Poetry
I.Paradise Lost by John Milton
Part I: Study specific poetic devices in poetry
Find the following-
"Anapestic (an-uh-PES-tick; the noun is anapest: AN-uh-pest), two unstressed syllables followed by a stressed one; for example:
And the eyes / of the sleep / ers waxed dead / ly and chill,
And their hearts / but once heaved, / and fore /ver grew still!
--George Gordon, Lord Byron, 'The Destruction of Sennacherib'" (Hamilton 200).
"Tetrameter (te-TRAM-eh-ter), four feet:
She walks / in beau / ty, like / the night
Of cloud / less climes / and star / ry skies
--George Gordon, Lord Byron, "She Walks in Beauty" (Hamilton 201).
Dr. Seuss was famous for using Anapestic Tetrameter. Also, "The Night Before Christmas" by Clement Moore is said to be written in anapestic tetrameter.
The Naming of Cats is a difficult matter,
It isn't just one of your holiday games;
You may think at first I'm as mad as a hatter
When I tell you, a cat must have THREE DIFFERENT NAMES.
First of all, there's the name that the family use daily,
Such as Peter, Augustus, Alonzo or James,
Such as Victor or Jonathan, George or Bill Bailey -
All of them sensible everyday names.
There are fancier names if you think they sound sweeter,
Some for the gentlemen, some for the dames:
Such as Plato, Admetus, Electra, Demeter -
But all of them sensible everyday names.
But I tell you, a cat needs a name that's particular,
A name that's peculiar, and more dignified,
Else how can he keep his tail perpendicular,
Or spread out his whiskers, or cherish his pride?
Of names of this kind, I can give you a quorum,
Such as Munkustrap, Quaxo, or Coricopat,
Such as Bombalurina, or else Jellylorum -
Names that never belong to more than one cat.
But above and beyond there's still one name left over,
And that is the name that you never will guess;
The name that no human research can discover -
But THE CAT HIMSELF KNOWS, and will never confess.
When you notice a cat in profound meditation,
The reason, I tell you, is always the same:
His mind is engaged in a rapt contemplation
Of the thought, of the thought, of the thought of his name:
His ineffable effable
Effanineffable
Deep and inscrutable singular Name.
- T.S. Eliot
(from "Old Possum's Book of Practical Cats")
by T.S Eliot
1. Listening to a Voice
I like to see it lap the miles,
And lick the valleys up,
And stop to feed itself at tanks;
And then, prodigious, step
Around a pile of mountains,
And, supercilious, peer
In shanties by the sides of roads;
And then a quarry pare
To fit its sides, and crawl between,
Complaining all the while
In horrid, hooting stanza;
Then chase itself down hill
And neigh like Boanerges;
Then, punctual as a star,
Stop - docile and omnipotent
At its own stable door.
I wandered lonely as a cloud
That floats on high o'er vales and hills,
When all at once I saw a crowd,
A host, of golden daffodils;
Beside the lake, beneath the trees,
Fluttering and dancing in the breeze.
Continuous as the stars that shine
And twinkle on the milky way,
They stretched in never-ending line
Along the margin of a bay:
Ten thousand saw I at a glance,
Tossing their heads in sprightly dance.
The waves beside them danced; but they
Out-did the sparkling waves in glee:
A poet could not but be gay,
In such a jocund company:
I gazed---and gazed---but little thought
What wealth the show to me had brought:
For oft, when on my couch I lie
In vacant or in pensive mood,
They flash upon that inward eye
Which is the bliss of solitude;
And then my heart with pleasure fills,
And dances with the daffodils.
Part II. . Saying and Suggesting
Study poetry by its themes (read the complete article)
There is a sense of sadness in the loss or decline of a relationship that is a common thread throughout the three Victorian poems, Lord Tennyson's "Tears, Idle Tears," Christina Rossetti's "An Apple Gathering," and Matthew Arnold's "Dover Beach." There is a great emphasis on the past and a concern for the future, but unlike much of the Romantic literature, there is less focus on the loss of innocence and experience of the individual, but rather, that general values of faith and love have become endangered
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Matthew Arnold's "Dover Beach"
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.Sophocles long ago
Heard it on the A gaean, and it brought
Into his mind the turbid ebb and flow
Of human misery; we
Find also in the sound a thought,
Hearing it by this distant northern sea.The Sea of Faith
Was once, too, at the full, and round earth's shore
Lay like the folds of a bright girdle furled.
But now I only hear
Its melancholy, long, withdrawing roar,
Retreating, to the breath
Of the night-wind, down the vast edges drear
And naked shingles of the world.
Ah, love, let us be true
To one another! for the world, which seems
To lie before us like a land of dreams,
So various, so beautiful, so new,
Hath really neither joy, nor love, nor light,
Nor certitude, nor peace, nor help for pain;
And we are here as on a darkling plain
Swept with confused alarms of struggle and flight,
Where ignorant armies clash by night.Overview: This lesson is designed to assist students in understanding one type of lyric poems, ode. Through the study and analysis of the poem "To Autumn" by Keats, students can understand this particular type of lyric poetry more effectively in their future reading, and they will also demonstrate their understanding by composing an ode.
Objective
- To explore the theme of the poem "To Autumn"".
- To discuss how autumn is described in the poem
Material: read the following poem
To Autumn by John Keats
Ode to Autumn
SEASON of mists and mellow fruitfulness, Close bosom-friend of the maturing sun; Conspiring with him how to load and bless With fruit the vines that round the thatch-eaves run; To bend with apples the moss'd cottage-trees, 5 And fill all fruit with ripeness to the core; To swell the gourd, and plump the hazel shells With a sweet kernel; to set budding more, And still more, later flowers for the bees, Until they think warm days will never cease; 10 For Summer has o'erbrimm'd their clammy cells. Who hath not seen thee oft amid thy store? Sometimes whoever seeks abroad may find Thee sitting careless on a granary floor, Thy hair soft-lifted by the winnowing wind; 15 Or on a half-reap'd furrow sound asleep, Drowsed with the fume of poppies, while thy hook Spares the next swath and all its twinèd flowers: And sometimes like a gleaner thou dost keep Steady thy laden head across a brook; 20 Or by a cyder-press, with patient look, Thou watchest the last oozings, hours by hours. Where are the songs of Spring? Ay, where are they? Think not of them, thou hast thy music too,— While barrèd clouds bloom the soft-dying day 25 And touch the stubble-plains with rosy hue; Then in a wailful choir the small gnats mourn Among the river-sallows, borne aloft Or sinking as the light wind lives or dies; And full-grown lambs loud bleat from hilly bourn; 30 Hedge-crickets sing; and now with treble soft The redbreast whistles from a garden-croft; And gathering swallows twitter in the skies. Activities and Procedures:
Begin the class by discussing the following questions:
- Read the first stanza and circle two words which you think best describe autumn.
- Point out lines in the first stanza which draw pictures in your mind
- Name at least three things that autumn and the sun are conspiring to do in stanza 1. How may autumn confuse the bees?
- Cite three instances in which the spirit of autumn is personified as a farm girl?
- What sights are evoked at line 25-26 to picture autumn's beauty? What autumn sounds are mentioned in the last seven lines of final stanza?
- What does Keats suggest about autumn's beauty and about cyclic pattern of nature? Is this poem mainly descriptive, or does the poet intrude his moods on the poem?
- What examples of tactile imagery-imagery that appeals to the senses of touch-do you find in" autumn"?
- What is the theme of the ode?(ripeness and harvest; nature's cycles)
Follow-up Activities:
- Does Keat's prefer autumn to the other seasons?
- Read Keat's Ode on a Grecian Urn or Ode to a Nightingale
- What images-of sound, sight, smell, taste, or touch-have led you on a journal of the imagination, perhaps back to some remembered past occurrence?
- Think of a season and write down two words which can best describe the season. What images do you usually see in this season?
- What kind of person would you like to compare the season to, and in what manner? Describe it.
- What kind of sound do you hear in this season, and make a list of different sounds and describe who is part of the "orchestra".
- Use the above notes as a source to compose your own ode.
Notes for the class: What is an ode?
An ode is an exalted lyric poem, aiming at loftier thought, more dignified expression, and more intricate formal structure than most lyrics. Another characteristic of odes is that they often addressed to someone or something.
An ode is a long lyric poem, serious and dignified in subject, tone, and style, often written to celebrate an event, person, being or power--or to provide a vehicle for private meditation. Sometimes an ode may have an elaborate stanzaic structure. Almost all odes are poems of address, in which the poet uses apostrophe( repetition of the initial word of thou -a poetic figure of speech in which inanimate object or absent person is directly addressed).
The ode was originally a Greek form used in dramatic poetry, in which a chorus would follow the movements of a dance while singing the words of the ode. Those odes often celebrated a public occasion of consequence, such as a military victory. From those ancient Greek beginnings, the form has descended through the Western culture to appear in English divested of dance and song.
Irregular odes: they have no set rhyme scheme and no set stanza pattern.
Horatian odes: follow a regular stanza pattern and rhyme scheme, as does the ode by Keats.
Part III . Diction (allusion, word choice/order , colloquial/formal English)
To Helen
by Edgar Allen Poe
Helen, thy beauty is to me
Like those Nicean barks of yore
That gently, o'er a perfumed sea,
The weary, way-worn wanderer bore
To his own native shore.
On desperate seas long wont to roam,
Thy hyacinth hair, thy classic face,
Thy Naiad airs have brought me home
To the glory that was Greece,
And the grandeur that was Rome.
Lo, in yon brilliant window-niche
How statue-like I see thee stand,
The agate lamp within thy hand,
Ah! Psyche, from the regions which
Are Holy Land!THE SECOND COMING
by: W. B. Yeats (1865-1939)
- URNING and turning in the widening gyre
- The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
- Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
- Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
- The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
- The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
- The best lack all conviction, while the worst
- Are full of passionate intensity.
- Surely some revelation is at hand;
- Surely the Second Coming is at hand.
- The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out
- When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi
- Troubles my sight: somewhere in the sands of the desert
- A shape with lion body and the head of a man,
- A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,
- Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it
- Reel shadows of the indignant desert birds.
- The darkness drops again; but now I know
- That twenty centuries of stony sleep
- Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,
- And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
- Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?
Batter My Heart by John Donne
Batter my heart, three-person'd God, for you
As yet but knock, breathe, shine, and seek to mend;
That I may rise and stand, o'erthrow me, and bend
Your force to break, blow, burn, and make me new.
I, like an usurp'd town to'another due,
Labor to'admit you, but oh, to no end;
Reason, your viceroy in me, me should defend,
But is captiv'd, and proves weak or untrue.
Yet dearly'I love you, and would be lov'd fain,
But am betroth'd unto your enemy;
Divorce me,'untie or break that knot again,
Take me to you, imprison me, for I,
Except you'enthrall me, never shall be free,
Nor ever chaste, except you ravish me.
Part IV: How to write an Elegy
Overview:
This lesson is designed to assist students in understanding one type of lyric poems, elegy. Through the study and analysis of the poem "Elegy" by Robert Bridges, students can understand this particular type of lyric poetry more effectively in their future reading, and they will also demonstrate their understanding by composing an elegy.
Objective:Materials:
- To explore the meaning of the poem "Elegy".
- To discuss how the poet suggest s his sorrow and grief without directly describing them.
Poem "Elegy" by Robert Bridges.
- Robert Bridges was born in 1844 and educated at Eton and Corpus Christi College, Oxford. After traveling extensively, he studied medicine in London and practiced until 1882. Most of his poems, like his occasional plays, are classical in tone as well as treatment. He was appointed poet laureate in 1913, following Alfred Austin. His command of the secrets of rhythm and a subtle versification give his lines a firm delicacy and beauty of pattern.
- Nightingales
- Beautiful must be the mountains whence ye come,
- And bright in the fruitful valleys the streams, wherefrom
- Ye learn your song:
- Where are those starry woods? O might I wander there,
- Among the flowers, which in that heavenly air
- Bloom the year long!
- Nay, barren are those mountains and spent the streams:
- Our song is the voice of desire, that haunts our dreams,
- A throe of the heart,
- Whose pining visions dim, forbidden hopes profound,
- No dying cadence nor long sigh can sound,
- For all our art.
- Alone, aloud in the raptured ear of men
- We pour our dark nocturnal secret; and then,
- As night is withdrawn
- From these sweet-springing meads and bursting boughs of May,
- Dream, while the innumerable choir of day
- Welcome the dawn.
- Winter Nightfall
- The day begins to droop,--
- Its course is done:
- But nothing tells the place
- Of the setting sun.
- The hazy darkness deepens,
- And up the lane
- You may hear, but cannot see,
- The homing wain.
- An engine pants and hums
- In the farm hard by:
- Its lowering smoke is lost
- In the lowering sky.
- The soaking branches drip,
- And all night through
- The dropping will not cease
- In the avenue.
- A tall man there in the house
- Must keep his chair:
- He knows he will never again
- Breathe the spring air:
- His heart is worn with work;
- He is giddy and sick
- If he rise to go as far
- As the nearest rick:
- He thinks of his morn of life,
- His hale, strong years;
- And braves as he may the night
- Of darkness and tears.
Activities :
- Begin the class with a brief discussion on what media people would normally use in expressing their sorrow? In what way?
- In writing poetry to express one's sorrow, what word he/she would normally use?
- Use the brief discussion to lead to the study of elegy. What is an elegy?
- An elegy is a type of lyric poem of mourning or lamentation for the dead. Usually it expresses sorrow over the death of someone the poet admired or loved or respected; sometimes it simply mourns the passing of all life and beauty.
- The elegy, a type of lyric poem, is usually a formal lament for someone's death. The term elegy is sometimes used more widely. In antiquity it referred to anything written in elegiac meter, which consisted of alternating lines of pentameter and hexameter
- Lyric poetry -- which takes its name from songs accompanied by the lyre -- is distinguished from dramatic and narrative poetry. Although the boundaries are flexible, most lyric poems are fairly short, and are often personal. Examples include the sonnet, the elegy and the ode.
- The category can include the threnody, the monody, the dirge, and the pastoral elegy. The last of these, an important Renaissance form, combines elements of the verse pastoral with the elegiac subject.
- One of the most famous examples of the genre in English, Milton's Lycidas, is properly a pastoral elegy. Other well-known English pastoral poems from the Renaissance are Spenser's Shepheardes Calendar and Sidney's Arcadia. As Arcadia suggests, although the pastoral is traditionally lyric poetry, it needn't be. Shakespeare's As You Like It includes pastoral elements, and Arcadia is sometimes considered a pastoral romance.
- Other terms often used as synonyms for pastoral are idyll, eclogue, and bucolic poetry. The georgic often shares many characteristics with pastoral, but it's worth keeping them separate.
- Questions for discussion about the elegy:
- What images in the first two stanzas make clear the poet's state of mind? What is implied in line 8?
- Who is the "figure" in stanza 5,6, and 7? Why does this place recall it to the poet's mind? Why does it walk with "the slow step of a mourner"? How has the poet's memory "enchanted" the scene?
- What are the "tears" in stanza 7? What "wounds" do trees have in the fall?
- What symbolical use of nature and seasons is made throughout the poem?
Follow-up Activities:
Following the study of the elegy, students will compose an elegy for a deceased person he/she loved or highly admired, or a person whose death has brought great sorrow to people's heart, e.g., Princess Diana, Martin Luther King, John Kennedy.Part V . Sound
Who Goes With Fergus? by William Butler Yeats
Alliteration and Assonance
Who will go drive with FergusFergus: (Irish king who gave up his throne to be a wandering poet). now,
And pierce the deep wood's woven shade (Note Yeats' use of alliteration and assonance in this poem. How does this affect the feeling of the poem?),
And dance upon the level shore? (Ulster, where Fergus lived, is located on the northeastern coast of Ireland).
Young man, lift up your russet brow,(Yeats repeats several phrases such as "lift up" and "brood." What is the effect of this repetition?)
And lift your tender eyelids, maid,
And brood on hopes and fear no more.
And no more turn aside and brood
Upon love's bitter mystery;
For Fergus rules the brazen cars,(chariot)
And rules the shadows of the wood,
And the white breast of the dim sea
And all dishevelled wandering stars.Eight O'Clock
by A.E. HousemanHe stood, and heard the steeple
Sprinkle the quarters on the morning town.
One, two, three, four, to market-place and people
It tossed them down.
Strapped, noosed, nighing his hour,
He stood and counted them and cursed his luck;
And then the clock collected in the tower
Its strength, and struck.
Do you like that? feel its power? admire its contrivance? find its tone and emotion congenial? I should add that it's English in origin, where market-places and public chiming clocks are common.
Is it clear to you what situation Housman is conjuring up? I think he means it to be clear, but he doesn't want to come right out and name it. So this poem too, like many another, is a kind of riddle. I invite you to submit your solution below.
We should probably think of the setting as late 19th century, although the poem was published in 1922.
In this poem, syntax plays an effective part -- and rhyme.
4. Imagery
John Keats (1795-1821)
TO AUTUMN.
1.
SEASON of mists and mellow fruitfulness,
Close bosom-friend of the maturing sun;
Conspiring with him how to load and bless
With fruit the vines that round the thatch-eves run;
To bend with apples the moss’d cottage-trees,
And fill all fruit with ripeness to the core;
To swell the gourd, and plump the hazel shells
With a sweet kernel; to set budding more,
And still more, later flowers for the bees,
Until they think warm days will never cease,
For Summer has o’er-brimm’d their clammy cells.2.
Who hath not seen thee oft amid thy store?
Sometimes whoever seeks abroad may find
Thee sitting careless on a granary floor,
Thy hair soft-lifted by the winnowing wind;
Or on a half-reap’d furrow sound asleep,
Drows’d with the fume of poppies, while thy hook
Spares the next swath and all its twined flowers:
And sometimes like a gleaner thou dost keep
Steady thy laden head across a brook;
Or by a cyder-press, with patient look,
Thou watchest the last oozings hours by hours.3.
Where are the songs of Spring? Ay, where are they?
Think not of them, thou hast thy music too,—
While barred clouds bloom the soft-dying day,
And touch the stubble plains with rosy hue;
Then in a wailful choir the small gnats mourn
Among the river sallows, borne aloft
Or sinking as the light wind lives or dies;
And full-grown lambs loud bleat from hilly bourn;
Hedge-crickets sing; and now with treble soft
The red-breast whistles from a garden-croft;
And gathering swallows twitter in the skiesOde To A Nightingale
a poem by John KeatsMy heart aches, and a drowsy numbness pains
My sense, as though of hemlock I had drunk,
Or emptied some dull opiate to the drains
One minute past, and Lethe-wards had sunk:
'Tis not through envy of thy happy lot,
But being too happy in thine happiness,--
That thou, light-winged Dryad of the trees
In some melodious plot
Of beechen green, and shadows numberless,
Singest of summer in full-throated ease.
O, for a draught of vintage! that hath been
Cool'd a long age in the deep-delved earth,
Tasting of Flora and the country green,
Dance, and Provençal song, and sunburnt mirth!
O for a beaker full of the warm South,
Full of the true, the blushful Hippocrene,
With beaded bubbles winking at the brim,
And purple-stained mouth;
That I might drink, and leave the world unseen,
And with thee fade away into the forest dim:
Fade far away, dissolve, and quite forget
What thou among the leaves hast never known,
The weariness, the fever, and the fret
Here, where men sit and hear each other groan;
Where palsy shakes a few, sad, last gray hairs,
Where youth grows pale, and spectre-thin, and dies;
Where but to think is to be full of sorrow
And leaden-eyed despairs,
Where Beauty cannot keep her lustrous eyes,
Or new Love pine at them beyond to-morrow.
Away! away! for I will fly to thee,
Not charioted by Bacchus and his pards,
But on the viewless wings of Poesy,
Though the dull brain perplexes and retards:
Already with thee! tender is the night,
And haply the Queen-Moon is on her throne,
Cluster'd around by all her starry Fays;
But here there is no light,
Save what from heaven is with the breezes blown
Through verdurous glooms and winding mossy ways.
I cannot see what flowers are at my feet,
Nor what soft incense hangs upon the boughs,
But, in embalmed darkness, guess each sweet
Wherewith the seasonable month endows
The grass, the thicket, and the fruit-tree wild;
White hawthorn, and the pastoral eglantine;
Fast fading violets cover'd up in leaves;
And mid-May's eldest child,
The coming musk-rose, full of dewy wine,
The murmurous haunt of flies on summer eves.
Darkling I listen; and, for many a time
I have been half in love with easeful Death,
Call'd him soft names in many a mused rhyme,
To take into the air my quiet breath;
Now more than ever seems it rich to die,
To cease upon the midnight with no pain,
While thou art pouring forth thy soul abroad
In such an ecstasy!
Still wouldst thou sing, and I have ears in vain--
To thy high requiem become a sod.
Thou wast not born for death, immortal Bird!
No hungry generations tread thee down;
The voice I hear this passing night was heard
In ancient days by emperor and clown:
Perhaps the self-same song that found a path
Through the sad heart of Ruth, when, sick for home,
She stood in tears amid the alien corn;
The same that oft-times hath
Charm'd magic casements, opening on the foam
Of perilous seas, in faery lands forlorn.
Forlorn! the very word is like a bell
To toll me back from thee to my sole self!
Adieu! the fancy cannot cheat so well
As she is fam'd to do, deceiving elf.
Adieu! adieu! thy plaintive anthem fades
Past the near meadows, over the still stream,
Up the hill-side; and now 'tis buried deep
In the next valley-glades:
Was it a vision, or a waking dream?
Fled is that music:--Do I wake or sleep
5. Figure of Speech
"Metaphors" by Sylvia Plath
Metaphors
I'm a riddle in nine syllables,
An elephant, a ponderous house,
A melon strolling on two tendrils.
O red fruit, ivory, fine timbers!
This loaf's big with its yeasty rising.
Money's new-minted in this fat purse.
I'm a means, a stage, a cow in calf.
I've eaten a bag of green apples,
Boarded the train there's no getting off.
"Flowers in a Grain of Sand" by William Blake
Auguries of Innocence
William Blake
To see a World in a Grain of Sand
And a Heaven in a Wild Flower,
Hold Infinity in the palm of your hand
And Eternity in an hour.Earth's Answer
William Blake
Earth raised up her head
From the darkness dread and drear,
Her light fled,
Stony, dread,
And her locks covered with grey despair.
How to Write a Villanelle
VILLANELLE
This French syllabic form has no set number of syllables per line; common choices seem to be between eight and eleven. (English versions of the villanelle sometimes appear in accentual syllabics, featuring a perennial favorite, iambic pentameter.) The villanelle carries a pattern of only two rhymes, and is marked most distinctively by its alternating refrain, which appears initially in the first and third lines of the opening tercet( a unit or group of three lines of verse). In all, it comprises five tercets and a concluding quatrain. Before the villanelle was made literary by the French in the late 1500s, it existed as a villanella, "an old Italian folk song with an accompanying dance."--from Handbook of Poetic Forms, ed. by Ron Padgett.
"The word villanelle, or villenesque, was used toward the end of the sixteenth century to describe literary imitations of rustic songs. Such villanelles were alike in exhibiting a refrain which testified to their ultimate popular origin. The villanelle was, in a sense, invented by Jean Passerat (1534-1602)."
"It is useful to describe the villanelle as a form in which power resides in the interplay of constant (repeating) and variable elements....a major challenge of the villanelle: packing the second through fifth tercets with appropriately varied and dense material that 'balances' and justifies the repeated material."
Author Philip K. Jason sees the villanelle as presenting a three-part structure of meaning: "introduction, development, and conclusion....this tendency for the material to split into three sections gives the villanelle form an affinity with basic cognitive and expository processes. Technically, the three parts derive from the relative weight and position of the repeating lines." Also in this vein, he discusses the idea that the villanelle lends itself nicely to "duality, dichotomy(a division into two especially mutually exclusive or contradictory groups or entities), and debate." We can imagine why.
Jason recognizes ways in which the form may be made more flexible. Regarding the refrain, he notes that altering punctuation between the lines of identical words can produce different effects. He also notes the possibilities of enjambing perhaps just the A2 tercets, and leaving those ending with A1 as stopped lines, or vice versa.
On the relation of form to function, Jason asserts that "the villanelle is often used, and properly used, to deal with one or another degree of obsession." He takes this interpretation rather seriously, saying that "There is even the potential for the two repeating lines to form a paradigm for schizophrenia....The mind may not fully know itself or its subject, may not be in full control, and yet it still tries, still festers and broods in a closed room towards a resolution that is at least pretended by the final couplet linking of the refrain lines." Wow.
--from "Modern Versions of the Villanelle," by Philip K. Jason. College Literature, 1980.The form, according to Turco:
A1 (refrain)
b
A2 (refrain)
a
b
A1 (refrain)
a
b
A2 (refrain)
a
b
A1 (refrain)
a
b
A2 (refrain)
a
b
A1
A2 (refrain)
EXAMPLES:
Mad Girl's Love Song
I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead;(A1)
I lift my lids and all is born again.
(I think I made you up inside my head.)(A2)
A1 (refrain)
b
A2 (refrain)
The stars go waltzing out in blue and red,
And arbitrary darkness gallops in:
I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead.(A1)
a
b
A1 (refrain)
I dreamed that you bewitched me into bed
And sung me moon-struck, kissed me quite insane.
(I think I made you up inside my head.) (A2)
a
b
A2 (refrain)
God topples from the sky, hell's fires fade:
Exit seraphim and Satan's men:
I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead.(A1)
a
b
A1 (refrain)
I fancied you'd return the way you said.
But I grow old and I forget your name.
(I think I made you up inside my head.)(A2)
a
b
A2 (refrain)
I should have loved a thunderbird instead;
At least when spring comes they roar back again.
I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead.(A1)
(I think I made you up inside my head.)(A1)
a
b
A1
A2 (refrain)
--Sylvia Plath
The Waking
I wake to sleep and take my waking slow.
I feel my fate in what I cannot fear.
I learn by going where I have to go.
We think by feeling. What is there to know?
I hear my being dance from ear to ear.
I wake to sleep and take my waking slow.
Of those so close beside me, which are you?
God bless the Ground! I shall walk softly there,
And learn by going where I have to go.
Light takes the Tree; but who can tell us how?
The lowly worm climbs up a winding stair;
I wake to sleep and take my waking slow.
Great Nature has another thing to do
To you and me; so take the lively air,
And, lovely, learn by going where to go.
This shaking keeps me steady. I should know.
What falls away is always. And is near.
I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow.
I learn by going where I have to go.
--Theodore Roethke
One Art
The art of losing isn't hard to master;
so many things seem filled with the intent
to be lost that their loss is no disaster.
Lose something everyday. Accept the fluster
of lost door keys, the hour badly spent.
The art of losing isn't hard to master.
Then practice losing further, losing faster:
places and names, and where it was you meant
to travel. None of these will bring disaster.
I lost my mother's watch. And look! my last, or
next-to-last, of three loved houses went.
The art of losing isn't hard to master.
I lost two cities, lovely ones. And, vaster,
some realms I owned, two rivers, a continent.
I miss them, but it wasn't a disaster.
--Even losing you (the joking voice, a gesture
I love) I shan't have lied. It's evident
the art of losing's not too hard to master
though it may look like (Write it!) like disaster.
--Elizabeth Bishop
Villanelle for D.G.B.
Every day our bodies separate,
exploded torn and dazed.
Not understanding what we celebrate
we grope through languages and hesitate
and touch each other, speechless and amazed;
and every day our bodies separate
us farther from our planned, deliberate
ironic lives. I am afraid, disphased,
not understanding what we celebrate
when our fused limbs and lips communicate
the unlettered power we have raised.
Every day our bodies' separate
routines are harder to perpetuate.
In wordless darkness we learn wordless praise,
not understanding what we celebrate;
wake to ourselves, exhausted, in the late
morning as the wind tears off the haze,
not understanding how we celebrate
our bodies. Every day we separate.
--Marilyn HackerThis traditional poetic form consists of five triplets and one quatrain. Written in iambic pentameter, the form utilizes repeating lines as well as a rhyme scheme.
Step1
Consider the subject matter that you wish to address in your poem. It's often a good idea to select the repeating lines ahead of time.
Step2
Write a three-line stanza in iambic pentameter with an a-b-a rhyme scheme, followed by a second three-line stanza in iambic pentameter with an a-b-a rhyme scheme. Use the first line of the first stanza as the third line of the second stanza.
Step3
Compose a third three-line stanza in iambic pentameter with an a-b-a rhyme scheme. Use the last line of the first stanza as your third line.
Step4
Draft a fourth three-line stanza in iambic pentameter with an a-b-a rhyme scheme. Use the first line of the first stanza as your third line.
Step5
Write a fifth three-line stanza in iambic pentameter with an a-b-a rhyme scheme. Use the last line of the first stanza as your third line.
Step6
Compose a quatrain in iambic pentameter with an a-b-a rhyme scheme. Use the first and last lines of the first stanza as your third and fourth lines.
Tips & Warnings
- Use the nonrepeating lines of your poem to accent or alter the meaning of the lines that are being repeated.
- A variation on the villanelle, created by Donald Justice, uses varying line lengths and allows slightly different wording in the repeated lines. If you're having difficulty creating a typical villanelle, you might want to consider using this version. You might lose some of the benefit of the exercise by doing so, but in the end a poet's duty is to act in the best interest of the poem.
- Creating a villanelle that surprises and interests the reader may be one of the most difficult tasks a poet can undertake.
- Do not be discouraged about forms by peers claiming to be poets. When you hear a poet say how much he or she dislikes writing in form, remember that a great artist sees the opportunities in every canvas, regardless or shape or size. A poor artist sees only the limitations.
This Living Hand, Now Warm and Capable
- Sonnet
"Let me not to the marriage of true minds"
- The Epigram
by Alexander Pope, William Blake, Langston Huges
- Other Forms
"Rondeau" by Leigh Hunt
"Triolet" by Robert Bridges
"Sestina" by Elizabeth Bishop
Symbol
"The Boston Evening Transcript" by T.S Eliot
The Boston Evening Transcript
THE READERS of the Boston Evening Transcript Sway in the wind like a field of ripe corn. When evening quickens faintly in the street, Wakening the appetites of life in some And to others bringing the Boston Evening Transcript, 5 I mount the steps and ring the bell, turning Wearily, as one would turn to nod good-bye to Rochefoucauld, If the street were time and he at the end of the street, And I say, “Cousin Harriet, here is the Boston Evening Transcript.
T.S. Eliot (1888–1965). Prufrock and Other Observations. 1917. 1. The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock
S’io credesse che mia risposta fosse A persona che mai tornasse al mondo, Questa fiamma staria senza piu scosse. Ma perciocche giammai di questo fondo Non torno vivo alcun, s’i’odo il vero, Senza tema d’infamia ti rispondo.
LET us go then, you and I, When the evening is spread out against the sky Like a patient etherised upon a table; Let us go, through certain half-deserted streets, The muttering retreats 5 Of restless nights in one-night cheap hotels And sawdust restaurants with oyster-shells: Streets that follow like a tedious argument Of insidious intent To lead you to an overwhelming question … 10 Oh, do not ask, “What is it?” Let us go and make our visit. In the room the women come and go Talking of Michelangelo. The yellow fog that rubs its back upon the window-panes, 15 The yellow smoke that rubs its muzzle on the window-panes Licked its tongue into the corners of the evening, Lingered upon the pools that stand in drains, Let fall upon its back the soot that falls from chimneys, Slipped by the terrace, made a sudden leap, 20 And seeing that it was a soft October night, Curled once about the house, and fell asleep. And indeed there will be time For the yellow smoke that slides along the street, Rubbing its back upon the window-panes; 25 There will be time, there will be time To prepare a face to meet the faces that you meet; There will be time to murder and create, And time for all the works and days of hands That lift and drop a question on your plate; 30 Time for you and time for me, And time yet for a hundred indecisions, And for a hundred visions and revisions, Before the taking of a toast and tea. In the room the women come and go 35 Talking of Michelangelo. And indeed there will be time To wonder, “Do I dare?” and, “Do I dare?” Time to turn back and descend the stair, With a bald spot in the middle of my hair— 40 [They will say: “How his hair is growing thin!”] My morning coat, my collar mounting firmly to the chin, My necktie rich and modest, but asserted by a simple pin— [They will say: “But how his arms and legs are thin!”] Do I dare 45 Disturb the universe? In a minute there is time For decisions and revisions which a minute will reverse. For I have known them all already, known them all:— Have known the evenings, mornings, afternoons, 50 I have measured out my life with coffee spoons; I know the voices dying with a dying fall Beneath the music from a farther room. So how should I presume? And I have known the eyes already, known them all— 55 The eyes that fix you in a formulated phrase, And when I am formulated, sprawling on a pin, When I am pinned and wriggling on the wall, Then how should I begin To spit out all the butt-ends of my days and ways? 60 And how should I presume? And I have known the arms already, known them all— Arms that are braceleted and white and bare [But in the lamplight, downed with light brown hair!] It is perfume from a dress 65 That makes me so digress? Arms that lie along a table, or wrap about a shawl. And should I then presume? And how should I begin?
. . . . .Shall I say, I have gone at dusk through narrow streets 70 And watched the smoke that rises from the pipes Of lonely men in shirt-sleeves, leaning out of windows?… I should have been a pair of ragged claws Scuttling across the floors of silent seas.
. . . . .And the afternoon, the evening, sleeps so peacefully! 75 Smoothed by long fingers, Asleep … tired … or it malingers, Stretched on the floor, here beside you and me. Should I, after tea and cakes and ices, Have the strength to force the moment to its crisis? 80 But though I have wept and fasted, wept and prayed, Though I have seen my head [grown slightly bald] brought in upon a platter, I am no prophet—and here’s no great matter; I have seen the moment of my greatness flicker, And I have seen the eternal Footman hold my coat, and snicker, 85 And in short, I was afraid. And would it have been worth it, after all, After the cups, the marmalade, the tea, Among the porcelain, among some talk of you and me, Would it have been worth while, 90 To have bitten off the matter with a smile, To have squeezed the universe into a ball To roll it toward some overwhelming question, To say: “I am Lazarus, come from the dead, Come back to tell you all, I shall tell you all”— 95 If one, settling a pillow by her head, Should say: “That is not what I meant at all. That is not it, at all.” And would it have been worth it, after all, Would it have been worth while, 100 After the sunsets and the dooryards and the sprinkled streets, After the novels, after the teacups, after the skirts that trail along the floor— And this, and so much more?— It is impossible to say just what I mean! But as if a magic lantern threw the nerves in patterns on a screen: 105 Would it have been worth while If one, settling a pillow or throwing off a shawl, And turning toward the window, should say: “That is not it at all, That is not what I meant, at all.”
. . . . .110 No! I am not Prince Hamlet, nor was meant to be; Am an attendant lord, one that will do To swell a progress, start a scene or two, Advise the prince; no doubt, an easy tool, Deferential, glad to be of use, 115 Politic, cautious, and meticulous; Full of high sentence, but a bit obtuse; At times, indeed, almost ridiculous— Almost, at times, the Fool. I grow old … I grow old … 120 I shall wear the bottoms of my trousers rolled. Shall I part my hair behind? Do I dare to eat a peach? I shall wear white flannel trousers, and walk upon the beach. I have heard the mermaids singing, each to each. I do not think that they will sing to me. 125 I have seen them riding seaward on the waves Combing the white hair of the waves blown back When the wind blows the water white and black. We have lingered in the chambers of the sea By sea-girls wreathed with seaweed red and brown 130 Till human voices wake us, and we drown.
"Uphill"by Christina Rosetti
II. Beowulf
Canto 11
THEN from the moorland, by misty crags,
with God's wrath laden, Grendel came.
The monster was minded of mankind now
sundry to seize in the stately house.
Under welkin he walked, till the wine-palace there,
gold-hall of men, he gladly discerned,
flashing with fretwork. Not first time, this,
that he the home of Hrothgar sought, --
yet ne'er in his life-day, late or early,
such hardy heroes, such hall-thanes, found!
To the house the warrior walked apace,
parted from peace;1 the portal opended,
though with forged bolts fast, when his fists had
struck it,
and baleful he burst in his blatant rage,
the house's mouth. All hastily, then,
o'er fair-paved floor the fiend trod on,
ireful he strode; there streamed from his eyes
fearful flashes, like flame to see.
-26-
He spied in hall the hero-band,
kin and clansmen clustered asleep,
hardy liegemen. Then laughed his heart;
for the monster was minded, ere morn should dawn,
savage, to sever the soul of each,
life from body, since lusty banquet
waited his will! But Wyrd forbade him
to seize any more of men on earth
after that evening. Eagerly watched
Hygelac's kinsman his cursed foe,
how he would fare in fell attack.
Not that the monster was minded to pause!
Straightway he seized a sleeping warrior
for the first, and tore him fiercely asunder,
the bone-frame bit, drank blood in streams,
swallowed him piecemeal: swiftly thus
the lifeless corse was clear devoured,
e'en feet and hands. Then farther he hied;
for the hardy hero with hand he grasped,
felt for the foe with fiendish claw,
for the hero reclining, -- who clutched it boldly,
prompt to answer, propped on his arm.
Soon then saw that shepherd-of-evils
that never he met in this middle-world,
in the ways of earth, another wight
with heavier hand-gripe; at heart he feared,
sorrowed in soul, -- none the sooner escaped!
Fain would he flee, his fastness seek,
the den of devils: no doings now
such as oft he had done in days of old!
Then bethought him the hardy Hygelac-thane
of his boast at evening: up he bounded,
grasped firm his foe, whose fingers cracked.
The fiend made off, but the earl close followed.
The monster meant -- if he might at all --
to fling himself free, and far away
fly to the fens, -- knew his fingers' power
in the gripe of the grim one. Gruesome march
to Heorot this monster of harm had made!
Din filled the room; the Danes were bereft,