A Guide to Poetry: Experimental Intermission

The Story So Far

1. Foot, Metrics, Prosody and Scansion

1.1 General Overview

1.2 Anglophonic metrics

1.3 Romance languages

1.4 Classical languages

2. Verse Forms

2.1 Sestina

2.2 Villanelle

2.3 Pantoum

2.4 English Sonnet

2.5 Rondelet

2.6 Italian Sonnet

2.7 Pushkin Sonnet

Thinking about iambic pentameter led me to thinking about the various forms that chiefly employ it in English language poetry:

Heroic couplets are lines of iambic pentameter that rhyme, famously used by Alexander Pope and John Dryden. An idea might be to add an extra alexandrine, creating a heroic triplet, though this is non-standard.

Blank verse is lines of iambic pentameter that don’t rhyme, like Milton or Shakespeare.

The Spenserian stanza is a fixed verse form invented by Edmund Spenser for his epic poem, The Faerie Queen. Each stanza consists of nine lines in total: eight lines in iambic pentameter followed by a single alexandrine in iambic hexameter. The rhyme scheme is ababbcbcc.

The ottava rima, a possible influence on Spenser, is a rhyming stanza of Italian origin probably invented by Giovanni Boccaccio. In English, it consists of eight lines of (usually) iambic pentameter, following the abababcc pattern. It is usually used for mock heroic works, though Tasso and Ariosto used it for serious epic poetry.

The rhyme royal is another possible influence on Spenser, a traditional medieval form: seven lines of iambic pentameter with an ababbcc rhyme scheme. Another is the ballad stanza (distinct from the ballad metre, which is discussed here. In fact, it’s worth refamiliarising yourself with that post in general), an eight-line stanza with the rhyme scheme ababbcbc.

I propose a 4 stanza iambic-pentametrical poem. First stanza is royal, second is ballad, third is ottava rima, and fourth is Spenserian.

Evening Queen

1: ababbcc

In Liverpool’s night, he ventures forward,

In search of her, someone he once knew well,

To whom his blackened spirit was poured

From pints of blackened beer and last order bell:

His queen of drugs, architect of his hell.

If powder has beauty, she is pretty;

For that cocaine skin, he scours the city

2: ababbcbc

Between the fault lines along clockwork towns

At bleakly-timed intervals in their bars.

The patrons spill out, wearing their frowns

Amid choirs of mirth between the cars

Like drunken angels set against the stars.

Our hero spies the point of our ballad

And she cries: onto lips vengeful as Mars

Blue make-up drips, from the eyes as pallid,

(this is terrible. I’m this close to abandoning it)

3: abababcc

As cold, as stones smoothed by Mersey tides.

He approaches, thinking to call her name

But, without knowing why, he refrains and hides

From frozen eyes, where ice and fire’s the same;

Where Heaven’s death, Limbo and Hell imply.

Frightened, he’s lost the patience for the game

A braver someone takes up before him,

He wanders back to his drunken forum

4: ababbcbbc

tried lied ride bide died collide imbibe

Where drunker friends search Lime Street for transport.

They flag a taxi down, and climb inside

Taking good care not to get their hand’s caught.

He wonders why it’s such a bumpy ride

As much as he’s drank, the driver’s imbibed

Far more before getting into his cab.

Mystery still clouds our Lady of Lies:

Metaphysics fails as our hero dies

And bequeaths the night to the whims of Mab.

Laurence Thompson, 16 December 2011

Closing thoughts

I think the less said about this poem, the better. Serves me right for trying to write this after three sonnets in one day. Still, it was worth a go, and I think the subject matter of each stanza more or less makes the variation worthwhile.

So far I’ve found that there’s a general correlation between how strict I’m keeping to form or meter and how good the poem actually is. I hope to expand upon this in a future post.

A Guide to Poetry #2: Verse Forms #6: The Petrarchan Sonnet

The Story So Far

1. Foot, Metrics, Prosody and Scansion

1.1 General Overview

1.2 Anglophonic metrics

1.3 Romance languages

1.4 Classical languages

2. Verse Forms

2.1 Sestina

2.2 Villanelle

2.3 Pantoum

2.4 English Sonnet

2.5 Rondelet

The Italian sonnet is, like the English, 14 lines in number. However, it is structured slightly differently. Instead of three quatrains followed by a rhyming couplet, it consists of an octave, which describes a problem, and a sestet, which resolves it.

A octave is simply two quatrains, a sestet two tercets (remember the Sestina?).

 

Examples

Here is John Milton’s Sonnet XXIII:

 

Methought I saw my late espoused Saint

Brought to me like Alcestis from the grave,

Whom Jove’s great Son to her glad Husband gave,

Rescu’d from death by force through pale and faint.

Mine as whom washt from spot of child-bed taint,

Purification in the old Law did save,

And such, as yet once more I trust to have

Full sight of her in Heaven without restraint,

Came vested all in white, pure as her mind:

Her face was vail’d, yet to my fancied sight,

Love, sweetness, goodness, in her person shin’d

So clear, as in no face with more delight.

But O as to embrace me she enclin’d

I wak’d, she fled, and day brought back my night.

 

The rhyme scheme here is ABBA in the octave and ABAB in the sestina. Since I can’t find many other examples in my library, I’m assuming this is mandatory, and that Milton keeping the rhymes the same is a personal choice, but for this exercise I’ll stick to both either way. Also, let’s keep iambic pentameter in mind.

Milton’s metaphysical problem, that his love has returned from the grave, is actually emotionally preferable to his solution, that he was just dreaming. Hence the last line “[actual] day brought back my [emotional] night.” Bear this in mind.

 

Let’s give it a go!

 

Acts facts lacks backs axe smacks blacks hacks Ajax pacts jacks quacks racks shacks wax tax

mind shined rhymed kind find bind timed climbed wined dined hind pined whined vined

shear near

 

Were you with me, I could perform the acts

With which the night does taunt my lonely mind;

Consumed, like upon your pussy I dined,

With fantasies of rope, with dreams of racks

 

We’d use (though my imagination lacks

The proper tools, some use I’m sure we’d find).

With coils of shadow, I would tightly bind

Your hands, and on your feet I’d pour hot wax!

 

Okay, de Sade might have my number here:

To my inexperience I confess

In matters bondage. S&M I fear

 

Is less your cup of tea than M&S.

And since your house is far, and lust is near

To dull masturbation I must regress.

 

I had to go through a lot of shit to get a picture this tasteful. I hope you bastards appreciate it.

Laurence Thompson, 16^th December 2011

 

Closing thoughts

Although I prefer the form of the English sonnet (I missed the final couplet), this might be my favourite poem I’ve composed this week. Perhaps it is just my getting used to metre – I found it easier to slip into iambic feet than in my English sonnet. As you can see, I drew up a rhyming bank from which to draw upon before starting the poem.

The poem more or less speaks for itself – the octave describes the problem of being a horny middle class fantasist without your lover being there, and the sestet recommends wanking, because even if she was there she wouldn’t want to get into bondage anyway. In the era of E.L. James’ Fifty Shades of Grey, this seems humorously fitting. In the final version, I changed the final line to fit the metre better, and to add a caesura:

To dull masturbation I must regress

 

becomes

 

To masturbation dull, must I regress

 

This also gives it a more archaic, sonnety feel, which makes it funnier. I like the idea of some Elizabethan or Restoration poet thinking about S&M. It’s also less coarse than, say, John Wilmot, so it doesn’t call him so much to mind and thus retains it’s anachronistic humour.

I’ve also since changed ‘ your’ in the third to last line to ‘our.’ So it seems more like the bondage is a passing whim and not something the narrator is obsessed with. Oh, and, again, I’ve gotten rid of the stanza breaks – that was purely to help me keep my place whilst composing. You can see the little rhyming dictionary I made for myself parallel to writing the poem above, too.

I also changed “pour hot wax” to “drip hot wax,” as it sounds less aggressive and more playful.

I don’t know where “coils of shadow” came from, but I like it. Maybe from this bit from Baudelaire I read yesterday:

 

As an angel with a beastly eye

I slide toward you noiselessly

and return again to hold you tight

in the shadows of the night

 

This may also have been an unconscious influence, again from Baudelaire:

 

Return with your fangs and your claws,

handsome kitten, to my ever-loving heart

while I return to your eyes, where I saw those gems

that won me from the start.

 

Incidentally, I will be putting up an anthology containing the final drafts of these poems at some point. But next up it’s the hardest sonnet yet: the dreaded Onegin stanza of Pushkin! Don’t miss it.