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Ask the Expert Series: A Conversation on Poetry
Ricochetti Concretevol came up with the idea to start a conversation where he would share his expertise: Concrete Questions Conversation. His real purpose was to attempt to claim the prize for worst poster when the contest rolls around next year, but he wound up starting a fascinating thread. It’s also a fascinating idea for a conversation. We have so much expertise gathered on Ricochet from a wide variety of fields of endeavor. So, I thought it would be fun for those who can to share their expertise.
Like many Ricochetti, I have several areas of expertise. But most of them are shared by several other people on Ricochet. For instance, we have many published authors here, so questions on the general topic of writing could be answered by many here as Aaron proved in his Fictional Advice for Fictional Authors conversation. Corporate governance might be another expertise that is easy to find on Ricochet. Many lawyers deal with the topic. Many of our members have surely also been on boards of commercial, non-profit, or governmental corporations. While they may not have abstracted the experiences in quite the way I have, if a question were put out on the subject, there might be a dozen or more answers available immediately. Some of my other areas of consulting expertise might be scarcer on the ground at Ricochet, but how many people are likely to have questions involving process management or data modeling? Of the things I know that there is a remote chance that people may have some curiosity about, the only thing left would be poetry. This includes poetic structures, meter, rhyme, rhythm, the prosody of many nations, and all those things we are supposed to believe disappeared in a free verse post-modernist world. If you have questions about how to write a better poem, how to approach a form, how to do anything regarding poetry, share the questions here and I shall try to answer them comprehensibly.
Now, Concretevol had questions from another member to start things out. I will start with a few questions from my FAQ sheet on one of my Websites.
Q. How does somebody create a new poetic form?
A. As poets, sometimes we conform to someone else’s standard, as when we write a sonnet. Other times we invent a new structure for a given situation and poem. If we codify the rules of the new form, find a name for it, reuse it, and share the form definition with other formalists who use it, it becomes a new form. If we only use the form once, don’t write down the rules, or if no other poets get excited by it, the form is just a nonce form, meaning used once.
In my own work, I’ve found at least four ways to create new poetry forms:
- Make something up for a specific poetic occasion. Form follows function, and sometimes I find I’ve created a form that is reusable when writing a specific poem.
- Vary on a theme:. As an example, when I first started using form, I couldn’t scan a poem to save my life — no rhythm — so had great difficulty with accentual-syllabic forms, such as the English sonnet. Given this, I created my own form of sonnet, the sardine, that is purely syllabic by definition. Of course, I didn’t have to do that given that the French also produce purely syllabic Petrarchan sonnets, but it seemed a great idea at the time. This brings up another point.
- Play to your handicaps and strengths. If there is something about a form that you can’t do or don’t like, consider changing the form rules for your own use. In developing the sardine, I actually used two existing forms. First was the Petrarchan sonnet; second was the redondilla, a purely syllabic Spanish quatrain with envelope rhyme scheme (abba). Based on this mixing, I came up with a fourteen line form that was syllabic, but was also tougher to rhyme than other sonnets. I’m much better at rhyming than a lot of people. (That isn’t to say that I don’t put out some real klinkers in my light verse.) So, the sonondilla’s predominant rhyme scheme is abbaabbaccddcc, which is even more difficult than the Petrarchan sonnet to do well.
- Analyze present forms for gaps. While writing a book on poetic forms that is still in progress, I came across an interesting fact about the ballade family. There is the ballade and the ballade supreme, a slightly longer variation. There are also the double ballade and double ballade supreme. Lastly, there is a double refrain ballade, but no double refrain ballade supreme. Well, being a poet with an engineer’s soul, or vice versa, I thought it best to fill the gap. Now I have a definition for the double refrain ballade supreme: a 35 line isosyllabic form divided into three ten line verses and a five-line envoy. Each line is usually eight or ten syllables long. It has two refrains. The rhyming and repeating structure are thus: ababbCcdcD ababbCcdcD ababbCcdcD cCdcD.
Knowing what elements define the different existing structures helps to understand how to create new ones.
Q. When you sit down in front of a blank page/screen and decide to write a villanelle, as an example, how do you approach it. I would assume, the theme comes first. Then what? Do you write down the rhyme scheme, find the first line and go from there?
A. Each form is different. For instance, with a Villanelle, it’s best to start with the couplet, the two refrains. They appear throughout separately and together and have to function as a final couplet.
The same is true of the Triolet, which also has a couplet. It’s scheme is ABaAabAB, so the first line (A) is a refrain that appears alone once, and with the repeton (B) twice. I start with that couplet.
A Sonnet I usually start with an idea and the turn of thought or pivot. I find it easier to develop the whole if I have the pivot in mind from the start.
A Sestina is a difficult form where you need to find six very flexible words as the repetitive end words. That is often the first step.
A Tyburn is similar, requiring one to find the first four words/phrases that will work together. The hardest part is finding a rhyme that will allow the structure.
I guess summing it up, I would say that you find the most difficult part to make work, and tackle that as your starting point. Once you have that down, the rest flows relatively easily.
Q. How does form influence creation?
A. Art is never done in freedom. All art, all creation, is done under constraints. There are several types of constraint in art: monetary, temporal, intentional, and artificial among them.
An architect will produce a different office building with a fifteen million dollar budget than with a one million dollar budget. If a sculptor gets a commission for a work, he may use different materials based on the cost of materials versus the amount of the commission. Maybe the sculpture will be marble instead of steel because of the cost of materials and price to work it. A painter who cannot afford a huge canvas may be able to afford a packet of smaller ones, so he’ll paint six miniatures rather than a wall-spanning canvas. Those are monetary constraints. Unless you are taking poetic commissions, you are unlikely to run into this type of constraint. Poetry usually takes time rather than money to produce. For a poet, a monetary constraint might come with enough cash to get his book an ISBN.
A temporal constraint deals with time. Does the building have to be finished before October when the snow flies in Minnesota? Does the sculpture have to be done by April 16th for the degree show? Does the painting have to be done by tomorrow for a gallery opening? These are examples of temporal constraints. Again, unless you are taking commissions or publishing, time constraints are seldom a factor. You might have to put out a poem for your wife’s birthday or write her one for your anniversary, but usually this isn’t a factor for poets.
The other two constraints are the ones we deal with every day.
Intentional constraints deal with purpose. If the architect is building an apartment house rather than an office building, it changes the specific applications of the building code. It changes the plumbing capacity needed. It changes the parking lot to space ratio. It changes many other factors. If the sculptor is building a work based on a commission from the city fathers, it will probably be more sedate than something created for a student degree show. If the painter is doing a portrait of a lady, it will be different than an urban mural of sea mammals on the wall of an opera house. Intention is reflected in the why. For a poet, writer or speechifier, one set of intentional constraints is the communication goals. Are we trying to inform, persuade, query, entertain, or some combination? A limerick is entertaining, but seldom meets the other three goals. A haiku is informative. It is good for painting an image in a few words, but would be terrible for persuasion. This brings us to the next set of constraints.
Artificial constraints are those imposed by the environment, tools, and materials. A brick building has different qualities than a glass and steel construction, as well as different strengths and weaknesses. A sculptor using steel works differently than one using stone. Different tools are used for the different media. One is cut and chipped away; the other heated, bent, and welded. A painter with a 4″ x 6″ canvas and oils is going to produce a different landscape than an artist with a 3′ x 4′ canvas and acrylic paints. For a poet, form is the set of artificial constraints. Ideally, form follows function. In other words, the intentional constraints are imposed first, which directs the artist to the form. An architect doesn’t look at a pile of bricks that he has laying around and think: “Gee, I can build something. I wonder what I should build?” Most of them have a commission or plan in their hands before they consider what materials will be used. With a poet, ideally one knows what one is trying to accomplish, and one can pick the form that best meets that potential.
The truth is that there is interplay. If the best form to achieve the goals and subject of the poem is a ballade, but the poet has never heard of a ballade, he may use a villanelle instead. Maybe the poet is required to write a Shakespearean sonnet for a class, so he determines his purpose for the poem based on that constraint.
Getting then to the meat of the issue, form influences creation through the interplay of intent with the strengths and weaknesses inherent in the form. A diamante is not a narrative form. It is created out of sixteen discrete words that do not interact grammatically. Instead, there are two base words, antonyms, which the other words describe or relate to. The only way that the diamante conveys a story is through the choice of a title and the direction downward from one polar opposite to the other. A ballad is meant to tell a story. A haiku is meant to convey an image, perhaps a metaphor comparing a natural event with a human one. Haiku is not meant to tell tales in the same way as the ballad. You can’t do with seventeen syllables what you can with hundreds of words.
Earlier I discussed finding the starting point of the poem. For each form it is different based on the hardest part of creating that form. For the haiku, it is in coming up with a fresh natural metaphor to describe something. After that, finding the words that convey that image in seventeen syllables is relatively easy. In writing a villanelle, creating the two refrains, which act both independently and as a couplet, is the most important factor in creating a successful villanelle. Of course, choosing the two rhymes is important, too. If you choose a rhyme ending that is hard to bring six or eight words on the topic to bear, things can get ugly. For instance, in my The Life and Times of Leaf the Red, the last word in the middle line of the first tercet is “travel.” I wound up with difficult going on the rhyme, following with: unravel, gravel, gavel, unravels, and gravel. It’s a good thing it is a bit of light verse, or I’d have to rewrite that with a new rhyme. Basically, you have to determine what the most important or difficult part of the form is and start there. This is another way that form interacts with the creative process.
So, those are a few questions to get things started. Let’s see if poetic form is as interesting a subject as concrete, or whether Concretevol just picked the wrong subject to be an expert in if he wanted to be the worst poster of the year. (And if you haven’t, I do urge you to check out Concretevol’s thread. It’s very interesting.)
Published in General
Here is a sample sonnet. Can anyone identify what the turn of thought is?
Cabin Full of Dreams
When last I saw my love upon the strand,
Her hair like fire shone and blew about.
Soft solid, real, and warm, I held her hand.
Her breath upon my cheek whispered devout
Assurances of true love’s ablest kind.
Sweet scent of flowers’ ultimate bequest
Wreathed both our bodies in a woven skein;
Our hearts filled with proximity’s request.
But now I have a cabin full of dreams,
Of plans to bring my jubilant return,
And papers sketched with daring, foolish schemes.
For like my lady’s hair, I burn, I burn,
And wait upon the day when duties call
Me back to her who holds my thoughts in thrall.
Robert Frost famously said that writing free verse poetry was like playing tennis without a net. I’ve always liked that, but not because it’s a put-down of free verse. It’s a recognition that even if you take away one aspect of poetry, you still have poetry in the end, though the arguments over its merits can become more difficult. There’s more to the ‘game’ than just meter and rhyme.
With that said, there’s a point where it ceases to mean anything. I’m thinking especially of ‘found verse’ and ‘prose poetry.’ At some point the emperor has divested himself of all apparel whatsoever and it’s time to move on.
I’ve come to appreciate the need for structure more and more. Ina good poem, everything has a purpose, and it moves to a point.
I can remember first reading T. S. Eliot’s “Wasteland” in college and being gripped by it. (You might say it was staring at the Pacific Ocean with wild surmise on a peak in Darien.) Good poetry, good art, will communicate truth and beauty, beauty and truth, and that’s sufficient unto the day thereof…
Your own poem, I assume? (A quick Google search didn’t turn up anything.)
The obvious turn in there is with the line “But now I have…” You’re shifting from a remembrance of the past to a current timeframe, and from the beach to the cabin. I suppose you could also place the turn in “For like my lady’s hair…” because that shifts the focus again into an unrealized future. But really, the last six lines are filled with an unrealized hope.
Some nice imagery here. Two nitpicks: I’m not sure what it means to ‘burn like my lady’s hair.’ Also, what do ‘duties’ have to do with bringing the lover back to the lady? What does that say about their relationship?
But I like how contrast the reality of the day upon the shore with the dreams of the present. The memory of the past is more real than the duties of today.
Belt,
Yes. The poem is mine. It will eventually be published in a science-fiction book that is part of my alternative history series that started with changes to history in 1700. This poem is written in 1786 by a young Royal Navy post-captain. You might note how it describes her hair in the second line. She’s a redhead. Thus the later line “burns like my lady’s hair.” As for duty, he is a Royal Navy post-captain. They are not yet even engaged at this point. So, his duty has taken him far from her, and he hopes it will bring him back soon. Until it does, he’s stuck up near Halifax on the North American station.
As for the pivot, you are correct. It comes at the traditional point between the octave and sestet.
Thank you for your kind words about the poem. The contrast between the past and present is, of course, fully intended and meant to convey where he’d rather be. This poem has a very strong example of the pivot, a total change of mood. Some who write sonnets do not include the pivot at all, yet it’s part of the magic of the form.
Perhaps that’s what I was getting at with inquiry into Biblical poetry, which tends to be light on explicitly phonetic structures like rhyme and meter (even in the original Hebrew or Greek, I’m given to understand), and heavier on other (syntactic but not obviously phonetic?) structures, like parallelism, chiasmus, and so on.
I was wrong, though, about Biblical poetry never using alliteration. It does, sometimes, though the alliteration, like the punning, (unsurprisingly) doesn’t survive the translation process very well. (Footnotes explaining Biblical puns are helpful; translations that try to preserve the puns without footnotes, less so: they often sound clumsy and artificial.)
I actually have a few poetic devices on my site. The list is by no means comprehensive yet. I need to get back to working on it.
As I also stated earlier, different cultures use different devices and different ways of binding lines. One of poetry’s early raisons d’être was as a mnemonic device. By having a story rich in poetic devices, one could more easily remember it. Early versions of the Bible or Homer’s works were memorized rather than written down.
Rereading what I wrote here, I vaguely remember where a famous author showed up at an English class, and the students started asking him about this symbol and that they had found or their teacher told them was in his text. His response was, “Is all that in there? I just thought it was…” the surface story.
Thank you for this lovely discourse. I had no idea there were so many forms, so many variations on each, and that you could even create your own. So many poetic terms are lovely words in themselves, perhaps because many come from French, I suppose. I actually heard the word ‘triolet’ not long ago, it’s in a song in Gilbert & Sullivan’s operetta, Princess Ida – but I had to look it up to see what it meant.
Have you heard any of the patter songs from Gilbert & Sullivan? I find them fascinating, they have incredibly gymnastic rhymes sometimes, and are often quite funny.
I like your poem very much. A character in a science fiction story who writes poetry sounds interestingly out-of-place!
I took welding. What do the capital and lower case letters represent in the rhyme schemes you have cited? What is the difference between abba and AbBa, or whatever?
Indeed. I like G&S. So, when you looked up triolet, did you actually find some examples? Or would you like to see some?
Roses are red
Violets are blue
I now have a blank page
What do I do?
Well, when I do something like xXxXxXxXxX, I’m usually showing unstressed (x) and stressed (X) syllables in a line. But in the rhyme schemes, a capital letter either means a refrain or a repeton. What’s the difference? You’ll see a refrain at least three times. A repeton will show up only twice in the poem. So, a triolet has eight lines with rhyme scheme: ABaAabAB. This means it turns on two rhymes and the first two lines, A and B are used multiple times. And I’m going to have to reboot my machine and come back in a bit.
It’s coming back to me now, thanks! I seem to remember the Shakespeare correlation in that long ago lesson as well. Very cool. :)
I refuse to take poetic advise from a people who thought vowels are optional! ;)
It will surprise no one that I take a harder stance on rhyme and meter, believing that without at least one a work is not truly a poem. It might be “poetic”, but that is only to say that it is similar to poetry in its beauty or brevity.
In the days of yore, standards might have been different because poetry was not written down. Old English refers to poems as songs. In an oral culture, it’s possible that poetry was distinguished by other means, such as by tonality, notes, and rhythms. As I said earlier, I pay less attention to rhyme and meter when songwriting.
I don’t object to non-traditional variations so long as they serve a purpose and don’t make a “poem” indistinguishable from prose. The boundaries might be fuzzy, but let’s not obliterate them entirely.
Though I’m not an enthusiastic fan of “e e cummings”, I do like to bend the rules of punctuation and capitalization in my poems and lyrics. Capitalizing the first letter of each line might look nice, but it can weaken a poem that relies on strategic capitalization (like when personifying objects) or multi-line phrases.
Yes, certainly, I’d like to read examples of triolet and villanelle too.
Yeah, years of thinking of the Psalms translated into English as poetry, and of singing unrhymed settings of the Psalms, mean I just can’t feel this way. Even when there isn’t rhyme or a consistent rigid meter, if I get a strong feeling of cadence from the way the words are arranged, it feels like poetry to me.
“like poetry” = poetic
“is poetry” = an actual poem
;)
Okay, so going back to rhyme schemes, a triolet has rhyme scheme of ABaAabAB. This means the first line is also repeated as the fourth and seventh lines. The third and fifth lines also rhyme with that line. The second line is also the eighth line and the sixth line rhymes with it. So, what does that mean?
Snake Dance
She was as sinuous as a serpent
with curves and moves to excite a dead man.
Just in watching her, a man could be spent.
She was as sinuous as a serpent.
When she dances, more than sinners repent.
Her dance was certainly not a can-can.
She was as sinuous as a serpent
with curves and moves to excite a dead man.
Excuse the weird formatting. WordPress, doncha know?
Just for kicks, here’s the villanelle I attempted many years ago. It’s about a real experience, when my cousin and I witnessed a parachuter drift into the ocean and (beyond our sight) drown. It’s not a good poem. But I am somewhat glad that a teacher encouraged me to try the form.
Silent, distant — a wayward stranger fell.
Others hovered peacefully toward the land.
My eyes cared only for the floating bell.
Below, fish circled, the ocean swelled,
extending a friendly but unwanted hand.
Silent, distant — a wayward stranger fell.
Secure on our porch, my cousin and I yelled
at the fool, as tourists stared from the sand.
My eyes cared only for the floating bell.
He met the sea with no great display — a shell
that waves stole from the shore as people ran.
Silent, distant — a wayward stranger fell.
He drowned — so the news that night would tell
two laughing boys. You could not understand —
My eyes cared only for the floating bell.
We dreamed of the undertow, the shapeless imp that held
him below, so the sea could feed on man.
Silent, distant — a wayward stranger fell.
My eyes cared only for the floating bell.
Well, lost one of my two examples. Thanks WordPress. Well, Here’s another:
Captain Gregg
He released the gas lamp valve with his foot
while deeply sleeping in his bed at night.
One moment he’s sleeping; then he’s kaput!
He released the gas lamp valve with his foot,
but did investigators find the root?
No, they thought he intended his sad plight!
He released the gas lamp valve with his foot
while deeply sleeping in his bed at night.
That may not be nearly as unusual as you believe. Many science-fiction writers are closet poets. (I, on the other hand, am a poet who is a closet science-fiction writer.)
What do you want to do? If you’re seeking inspiration, there are many ways to court the Muses.
Yes, but old English did not rhyme, and it’s meter was much different from the accentual-syllabic you are used to. Their form of poetry relied heavily on Alliterative accentual verse where they did not count all the syllables in a line, only the stressed syllables, and alliteration was their main tool. So, they sounded like sports headline writers:
Sox Slam St. Louis and Sashay to Success!
I wouldn’t call this one great. It’s one of my older ones, and like Aaron’s a student work. But it has something to it.
The Hall of Illusion
I walked into the looking glass,
a whole new world to discover,
to find a world made out of brass.
I thought my reflection to surpass
in mere days of being the other,
so I walked into the looking glass.
Therein I found a shivering mass
of selves who thought each other clever.
I found a world made out of brass.
There was neither sun nor springy grass,
but twisted selves would fly and hover,
when I walked into the looking glass.
It might to you now seem so crass,
but how I wish that I had never
ventured to find that world made of brass.
Myselves still stare at me as I pass
with evil looks they will not cover.
I walked into the looking glass
to find a world made out of brass.
And this is just silly:
The Mighty Chipmunk Chirp
Have fear, O Man! Your place in nature is usurped!
No longer is poor mankind the top of the heap,
As those know who have heard the mighty chipmunk chirp.
“What?!?” you exclaim, “Mighty? That little furry twerp?”
But he is fast, furious, and able to leap.
Have fear, O Man! Your place in nature is usurped!
“Why, I could with a single step, make him extirp!”
But they breed rapidly, and you’ll soon be knee deep,
As those know who have heard the mighty chipmunk chirp.
“I’ll start hunting them for meals. They’ll be a small burp!”
Barely a morsel, they will not from hunger keep.
Have fear, O Man! Your place in nature is usurped!
“I’ll face them down and use my brain them to discerp?”
Tear them apart? Be assured that will not come cheap.
As those know who have heard the mighty chipmunk chirp.
Mankind’s day of rule was a statistical blurp,
as Earth’s rightful ruler takes his place with a peep.
Have fear, O Man! Your place in nature is usurped!
As those know who have heard the mighty chipmunk chirp.
I didn’t know how to label it, but that is my style as well. I focus on stresses.
In my poem above, the word “peacefully” in the second line is what musicians would refer to as a triplet — a three-step rhythm within a 4:4 beat. Perhaps that is a good example.
Here is an example of Old Story Measure, which is related to the Anglo-Saxon (Old English) poetic forms:
Flower on the Ledge
My pot perches proudly on the ledge,
where the wild wind whirls through my leaves.
My petals flap fluidly, quickly
pushing my pollen in the path of the winds.
My stamens stand, stoically proud.
To attract the apian aeronauts here,
I await the bees bearing their gifts
of fertile dances decked in glory.
The jay circles stealthily above,
coming to land, and lazily scratching
at roots in my vessel. He recklessly knocks
my pot o’er the edge to plunge downward.
Terrified, I rapidly tumble to ground!
My stalk hits the hard concrete
followed by shards fractured from my pot.
In my next life, no ledges for me!
With a hat tip to Prawn:
I bet it does!