Compass Points - A Practical Guide to Poetry Forms: How To Find The Perfect Form For Your Poem - Softcover

Chisholm, Alison

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1782790322 ISBN 13: 9781782790327

Verlag: Compass Books, 2014

Inhaltsangabe

A Practical Guide to Poetry Forms is a practical handbook on poetry forms, giving informative details on the construction of the major set forms. It also includes exercises, all within the scope of the beginner, yet stimulating enough to engage the more experienced poet.
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Über die Autorinnen und Autoren

Alison Chisholm has been writing poetry for over 40 years, and has had ten collections published, (nine by specialist poetry publishers and the most recent self-published), as well as ten textbooks on the craft of writing. She lives in Southport, UK.
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Alison Chisholm has been writing poetry for over 40 years, and has had ten collections published, (nine by specialist poetry publishers and the most recent self-published), as well as ten textbooks on the craft of writing. She lives in Southport, UK.
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Compass Points: A Practical Guide to Poetry Forms

How to Find the Perfect Form for Your Poem

By Alison Chisholm

John Hunt Publishing Ltd.

Copyright © 2013 Alison Chisholm
All rights reserved.

ISBN: 978-1-78279-032-7

Contents

Preface, 1, 
Chapter 1: The Concept of Form, 2, 
Chapter 2: Short and Simple, 11, 
Chapter 3: Learning from Italy, 26, 
Chapter 4: Let's Hear it Again ..., 35, 
Chapter 5: And Another Thing ..., 56, 
Chapter 6: Numbers and Pictures, 71, 
Chapter 7: Free Verse – Or Is It?, 80, 
Chapter 8: Where to Next?, 90, 

CHAPTER 1

The Concept of Form

Being a poet is an amazing calling. Whether you feel it's your life's work or just a pleasant pastime, it places you in an elite group of people whose ranks include Homer, Sappho, Chaucer, Shakespeare, Wordsworth, Eliot, Plath and Motion. It shows you the world in a new and exciting way, and allows you to communicate that excitement with people you will never meet, but whose lives are affected by what you have said.

Your poems will be crammed with ideas and insights, emotion and reaction, observation and perception. The vehicle for conveying these depends on imagery, use of language, rhythm, metaphor and other elements; but before these can work, it needs a form.

As soon as you start to write your poem down, a form, its physical structure, begins to emerge. As it takes shape, it may evolve a pattern of its own, or it may be worked into one of the set forms that have been developed, practised and perfected over generations. Poets of the past have left a legacy of templates that work. If they didn't we would not still be using them.

Some forms lend themselves to particular themes and subjects. Sonnets, for example, are often used for love poetry. Others convey a mood or atmosphere, like the haunting villanelle whose repetitions give it an enclosed, almost claustrophobic feel.

The skill of marrying content and form, acquired as much by practice as study, gives your poetry an edge - the advantage of working well in patterns poets inherit and readers recognise. Understanding the dynamics of different forms adds to the enjoyment of the poetry you read, and enriches the quality of the poetry you write.

Playing with forms can be exhilarating and exasperating, often at the same time. It's easy to be whipped along by the excitement of the moment, and glory in the joy of fitting all the words into a sestina, getting the repetition right in a pantoum, or finding the perfect Zen moment for a haiku. These are, indeed, moments to be enjoyed and relished; but never at the expense of the quality of the poem. It's always a case of poetry first, nuts and bolts after.

For the writer, there is something reassuring about using a set form. It provides you with a framework into which you can fit the information you want to communicate in the poem. It tells you where lines and/or stanzas begin and end, and how the rhymes fit. Apply it correctly, and it gives your poem shape, authority and confidence.

For the reader, a set form gives the assurance that this poem has direction, a planned route through its content, which indicates that safe hands are providing guidance to help you understand what it has to say.

The form indicates the number and length of lines, their metre, and the placing of rhymes and repetitions. This involves some ancient Greek terms and a touch of alphabet juggling, but it's worth persevering with these. Let's start with the lines.

Some forms have fixed numbers of lines, while others may be broken down into a sequence of verses or stanzas. Limericks have five lines, for example, triolets eight, and rubais a multiple of four, as they can be written in any number of four-line stanzas. The line length is the second half of the metrical description, but we'll look at it first. (We're poets, we're allowed to be contrary.) It may be:

Monometerone measure - or foot - in the line

Dimeter two feet
Trimeter three feet
Tetrameter four feet
Pentameter five feet
Hexameter six feet
Heptameter seven feet
Octameter eight feet

The first half of the phrase is the definition of each foot, depending on the emphasis natural pronunciation gives to a word, part of a word, or a phrase. It's the metre, this pattern of stressed and unstressed syllables, that gives the lines a beat, and the major ones are these:

Pyrrhic two unstressed syllables of a
Spondee two stressed strange times
Iamb/iambus one unstressed, one stressed behind
Trochee one stressed, one unstressed Friday
Anapaest two unstressed, one stressed in the house
Dactyl one stressed, two unstressed heartily
Anti-bacchic one unstressed, two stressed a long night
Bacchic two stressed, one unstressed deep breathing
Amphibrach one unstressed, one stressed, behaviour
one unstressed
Amphimacer one stressed, one unstressed, candle wax
one stressed
Tribrach three unstressed if it is
Molossus three stressed four train guards

The metrical foot most often used in the English language is the one that fits most naturally into the way words are pronounced. This is the iambic foot, often in the pentameter version. So a single line of iambic pentameter consists of five feet, each of two syllables - the first unstressed, and the second stressed. Try saying this line aloud, and the pronunciation should fall neatly into the pattern:

He rode the horse across the furrowed field.

To avoid any possible misreading, the line can be marked with x to indicate an unstressed syllable, and / for a stressed one:

x / x / x / x / x / He rode the horse across the furrowed field.

Iambic tetrameter, with lines a foot (two syllables) shorter, is second in popularity:

x / x / x / x / He rode the horse across the field.

Following close behind is iambic hexameter, with its six feet, also known as the alexandrine. Some forms end a stanza of iambic pentameter with an alexandrine or two.

x / x / x / x / x / x / He rode a chestnut horse across the furrowed field

Once a pattern such as iambic pentameter is established, it's important to keep to it throughout the poem, unless you are changing it for a sound artistic reason; but it would become very dull if it were pounded out for hundreds of lines without a single variant. It's a good idea to practise unvaried metre until it becomes second nature, and then to look at the tiny syncopations that work within it.

The first of these frequently used variants is initial trochaic substitution, where you replace the first iambus with a trochee, so that the line begins with a stressed syllable followed by an unstressed, and then reverts to the usual form, eg:

/ x x / x / x / x / Riding a horse across the furrowed field

This gives a pleasing effect, but it's important to remember to change back to the familiar pattern in the second foot.

The other change that often occurs is the addition of an unstressed syllable at the end of the line, or feminine ending:

x / x / x / x / x / x He rode a horse across the grassy meadow.

This gives a lingering note to the end of the line, and again makes an attractive change. (The less usual additional stressed syllable is a masculine ending.)

Iambic pentameters produced without rhyme are known as blank verse, a good device for conveying...

Details zur Ausgabe

• Verlag: Compass Books
• Erscheinungsdatum: 2014
• Sprache: Englisch
• ISBN 10: 1782790322
• ISBN 13: 9781782790327
• Einband: Taschenbuch
• Anzahl der Seiten: 111
• Kontakt zum Hersteller: Nicht verfügbar
• Verantwortliche Person: Buchbär; info@buchbaer.de; ; Weberstr. 67; Osnabrück; 49084; Deutschland