LTAM 104a, Spring 1998

A LITTLE FAKE BOOK

OF BASIC INFORMATION ON POETIC FORM

There is a good deal of controversy about the degree to which the formal aspects of a poem determine its meaning: on one end of the spectrum stand advocates of "pure poetry," who feel that musicality and imagery are of primary importance (Poe, for instance, was one); on the other end are readers who are concerned above all with the ideological meanings of a poem, and who downplay the formal aspects to a minimum. Rather than try to convert you into taking a particular position on this spectrum, I want you to master the tools that will allow you to make the decision yourself: the tools of formal analysis of language. To some degree, these tools apply to all language: we speak in rhythmic patterns, and often rhetorical ones as well. Look closely, and your notion of "poetic language" may expand tremendously (to Whitman's delight, no doubt!).

Assume, first, that you will need to read the poem through several times to get a basic understanding of what it is trying to say. If the normal word order of a sentence is inverted in a poetic line, paraphrase or diagram it. Are there parts of speech left out? Is a dependent clause ambiguous- could it refer to two different subjects (and if so, how might the ambiguity lead you to different conclusions)? On a broader scale, what kinds of issues does the poem seem to be addressing? Is there a crisis of belief or emotion? Who is speaking, and to whom? What changes -- in setting, voice, or tone-- over the course of the poem?

Imagery and metaphorical language are language's primary ways of suggesting that which it does not choose to make perfectly explicit. Visual and aural images may set the scene for a poetic statement, or they may radiate some symbolic significance. All images are not necessarily symbolic, nor is there a "master key" of universally accepted symbols that every reader agrees upon. The image makes sense in its context, as part of a sum effect; it is not (usually, anyway) a simple riddle to be "decoded" in only one way. Circle, or try to map out, the different images in the poem; look for contrasts, inversions, or repetitions among them.

Common misstep in analysis: "The poet uses the color red, which is a symbol of blood and death." Well, maybe, but only if there are other significant contextual clues that support the idea that the poem is worrying about death-- a red-beaked vulture tossing the bloody carcass of a mouse around, for instance. If, on the other hand, the poem is simply describing a red dress that a woman is wearing, this "symbolic" meaning doesn't seem justified.

As we use language, we are continually comparing one thing to another; speaking of something in terms of another thing it resembles. This is metaphor (from Greek meta+ferein, to carry across). If that comparison is explicit- "my love is like a red, red rose"; "he was as thick as a brick"-- the figure of speech is a simile. An extended metaphor is called a conceit (Whitman's conceit in "The Sleepers" is that he watches and sleeps beside every person on the globe: "I go from bedside to bedside...I descend my western course.") A particularly extravagant or humorous metaphor may be labelled catachresis. E.g., Whitman's "I find I incorporate gneiss" (gneiss is a kind of rock formation) : the metaphor of becoming the land seems overblown here).

Metonymy ("substitution") also involves making one thing stand for another, but in this case the comparison is one of common association rather than "poetic" effort: for instance, using "sweat" to mean "hard work" ("the sweat of our brow"), "blood" for self-sacrifice ("Yankee blood has been spilled"), "heart" for feeling ("You have no heart"), etc. Synechdoche is a kind of metonymy that represents the part through the whole, or the whole through the part: "the White House announced" to mean "the President said," "bread" to mean food in general ("Give us this day...").

RHETORICAL SCHEMES. Unlike metaphor and metonymy, which may continously change the impression of meaning you get from the poem, rhetorical schemes are just names for the patterns into which language naturally falls- and which writers often consciously choose to heighten.

HEARING METRICAL PATTERNS

Before Whitman, most English poetry was written in "accentual-syllabic" form: a combination of counted syllables and stresses (accents) in any given line. Scansion- the measurement of such stresses- is somewhat like musical notation. It is not an exact science, but rather a way of trying to mark the natural rhythms of speech. This is equally applicable in free verse. To scan a poem, you should read it aloud, and note where the stressed (CAPS) and non-stressed (lower-case) syllables fall:

I CELebrate mySELF, and SING mySELF

  • ["celebrate" might also be read CELeBRATE](1)

You'll notice the tendency here toward two-beat clusters: in English, we tend to run one-syllable words together, and divide longer words into more readily stressed units. An iamb is a stressed syllable followed by an unstressed one ( da-DAH, as in "unless"); a trochee is the reverse (DAH-da, as in "greater"). Most prosodists (students of scansion) call these units "feet," and classify lines of poetry according to the number of feet they have and the kind of foot that prevails. Thus, iambic pentameter is line with five iambs; it is a very common line in English. Trimeter (3-foot), tetrameter (4-foot), and hexameter (6-foot) lines are also relatively common. Other line lengths exist, but they are less common, as in Poe's "Raven," which is full of relentlessly regular, trochaic octameter lines:

Each of these first two lines of Poe's "To Helen" begins with a trochaic substitution; the poem goes on in perfect iambic tetrameter lines until the pattern ruptures again with the two key lines that end the second stanza: "To the glory that was Greece / And the grandeur that was Rome." Despite these substitutions, the overall pattern of the poem is principally iambic.

There is a whole range of "acceptable substitutions" to the basic skeleton of meter.(2) A double-stressed foot is a spondee (DAH-DAH, as in "milkman") [adj. "spondaic"], and as you can imagine, it aggressively calls attention to itself. There are three-beat feet as well, but it is much rarer for these to characterize the entire line (although there are some formidable exceptions, as in Longfellow's "Evangeline," written in dactylic hexameter). Generally, they substitute for the "normal" iamb or trochee. These are called the anapest (da-da-DA, as in "unabashed") and the dactyl (DA-da-da, as in "comedy"). And poets working in meter often allowed themselves omitted syllables as well, usually leaving out the expected unstressed beat at the end of a line (see the end of the line from "The Raven" on the previous page). Likewise, it is permissible (and common) to add an extra unstressed beat at the end of a line.

Even in free verse, you can hear these rhythms. However, the "skeleton" of the poem is not the metrical pattern, but the look of the line itself. We notice unusual deviations in the poem's appearance on the page as well as its aural stresses. A very short line in the midst of many long ones is attention-getting, just as the swerve away from a parallel structure is. (Whitman's catalogues are perfect examples: when, after the long, parallel lists, we hear "But they are not the Me myself," we wake from the almost hypnotic trance he's put us in, and pay attention). Our attention is also drawn to where the line breaks, and the overall cadence (musicality; the combination of sounded phrases) of the poem.

A line of unrhymed iambic pentameter is called blank verse. A line of iambic hexameter (rhymed or not) is an alexandrine.

The organization of units greater than the line are also important. The stanza encompasses as many lines as the poet clusters together without a blank space.

Two lines together, whether they rhyme or not, are generally read as a couplet; three lines, a tercet; four, a quatrain. A closed (or 'heroic') couplet consists of two end-stopped lines (the first line does not extend into the next); open couplets, in contrast, are enjambed.

A refrain is any line repeated in between various stanzas. Generally, these units are most meaningful in metrical verse, but free-verse writers use them knowingly as well. The relationship of lines to each other, then, is often meaningful: for instance, the two lines in the couplet might contain contrasting ideas, or might reinforce a larger theme.

Rhyme is, obviously, another way to tie words and concepts together in a poem, either in a relationship of similarity or difference. End rhymes are positioned, obviously, on the ends of lines that are linked in a rhyming pattern; internal rhyme echoes within one line. Rhyme isn't just a formula for completing some blueprint of a verse scheme: when well used, it helps structure the whole experience of reading a poem. If you know a rhyme is coming, the poem (or a line of thought within the poem) won't feel finished until it does. A surprising rhyme can upset your previous understanding of what was happening in the poem, or it can change the tone- making the poem suddenly funny or ironic.

Alliteration (the same sound beginning different words), consonance (the repetition of consonants at any location in the word), assonance (the repetition of vowel sounds), and onomatopoeia (the imitation of natural sounds) are related strategies for enhancing the poem's musicality.

Common misstep in analysis: many people feel obliged, in writing about poetry, to characterize the "feeling" of certain sounds: the "sss" feels lazy, the long "O" feels mournful, and so forth. As with our discussion of symbolism, however, these impressions are only convincing if there is a larger context of meaning within the rest of the poem to justify them. If the words themselves don't support that impresion logically, you're opening yourself to the accusation of being excessively subjective (you hear the "w" sound as happy, but I don't). Beware, then, of making too much of sound patterns. On the same note, beware of generalizing about the emotional responses of all readers. Attention to the reading experience is a good thing, but remember that your experience may not be the same as everyone's.


COMMON METRICAL FORMS

Beyond the units of foot, line, and stanza, there are of course a number of well-known verse forms of designated length. You might see these as rigid, constricting forms from which Whitman had to "free" himself and other writers, but you can also think of them as formal challenges- and as a way of entering into dialogue with everyone who has written before in that form. When you discover that a poem is written in one of these structures, then, think about its relation to tradition: one can work within a given verse tradition in order to undermine it (e.g., Poe's "Sonnet: To Science," with its hidden extra line).


The meter most common to Old English, according to linguists, had four-foot, well-accented lines. The rhymed tetrameter quatrain is perhaps the most basic stanza form in the language, with any number of rhyme patterns: abab, abba, and xaxa (where x=an unrhymed line) are the most common. Traditional ballad stanza alternates tetrameter lines with trimeters (see Longfellow's "The Village Blacksmith") in quatrains. The same pattern can also be called common meter, and is frequently found in hymns (and in Dickinson's poetry). Many other hymns are written in all-tetrameter quatrains: long meter (usually rhymed abab) or in all-trimeter ones: short meter. Most popular songs are written in some form of tetrameter line. The blues form, generally in tetrameter, repeats a statement twice, with slight variation, followed by a resolution.

Why, then, did English-language writing turn toward the pentameter line? One theory is that the five-beat line evades the sing-song, forward-moving narrative quality of these folk meters, which are so symmetrical (4 beats x 4 lines). By comparison, a pentameter line seems asymmetrical, and therefore more reflective (some would say "artificial"). Pentameter lines, too, tend to be organized in quatrains: the elegaic quatrain (rhymed abab) is one. But there are exceptions to this norm, too: one famous example is terza rima, a complex interweaving of interlocked iambic-pentameter triplets, rhymed aba bcb cdc ede fef , etc. Rhyme royal is a 7-line iambic pentameter stanza, rhymed ababbcc. Ottava rima is a similar 8-line stanza (abababcc). The Spenserian stanza has 9 lines, abab bcbc c, and ends with an alexandrine (6-beat line) for variation and summation. Then, of course, there's the sonnet: 14 lines of iambic pentameter. A Petrarchan sonnet is divided into the first 8 lines (the octave, abba abba) and the next 6 (sestet cde cde). A Shakespearean sonnet is divided into 4 quatrains and a couplet: abab cdcd efef gg. Naturally, there have been endless variations upon each pattern.

There are other common verse forms that can be adapted to suit most any line length, from trimeter to hexameter. The villanelle weaves together six aba aba aba triplets, with many of the rhymes coming from the same word of slightly varying refrains. The sestina is an incredibly complicated six-line stanza in which the same words are repeated in a different order in each line.

For further reference, see: John Hollander, Rhyme's reason : a guide to English verse (Yale University Press, 1989); Mary Oliver, A poetry handbook (San Diego : Harcourt Brace, 1994); Richard Bradford, A linguistic history of English poetry (London: Routledge, 1993).

1. Notice the way that a rhythmic pattern can take over your normal way of pronouncing stressed syllables: if you're reading lines of iambic pentameter, you will unconsciously start stressing words to make them fit the meter, like this one, which I'm tempted to make perfectly iambic. Some have called this "the tyranny of meter." It's no small irony that Whitman, the pioneer of free verse, begins "Song of Myself" with an iambic pentameter line!

2. As those of you who have taken poetry courses dealing with earlier periods know, conventions of "acceptable" substitution change over time, as verse forms come in and out of fashion. To read such poems well, you need to have an idea about the metrical preferences and controversies of the time. The 19th century was characterized by a fairly open attitude toward meter, and poets experimented freely with what might have once been considered outlandish forms.