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Poetry
4. Poetry
Table of Contents:
In addition, there are a number of outward signs that indicate a poem: Most
obviously, the individual text lines in poetry do not fill the entire width of the
page. Thus, before they have actually started reading, readers of poetry are
given an instant indication that what they are going to read is probably a poem.
In consequence, a reader’s attention is likely to focus on ‘poetic features’ of the
text.
Poetry is often associated not only with specialised language but with a
very dense use of such specialised language. Poems usually try to express their
meaning in much less space than, say, a novel or even a short story. Alexander
Pope once explained that he preferred to write poetry even when he wrote
about philosophy because it enabled him to express himself more briefly
(Pope, Preface to An Essay on Man, 1734). As a result of its relative brevity,
poetry tends to make more concentrated use of formal elements, it displays a
tendency for structural, phonological, morphological and syntactic
overstructuring, a concept which originated in formalist and structuralist
criticism. It means that poetry uses elements such as sound patterns, verse and
metre, rhetorical devices, style, stanza form or imagery more frequently than
other types of text. Obviously, not all poems use all these elements and not all
verse is poetry, as John Hollander remarks (Hollander 2001: 1). Especially
modern poets deliberately flaunt reader expectations about poetic language (see
the ‘found poem’ in ch. 1.2.). Nonetheless, most poetry depends on the
aesthetic effects of a formalised use of language.
Some people associate poetry with subjectivity and the expression of
intense personal experience. While this is true for some poetry, especially
lyrical poetry, there are a great number of poems this does not apply to; for
example narrative poems like Scott’s Marmion or didactic and philosophical
poems like Pope’s Essay on Man or John Philips’ Cyder. Just as it is often
misleading to identify the author of a novel with its narrator, one should not
assume that the author of a poem is identical with its speaker and thus even
lyrical poems cannot be treated as subjective expressions of the author. The
two levels of author and speaker should always be kept separate. The
communication situation in poetry is very similar to the one in prose, except
that poetry very often does not include dialogue, thus the inner box is optional:
Code/Message
Searching for a definition of poetry, other readers look for ‘universal truth’ or
some other deeper meaning in poetry more than in prose, the famous
nineteenth-century critic Matthew Arnold for instance (see Arnold 1880).
Again, while some poetry might very well deal with universal truths, this is
probably not the case for all. There is no doubt some poetry which is very
lovely and very popular but which, at bottom, is really neither very profound
nor the expression of a universal truth. Take these lines by Ben Jonson for
instance, one of the most popular love songs in the last 400 years:
To Celia
With all the difficulties of defining poetry it is worth remembering that poetry,
especially in the form of song, is one of the oldest forms of artistic expression,
much older than prose, and that it seems to answer – or to originate in – a
human impulse that reaches for expression in joy, grief, doubt, hope,
loneliness, and much more.
Subcategories of the lyric are, for example elegy, ode, sonnet and dramatic
monologue and most occasional poetry:
In modern usage, elegy is a formal lament for the death of a particular person
(for example Tennyson’s In Memoriam A.H.H.). More broadly defined, the term
elegy is also used for solemn meditations often on questions of death, such as
Gray's Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard.
An ode is a long lyric poem with a serious subject written in an elevated style.
Famous examples are Wordsworth’s Hymn to Duty or Keats’ Ode to a Grecian
Urn.
The sonnet was originally a love poem which dealt with the lover’s sufferings
and hopes. It originated in Italy and became popular in England in the
Epics usually operate on a large scale, both in length and topic, such as the
founding of a nation (Virgil’s Aeneid) or the beginning of world history
(Milton's Paradise Lost), they tend to use an elevated style of language and
supernatural beings take part in the action.
The mock-epic makes use of epic conventions, like the elevated style and the
assumption that the topic is of great importance, to deal with completely
insignificant occurrences. A famous example is Pope's The Rape of the Lock,
which tells the story of a young beauty whose suitor secretly cuts off a lock of
her hair.
Both lyric and narrative poetry can contain lengthy and detailed descriptions
(descriptive poetry) or scenes in direct speech (dramatic poetry).
In accentual metre each line has the same number of stresses, but varies in
the total number of syllables. It is found in nursery rhymes and it was
commonly used in Old English poetry. In the late nineteenth century Gerard
Manley Hopkins developed the so-called sprung rhythm, in which again only
stresses are central. A system of accentual metre very similar to the medieval
pattern has recently re-emerged in rap poetry.
Nursery rhyme: In this example there are six stresses in each line and a
varying number of non-stressed syllables between the stresses.
Old English poetry usually has between two and four marked stresses in each
line and a marked pause (caesura) in the middle, indicated by the gap in the
printed line. Alliterations emphasise the stress pattern (alliterations are
underlined):
Rap music relies on a similar pattern: four heavy beats with a marked pause in
the middle of the line. Apart from alliterations, rap tends to rely on rhyme
patterns to mark the line and provide a kind of climax on the fourth beat (see
Attridge 1995: 90-94). The following example uses internal rhyme (axe / Max /
Tracks / Cadillacs / Wax), t-alliteration and m-alliteration, assonances on ‘a’
and the short German ‘i’ sound. The main stresses are underlined:
William Blake, for instance, liked the so-called fourteener, a line with fourteen
syllables:
This, it may be noted, is also iambic. Pure syllabic verse is comparatively rare in
English and what there is, is imported from foreign forms of poetry, such as
the Japanese Haiku. The Haiku, in its conservative definition, has three lines,
the first and the last line have five syllables, the middle line has seven, as in the
following example:
Notice that some feet have two syllables (iamb, trochee and spondee) and
others have three (dactyl and anapaest). For obvious reasons, spondee is a
metrical pattern which does not occur throughout a whole poem. One simply
does not stress every single syllable of an utterance for any length of time. But
it sometimes occurs in a single line or within otherwise regular lines of
different metrical patterns.
In accentual-syllabic verse; lines are named according to the number of
accents they contain, again the Greek numbers are used.
1 accent monometer
2 accents dimeter
3 trimeter
4 tetrameter
5 pentameter
6 hexameter
7 heptameter
8 octameter
To name the metre of a poem one usually combines the terms giving the stress
pattern and the number of stresses per line: A line of poetry that is written in
iambic metre and has four accents or stresses is called iambic tetrameter:
Some combinations of metre and line length have a special name. An iambic
hexameter for example is called alexandrine.
SO WHAT?
Metre must be suitable for the theme of the poem. Otherwise it leads to more
or less ridiculous contradictions and thematic incoherence (see theme and
isotopy ch. 1.5.). Paul Fussell (1967) cites Cowper’s poem on the felling of
poplar trees as an example of a particularly unsuitable metrical choice:
Free Verse does not use any particular pattern of stress or number of syllables
per line. It is a type of verse that has been widely used only since the twentieth
century. Although without regular metre, it is not without rhythmic effects and
organisation. Free verse can be organised around syntactic units, word or
sound repetitions, or the rhythm created by a line break.
The lines surrounding our problematic line are all very clearly iambic (except
maybe the line “Say, what can Cloe want? […]” which seems to be iambic with
one spondee at the beginning). Because we have a tendency to continue a
particular rhythm once it has been started – change is always unsettling – we
almost automatically continue to scan according to the pattern that has already
been set. Decisions about the metrical pattern of a poem are thus governed by
what Rulon Wells has called the maximisation principle, the dominant
metrical pattern is the one that has to make the least exceptions (see Ludwig
1990: 55). In our example above, rather than saying the first line is iambic, the
second dactyllic, the third iambic, etc., we say the poem is iambic with two
irregularities in initial position (lines 158 and 160).
On the basis of the maximisation principle we tend to establish a
metrical grid (term from Fowler 1968, see also the discussion in Ludwig 1990:
47) in our heads, that is, we form the expectation of a certain pattern and once
it is established, we expect it to continue. The whole poem is read against this
metrical grid and it is on this basis that deviations are noted.
A poem that scanned with absolute regularity would more than likely jingle on
in insufferable tedium. This danger is circumvented by little deviations that
break the regular pattern of the metrical grid. Metrical deviations are created by
substitution and in recitation.
Because metrical deviations go against our expectations (they break the
metrical grid we have formed in our minds), such places are more noticeable
than others. The tension that is created between the abstract metrical grid and
the actual linguistic and metrical realisation is called interplay (the term was
introduced by Wimsatt and Beardsley 1959, see discussion in Ludwig 1990: 38).
Places of interplay deserve special attention in analysis because they usually
have a definite function in conveying the meaning of a poem.
4.3.1.7. Substitutions
To break the monotony of regular metre poets often substitute one metrical
foot from a regular pattern with another. For example in a series of iambic feet
one might find a spondee or a trochee as in the following example:
4.3.1.8. Recitation
This poem is written in blank verse but it is almost impossible to recite it with
a regular iambic pattern. The first line could be more easily read like this: Of
MAN’s FIRST (half-stress) disoBEdience (pause) and the FRUIT of that
forBIDd’n TREE (pause) whose MORtal TASTE etc. There are obviously
other possibilities. A recitation is always an interpretation of the poem and
there is no one possible recitation, though metre and rhythm set certain limits
within which individual interpretations can operate (see discussion under
Modulation and audio example further down).
SO WHAT?
This poem scans very regularly as iambic tetrameter. The few exceptions that
would probably demand a slight irregularity in stress when reading the poem
out loud are in line 1 (spondee ”what dead!”), line 19 (”Wont at such times”, 1
o o 1, initial trochee) and line 32 (”Turned to that dirt”, 1 o o 1, initial trochee).
There are a few more places that invite, rather than demand, a
divergence from the iambic pattern – though these are a matter of
interpretation rather than an absolute necessity: “Well” at the beginning of line
5, “The last loud trump” in line 6 (o 1 1 1, one iambic, one spondee), the initial
“And, trust me” in line 7 (1 1 1), the frequent third person pronoun in initial
position (especially lines 8, 14, 22, 24: “He’d wish ...”, “He burnt”, “He
had...”, “He made ...”) and the word “True”, also in intial position, in line 23.
Two main effects are produced by this use of interplay: The
irregularities of line 1 (“what dead”), line 5 (“Well”) and line 7 (“And, trust
me”) effectively help to reproduce the conversational tone of gossip (compare
audio file).
The emphasis on the initial words “He” (lines 8, 14, 22, 24), “True”
(line 23) and “Turned” (line 32), drawn to the audience’s particular notice
through the interplay, brings out a particular aspect of the poem’s satire: It
creates a link between the dead duke, truth, and “turned”. On one level, the
poem expresses a certain amount of triumph that the fortunes of the duke
have turned, and the duke himself, despite his high place in the world, will now
turn to dust (the poem significantly uses the more negative “dirt” rather than
the more neutral ‘dust’) like everyone else. On another level, the repeated
inversion to stress the word ‘he’ in the first part of the poem, might be taken to
indicate that the duke ‘turned’ values on their heads: he is ‘true’ not to beautiful
principles but to selfish “profit” and “pride”, he caused grief in his family not
4.3.2. Rhythm
Key terms:
All languages make use of rhythm, and poetry exploits these rhythms to create • end-stopped lines
additional meaning. Rhythm generally is “a series of alternations of build-up • run-on-lines
(enjambment)
and release, movement and counter-movement, tending toward regularity but • caesura
complicated by constant variations and local inflections.” (Attridge 1995: 3). • elision
While poetic metre and metrical deviations contribute to the rhythm of a • expansion
poem, rhythm itself is a more general phenomenon, relating mainly to the • catenation
variations of speed in which a poem is likely to be read. This speed is
influenced particularly by
• pauses
• elisions and expansions
• vowel length
• consonant clusters
• modulation
The fact that poems are presented in lines which do not fill the space on the
page, coupled frequently with rhymes at the end of the line, invites the reader –
and often also the performer – to pause for a moment at the end of each line.
Such pauses are especially pronounced for end-stopped lines, lines where a
syntactical unit comes to a close at the end of the line. These pauses at the end
of a line cause a poem to have a different rhythm than prose. They also
encourage the reader to dwell on individual words and sounds more than he or
she would in prose; they promote a perception of the text in question as
poetry. Compare the effect of the following text excerpt, once written as
continuous prose, once as poetry (best to read it aloud!):
The sea is calm to-night. The tide is full, the moon lies fair upon the
straits; on the French coast the light gleams and is gone; the cliffs of
England stand, glimmering and vast, out in the tranquil bay. Come to
the window, sweet is the night air! Only, from the long line of spray
where the sea meets the moon-blanched land, listen! you hear the
grating roar of pebbles which the waves draw back, and fling, at their
return, up the high strand, begin, and cease, and then again begin, with
tremulous cadence slow, and bring the eternal note of sadness in.
A pause can also occur within lines and then it is called caesura. A caesura can
serve simply to break the monotony of the metrical pattern but usually it
emphasises particular words or a contrast within the line. Consider another
excerpt from Soyinka’s Telephone Conversation:
The caesura after “I hate a wasted journey” creates a moment of suspense, one
is waiting to hear what he has to tell her. The caesura after “Silence” in fact
acts out the meaning of the word ‘silence’ and thus intensifies its effect.
SO WHAT?
As with any other formal device, the function of a caesura varies according to
the context in which it is used. Consider the following example:
Here the caesura achieves two effects: First, though the lines are iambic
heptameter, the caesura in each line breaks them into a first part with four and
a second part with three accents. Thus, the poem has the rhythm of the ballad
stanza and indeed, there is a tradition of street ballads about the deeds of
criminals to which Eliot alludes here. Second, the caesura in the last line
operates rather like a fanfare, leading up to the triumphant “Macavity’s not
there” which is repeated throughout the poem as a sort of refrain.
There are times when unstressed syllables which are normally pronounced are
not pronounced in a particular line in order to make the line fit the metre. In
such cases one talks of elision. Elisions occur mostly when two non-stressed
These elisions are entirely appropriate in this context, since they speed up the
rhythm and thus literally convey the hurry of time which worries the speaker.
As can also be seen from this excerpt, syllables that would normally be
elided are not always elided in metrical verse (“winged” in this example), partly
because that is an older common pronunciation, partly to fit the metre. In such
cases one speaks of an expansion. Some editors mark such places with an
accent mark, but others simply assume that the reader will accommodate the
pronunciation of words to the metre.
The change from a pleasantly sauntering iamb in the first stanza to a more
bouncing and bustling anapaest in the second stanza speeds up the rhythm of
the poem and adequately conveys the change from the Gumbie Cat’s sedate
day-life to her active night-life. The increase of speed is supported by the easier
catenation (the way the words are linked in pronunciation, as in a chain) in the
second stanza.
Apart from metre there are other elements that influence the speed of a
line of verse. Some critics argue that certain metrical arrangement have a
tendency to support certain rhythms and thus certain topics better than others.
Dactyl and anapaest, for instance, tend to have a fairly light and playful rhythm.
But there is no general rule for the connection between metre and rhythm and
there are certainly plenty of examples where dactyl or anapaest have anything
but a playful effect (in Tennyson’s Charge of the Light Brigade for instance).
Especially iamb and trochee can be used for a wide variety of rhythms and
speeds. Depending on word choice and the arrangement of vowels and
consonant clusters they can support very fast as well as very slow rhythms.
Consider the following example which describes the effect of heavy rain in
eighteenth-century London. The poem begins quite slowly with
As the water begins to flood the streets and washes along various, mostly
smelly, items, the rhythm is perceptibly increased:
While in the poem by T.S. Eliot above an iamb was used for a fairly slow
rhythm, in Swift’s poem, particularly in the last three lines, the iambic is used
to convey the speed and chaos with which various items are swirled down the
street. The increased speed in the last three lines is achieved through the use of
mainly short vowels in: dung, guts, blood, puppies, stinking, sprats, drenched,
mud, dead, cats, turnip, tops, etc. (compare the beginning, which still has a
number of long vowel sounds and diphthongs as in Careful, foretell, hour,
Also in iambic metre, the very long vowels in this passage and in particular the
l-alliteration combined with four repetitions of the consonant combination ‘ng’
(“longing lingering”) draw the sounds out into a pensive slowness, as indeed
is suitable to the theme of the poem: a meditation in a churchyard. Notice also
how the elision “e’er” in this case actually contributes to slow down the
rhythm, since it makes the reader dwell on a long drawn-out vowel sound.
4.3.2.5. Modulation
The discussion of rhythm so far should have made clear that simply the metre
of a poem does not account for a variety of rhythmical effects. The aspect of
modulation also deserves some consideration in this context. Compare the
following stanzas:
reader/rider
(consonance: same consonants but different stressed vowel sound)
poppet/profit, forever/weather
(assonance: same vowel sounds, different consonants)
opposite/spite, home/come
(eye-rhyme: spelling identical but pronunciation different)
The most noticeable rhyme is the rhyme at the end of a line, the end-rhyme.
But there are also lines within lines, so-called internal rhymes.
When a word in the middle of the line (usually before a caesura) rhymes with
the word at the end of the line it is a leonine rhyme.
Sound patterns, especially rhyme, help to divide a poem into sections. These
sections can help, for instance, to mark various stages of thematic development
in a poem: the movement from despair to hope, from description to moral
application and so on. This is notably the case in sonnets, where the octet and
the sestet or the quatrains and the final couplet often form a contrast (see ch.
4.5., stanza forms).
Apart from rhyme, there are other sound patterns that are remarkable in poetry
and that are often used to link words which would not otherwise be connected
(see also list of rhetorical devices ch. 1.6.3.). These connections create meaning
patterns. Three of these sound patterns shall be considered in more detail here:
alliteration, assonance and onomatopoeia.
An alliteration is the repetition of the same sound, usually a
consonant, at the beginning of words or stressed syllables in close proximity.
SO WHAT?
Sound patterns can create or emphasise links between words which would
otherwise be less noticeable. Consider the following two lines from Pope’s
Imitations of Horace. Pope is trying to explain that whatever one does, one needs
to practice first before one can safely be let loose onto a trusting world. In
The p-alliteration puts the three words ‘Prenticeship’, ‘Puppies’ and ‘Poor’ on
one level, they are all things one can practice on, if one is not proficient in any
skill. The alarming aspect is of course, and this represents the satirical element
of these lines, that puppies and the poor are treated as though they were rather
the same thing, literally a thing one can test medicine on. This effect is further
strengthened by the parallel syntax. Whatever one might feel about animal
testing, to talk about ‘poor-testing’ in a casual aside (a hyperbaton here),
indicates a cruel disregard of human dignity which Pope criticises here.
Stichic verse is a continuous run of lines of the same length and the same
metre. Most narrative verse is written in such continuous lines. Lyric poetry,
because it is closer to song, usually uses stanzas.
[...]
And now, with gleams of half-extinguished thought,
With many recognitions dim and faint,
And somewhat of a sad perplexity,
The picture of the mind revives again;
While here I stand, not only with the sense
Of present pleasure, but with pleasing thoughts
That in this moment there is life and food
For future years. And so I dare to hope
[...]
(From: Wordsworth, Lines Written a Few Miles above Tintern Abbey)
Couplet is the name for two rhyming lines of verse following immediately
after each other. The heroic couplet, popular in the seventeenth and
eighteenth centuries consists of two lines of rhyming iambic pentameter. An
octosyllabic couplet is also sometimes called a short couplet. The regular
metre and the rhyme pattern of the couplet, usually with end-stopped lines,
provides comparatively small units (two lines in fact) in which to make a point.
Especially eighteenth-century poets used the form to create satirical contrasts
within the couplet. In the following example from Pope’s Imitations of Horace
especially the lines “To prove, that Luxury could never hold; / And place, on
good security, his Gold” present a blatant contradiction between words and
action in a completely harmonious (regular metre, noticeable rhyme) poetic
form. In consequence the reader notices the contradiction somewhat belatedly,
almost as an afterthought. The effect is that of thinly disguised satire.
The terza rima is a variant of the tercet famously used by Dante in his Divine
Comedy. The terza rima uses a chain rhyme: the second line of each stanza
rhymes with the first and the third line of the next stanza (aba bcb cdc etc.)
The quatrain is one of the most common and popular stanza forms in English
poetry. It is a stanza comprising four lines of verse with various rhyme
patterns. When written in iambic pentameter and rhyming abab it is called
heroic quatrain:
Tennyson used a quatrain rhyming abba for his famous poem In Memoriam
A.H.H. and the stanza form has since derived its name from this poem – the
Memoriam stanza:
The ottava rima derives from Italian models like the terza rima and the sonnet
do; it is a stanza with eight lines rhyming abababcc. The most famous use of the
stanza form in English poetry was made by Byron in Don Juan, who skillfully
employs the stanza form for comic effect; in the following example the last line
renders the slightly pompous lovesickness of the first seven lines quite
ridiculous.
The limerick is used mainly for nonsense verse. It consists of five lines, two
longer ones (trimeter, one trochaic foot, two anapaests), two shorter ones
(anapaestic dimeter) and another trimeter (one trochee, two anapaests).
Edward Lear, one of the most famous limerick- and nonsense verse writers,
insisted that the first and the fifth line of the limerick should end with the same
word, usually a place name.
The villanelle has a rather intricate verse and rhyme pattern. It originated in
France and reproduces the circular patterns of a peasant dance. The villanelle
has five tercets rhyming aba and a final quatrain rhyming abaa. The lines of the
first tercet provide a kind of refrain, a recurring repetition of one or more
lines. Thus the first line of the first tercet is repeated as the last line of the
second and fourth tercet, the third line of the first tercet is repeated as the last
line of the third and the fifth tercet. (One really needs to look at the example to
work this out.) Both lines (first and third line of first tercet) form the last two
lines of the concluding quatrain. A famous example is Dylan Thomas’ poem
“Do not go gentle into that good night”, where the highly organised and
artificial but also playful form of the villanelle at first seems to contrast starkly
with the poem’s topic: the sick and dying father. But the form, which has to
bend language into this disciplined playfulness, effectively helps to express the
speaker’s overwhelming desire to instil a spirit of resistance and a new passion
for living in his father.
For God’s sake hold your tongue, and let me love, (pentameter)
Or chide my palsy, or my gout, (tetrameter)
My five grey hairs, or ruined fortune, flout, (pentameter)
With wealth your state, your mind with arts improve, (pentameter)
Take you a course, get you a place, (tetrameter)
Observe his Honor or His Grace, (tetrameter)
Or the King’s real, or his stampèd face (pentameter)
Contémplate; what you will, approve, (pentameter)
So you will let me love. (trimeter)
SO WHAT?
The question for interpretation is not primarily what is this stanza form called
but what does this stanza form do, how does it contribute to the meaning of
the poem. Christoph Bode (2001: 85) has pointed out the appropriateness of
the five-line stanza in Robert Frost’s The Road Not Taken since the poem is
about two roads, only one of which is taken, the other one is left behind or left
over as it where, like the fifth line of the stanza.
Like Frost’s poem, this poem is about a traveller on a road. There is only one
road in this poem and the speaker focuses on the length of this particular road
and on the distance it puts between himself and his love. But the point is also
that even the longest road will one day lead back to where it started. The
quatrains which are used here present a closed system: On the one hand they
lead forward, on the other hand there is always a link to what has come before.
The alternating rhyme picks up a previous line (after the distance of another
rhyme in between has been put behind), the last stanza repeats the rhyme and
even two entire lines of the very first stanza of the poem, it reaches back to its
beginning leaving the distance of the poem in between.
References for primary texts have been abbreviated. Most of the poems quoted
can be found in standard anthologies such as the Norton Anthology of Poetry
or The New Oxford Book of English Verse. In addition, the following have
been used:
Butler, Samuel. 1761 [1663-64]. Hudibras: In Three Parts: Written in the Time of the
Late Wars. London: D. Browne etc.
Cowper, William. 1968. Poetry and Prose. Ed. Brian Spiller. London: Rupert
Hart-Davis.
Eliot, T.S. 1971. The Complete Poems and Plays: 1909-1950. New York: Harcourt
Brace & World.
Gilbert, W.S. and 1994. The Savoy Operas. Hertfordshire: Wordsworth.
Housman, A.E. 1898. A Shropshire Lad. London: Richards Press.
Lonsdale, Roger, ed. 1987. The New Oxford Book of Eighteenth-Century
Verse. Oxford: OUP.
Pope, Alexander. 1965. The Poems. Ed. John Butt. London: Methuen.
Primary Texts:
Quintilian. Institutia Oratorio.1966-69. Trans. H.E. Butler. London: Heinemann.
Scott, Walter. 1904. Poetical Works. Ed. J. Logie Robertson. London: Henry
Frowde.
Spenser, Edmund. 1977 [1596]. The Faerie Queene. Ed. A.C. Hamilton. London:
Longman.
Secondary Sources: