always you and I.

Counting the beats,
Counting the slow heart beats,
The bleeding to death of time in slow heart beats,
Wakeful they lie.

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The Epigram

An epigram is a form: a short poem ending in a witty or ingenious turn of thought, to which the rest of the composition is intended to lead up.(according to the Oxford English Dictionary). Often it is a malicious gibe with an unexpected stinger in the final line - perhaps in the very last word.

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Alexander Pope (1688-1744)

Epigram Engraved on the Collar of a Dog

Which I Gave to His Royal Highness

I am his Highness' dog at Kew;

Pray tell me sir, whose dog are you?

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Sir John Harrington (1561? -1612)

Of Treason

Treason doth never prosper, what's the reason?

For if it prosper, none dare to call it treason.

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Treason - definitions

noun

1.

the offense of acting to overthrow one's government or to harm or killits sovereign.

2.

a violation of allegiance to one's sovereign or to one's state.

3.

the betrayal of a trust or confidence; breach of faith; treachery.

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Anonymous

Epitaph on a dentist

Stranger, approach this spot with gravity;

John Brown is filling his last cavity.

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Hilaire Belloc (1870-1956)

Fatigue

I'm tired of Love: I'm still more tired of Rhyme.

But Money gives me pleasure all the time.

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Wendy Cope (b. 1945)

Variation on Belloc's "Fatigue"

I hardly ever tire of love or rhyme -

That's why I'm poor and have a rotten time.

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Wendy Cope (b. 1945)

Variation on Belloc's "Fatigue"

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Additional Poems

William Blake

Tyger, Tyger

Tyger Tyger, burning bright,

In the forests of the night;

What immortal hand or eye,

Could frame thy fearful symmetry?

In what distant deeps or skies.

Burnt the fire of thine eyes?

On what wings dare he aspire?

What the hand, dare seize the fire?

And what shoulder, & what art,

Could twist the sinews of thy heart?

And when thy heart began to beat,

What dread hand? & what dread feet?

What the hammer? what the chain,

In what furnace was thy brain?

What the anvil? what dread grasp,

Dare its deadly terrors clasp!

When the stars threw down their spears

And water'd heaven with their tears:

Did he smile his work to see?

Did he who made the Lamb make thee?

Tyger Tyger burning bright,

In the forests of the night:

What immortal hand or eye,

Dare frame thy fearful symmetry?

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William Blake - Tyger, Tyger

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William Butler Yeats

When You Are Old

When you are old and gray and full of sleep

And nodding by the fire, take down this book,

And slowly read, and dream of the soft look

Your eyes had once, and of their shadows deep;

How many loved your moments of glad grace,

And loved your beauty with love false or true;

But one man loved the pilgrim soul in you,

And loved the sorrows of your changing face.

And bending down beside the glowing bars,

Murmur, a little sadly, how love fled

And paced upon the mountains overhead,

And hid his face amid a crowd of stars.

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Prof Gioia talked about this poem in class.

The speaker who invites his beloved woman to rethink, evaluate her decisions in life. The speaker claimed to be the only one who truly loved her, and would love her for eternity.

The woman in young, but the speaker asks her to imagine herself in the future, alone, opening a book (probably poetry, images) in which she would look back in the past, and realize that a lot of people were attracted to her because she was beautiful, but now she is old, and probably alone, because she rejected his proposal.

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THE SONNET

In the poetry of western Europe and America, the sonnet is the fixed form that has attracted for the longest time the largest number of noteworthy practitioners.

Originally an Italian form (sonetto: "Little Songs"), the sonnet owes much of its prestige to Petrarch (1304-1374) who wrote in it of his love for the unattainable Laura.

Soon after English poets imported the sonnet in the 16th century, they worked out their own rime scheme - one easier for them to follow than Petrarch's which calls for a greater number of riming words than English can readily provide.

English sonnet, sometimes called Shakespeare Sonnet, the rimes cohere in four cluster:

a b a b - c d c d - e f e f - g g

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William Shakespeare (1564-1616)

Let me not to the marriage of true minds

Let me not to the marriage of true minds
Admit impediments. Love is not love
Which alters when it alteration finds,
Or bends with the remover to remove:
O no; it is an ever-fixed mark,
That looks on tempests, and is never shaken;
It is the star to every wandering bark,
Whose worth's unknown, although his height be taken.
Love's not Time's fool, though rosy lips and cheeks
Within his bending sickle's compass come;
Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks,
But bears it out even to the edge of doom.
If this be error and upon me proved,
I never writ, nor no man ever loved.

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Michael Drayton (1563-1631)

Since there's no help,

come let us kiss and part

Since there's no help, come let us kiss and part;
Nay, I have done, you get no more of me,
And I am glad, yea glad with all my heart
That thus so cleanly I myself can free;
Shake hands forever, cancel all our vows,
And when we meet at any time again,
Be it not seen in either of our brows
That we one jot of former love retain.
Now at the last gasp of Love's latest breath,
When, his pulse failing, Passion speechless lies,
When Faith is kneeling by his bed of death,
And Innocence is closing up his eyes,
Now if thou wouldst, when all have given him over,
From death to life thou mightst him yet recover.

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Michael Drayton (1563-1631)

Since there's no help,

come let us kiss and part

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Edna St. Vicent Murray (1892-1950)

What lips my lips have kissed,

and where, and why

What lips my lips have kissed, and where, and why,

I have forgotten, and what arms have lain

Under my head till morning; but the rain

Is full of ghosts tonight, that tap and sigh

Upon the glass and listen for reply,

And in my heart there stirs a quiet pain

For unremembered lads that not again

Will turn to me at midnight with a cry.

Thus in winter stands the lonely tree,

Nor knows what birds have vanished one by one,

Yet knows its boughs more silent than before:

I cannot say what loves have come and gone,

I only know that summer sang in me

A little while, that in me sings no more.

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Edna St. Vicent Murray (1892-1950)

What lips my lips have kissed,

and where, and why

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Robert Frost (1874-1963)

Acquainted with the Night

I have been one acquainted with the night.

I have walked out in rain—and back in rain.

I have outwalked the furthest city light.

I have looked down the saddest city lane.

I have passed by the watchman on his beat

And dropped my eyes, unwilling to explain.

I have stood still and stopped the sound of feet

When far away an interrupted cry

Came over houses from another street,

But not to call me back or say good-bye;

And further still at an unearthly height,

One luminary clock against the sky

Proclaimed the time was neither wrong nor right.

I have been one acquainted with the night.

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Robert Frost (1874-1963)

Acquainted with the Night

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Kim Addonizio

First Poem for You

I like to touch your tattoos in complete

darkness, when I can’t see them. I’m sure of

where they are, know by heart the neat

lines of lightning pulsing just above

your nipple, can find, as if by instinct, the blue

swirls of water on your shoulder where a serpent

twists, facing a dragon. When I pull you

to me, taking you until we’re spent

and quiet on the sheets, I love to kiss

the pictures in your skin. They’ll last until

you’re seared to ashes; whatever persists

or turns to pain between us, they will still

be there. Such permanence is terrifying.

So I touch them in the dark; but touch them, trying.

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Kim Addonizio

First Poem for You

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A.E Stallings (b. 1968)

Sine Qua Non

Your absence, father, is nothing. It is naught–
The factor by which nothing will multiply,
The gap of a dropped stitch, the needle’s eye
Weeping its black thread. It is the spot
Blindly spreading behind the looking glass.
It is the startled silences that come
When the refrigerator stops its hum,
And crickets pause to let the winter pass.

Your absence, father, is nothing–for it is
Omega’s long last O, memory’s elision,
The fraction of impossible division,
The element I move through, emptiness,
The void stars hang in, the interstice of lace,
The zero that still holds the sum in place.

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A.E Stallings (b. 1968)

Sine Qua Non

COMMENTARY: Sine qua non, Latin for indispensable which is Latinate for…(curiously no Germanic words exist for this concept), “without this nothing,” might, in this poem, be playfully rephrased as “sine non non,” without nothing nothing, since Stallings’s point seems to be that her father’s absence brings presences into sharper distinction. The black thread is needful (there’s a Germanic word) of the needle hole.

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R.S. Gwynn (b 1948)

Shakespearean Sonnet

With a first line taken from the tv listings

A man is haunted by his father's ghost.
Boy meets girl while feuding families fight.
A Scottish king is murdered by his host.
Two couples get lost on a summer night.
A hunchback murders all who block his way.
A ruler's rivals plot against his life.
A fat man and a prince make rebels pay.
A noble Moor has doubts about his wife.
An English king decides to conquer France.
A duke learns that his best friend is a she.
A forest sets the scene for this romance.
An old man and his daughters disagree.
A Roman leader makes a big mistake.
A sexy queen is bitten by a snake.

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R.S. Gwynn (b 1948)

Shakespearean Sonnet

PS: NOT SURE ABOUT THE ALLUSIONS. BUT I FOUND THESE...

Hamlet
Romeo and Juliet
Macbeth
A Midsummer Night's Dream
Richard III
Richard II
Henry IV Part I
Othello
Henry V
Twelfth Night
As You Like It
King Lear
Julius Caesar
Antony and Cleopatra

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Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1806-1861)

How Do I Love Thee? Let Me Count The Ways

How do I love thee? Let me count the ways.
I love thee to the depth and breadth and height
My soul can reach, when feeling out of sight
For the ends of Being and ideal Grace.
I love thee to the level of everyday's
Most quiet need, by sun and candle-light.
I love thee freely, as men strive for Right;
I love thee purely, as they turn from Praise.
I love thee with a passion put to use
In my old griefs, and with my childhood's faith.
I love thee with a love I seemed to lose
With my lost saints, --- I love thee with the breath,
Smiles, tears, of all my life! --- and, if God choose,
I shall but love thee better after death.

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Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1806-1861)

How Do I Love Thee? Let Me Count The Ways

Prof Gioia talked about the ways the speaker loves. Spiritual, Physical, Emotional, etc

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William Shakespeare (1564-1616)

When, in disgrace with

Fortune and men's eyes

When, in disgrace with fortune and men’s eyes,

I all alone beweep my outcast state,

And trouble deaf heaven with my bootless cries,

And look upon myself and curse my fate,

Wishing me like to one more rich in hope,

Featured like him, like him with friends possessed,

Desiring this man’s art and that man’s scope,

With what I most enjoy contented least;

Yet in these thoughts myself almost despising,

Haply I think on thee, and then my state,

(Like to the lark at break of day arising

From sullen earth) sings hymns at heaven’s gate;

For thy sweet love remembered such wealth brings

That then I scorn to change my state with kings.

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William Shakespeare (1564-1616)

When, in disgrace with

Fortune and men's eyes

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CHAPTER 10 - TERMS FOR REVIEW

Form - In a general sense, form is the means by which a literary work expresses its content.

Fixed Forms - A traditional verse form requiring certain predetermined elements of structure - for example, a stanza pattern, set meter, or predetermined line length.

Closed Forms - A generic term that describes poetry written in a pattern of meter, rime, lines, or stanzas. A closed form adheres to a set of structure.

Open Forms - Verse that has no set scheme - no regular meter, rime, or stanzaic pattern.

Open form has also been called FREE VERSE.

Blank Verse - Blank verse contains five iambic feet per line (iambic pentameter) and it is not rimed. (Blank means UNRIMED).

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Couplet - A two-line stanza in poetry, usually rimed and with lines of equal lengths.

Closed Couplet - Two rimed lines of iambic pentameter that usually contain an independent and complete thought or statement. Also called heroic couplet.

Quatrain - A stanza consisting of four lines, it's the most common stanza form used in English poetry.

Epic - A long narrative poem tracing the adventures of a popular hero. Epic poems are usually written in a consistent form and meter throughout.

Epigram - A very short, comic poem, often turning at the end with some sharp wit or unexpected stinger.

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The Sonnet

Sonnet - A fixed form of fourteen lines, traditionally written in iambic pentameter and rimed throughout.

Italian Sonnet - Also called Petrarchan Sonnet, it rimes the octave (first 8 lines) - a b b a a b b a ; The Sestet (the last 6 lines) may follow a rime pattern, as long as it does not end in couplet. The poem traditionally turns, or shifts, in a mood or tone, after the octave.

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English Sonnet - Also called Shakespearean Sonnet, it has the following rime scheme organized into three quatrains and a concluding couplet: a b a b c d c d e f e f g g . The poem may turn - that is, shift in mood or tone - between any of the rime clusters.