Some Common Poetic Forms
A familiarity with some of the most frequently used fixed forms of poetry is useful because it allows for a better understanding of how a poem works. By classifying patterns we can talk about the effects of established rhythm and rhyme and recognize how the pace and meaning of the lines can be affected by variations or deviations from the patterns. An awareness of form also allows us to anticipate how a poem is likely to proceed. As we shall see, a sonnet creates a different set of expectations in a reader from those of, say, a limerick. A reader isn’t likely to find in limericks the kind of serious themes that often make their way into sonnets. The discussion that follows identifies some of the important poetic forms frequently encountered in poetry, especially (but not exclusively) poetry in the English tradition.
The shape of a fixed-form poem is often determined by the way in which the lines are organized into stanzas. A stanza — the Italian word for “room” — consists of a grouping of lines, set off by a space, that usually has a set pattern of meter and rhyme. This pattern is ordinarily repeated in other stanzas throughout the poem. What is usual is not obligatory, however; some poems may use a different pattern for each stanza, somewhat like paragraphs in prose.
Traditionally, though, stanzas do share a common rhyme scheme, the pattern of end rhymes. We can map out rhyme schemes by noting patterns of rhyme with lowercase letters: the first rhyme sound is designated a, the second becomes b, the third c, and so on. Using this system, we can describe the rhyme scheme in the following three-stanza poem this way: aabb, ccdd, eeff.
Loveliest of trees, the cherry now 1896
Considerations for Critical Thinking and Writing
- FIRST RESPONSE. What is the speaker’s attitude in this poem toward time and life?
- Why is spring an appropriate season for the setting rather than, say, winter?
- Paraphrase each stanza. How do the images in each reinforce the poem’s themes?
- Lines 1 and 12 are not intended to rhyme, but they are close. What is the effect of the near rhyme of “now” and “snow”? How does the rhyme enhance the theme?
Poets often create their own stanzaic patterns; hence there is an infinite number of kinds of stanzas. One way of talking about stanzaic forms is to describe a given stanza by how many lines it contains.
A couplet consists of two lines that usually rhyme and have the same meter; couplets are frequently not separated from each other by space on the page. A heroic couplet consists of rhymed iambic pentameter. Here is an example from Alexander Pope’s “Essay on Criticism”:
A tercet is a three-line stanza. When all three lines rhyme, they are called a triplet. Two triplets make up this captivating poem.
Upon Julia’s Clothes 1648
Considerations for Critical Thinking and Writing
- FIRST RESPONSE. What purpose does alliteration serve in this poem?
- Comment on the effect of the meter. How is it related to the speaker’s description of Julia’s clothes?
- Look up the word brave in the Oxford English Dictionary. Which of its meanings is appropriate to describe Julia’s movement? Some readers interpret lines 4–6 to mean that Julia has no clothes on. What do you think?
Connection to Another Selection
- Compare the tone of this poem with that of Alfred, Lord Tennyson’s “The Eagle,” a poem of similar length and rhyme scheme. Is there any significant difference in tone between these two poems? If so, what accounts for it?
Terza rima consists of an interlocking three-line rhyme scheme: aba, bcb, cdc, ded, and so on. Dante’s Divine Comedy uses this pattern, as does Robert Frost’s “Acquainted with the Night.”
A quatrain, or four-line stanza, is the most common stanzaic form in the English language and can have various meters and rhyme schemes (if any). The most common rhyme schemes are aabb, abba, aaba, and abcb. This last pattern is especially characteristic of the popular ballad stanza, which consists of alternating eight- and six-syllable lines. Samuel Taylor Coleridge adopted this pattern in “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner”; here is one representative stanza:
All in a hot and copper sky
The bloody Sun, at noon,
Right up above the mast did stand,
No bigger than the Moon.
There are a number of longer stanzaic forms, and the list of types of stanzas could be extended considerably, but knowing these three most basic patterns should prove helpful to you in talking about the form of a great many poems. In addition to stanzaic forms, there are fixed forms that characterize entire poems. Lyric poems can be, for example, sonnets, villanelles, sestinas, or epigrams.
Sonnet
The sonnet has been a popular literary form in English since the sixteenth century, when it was adopted from the Italian sonnetto, meaning “little song.” A sonnet consists of fourteen lines, usually written in iambic pentameter. Because the sonnet has been such a favorite form, writers have experimented with many variations on its essential structure. Nevertheless, there are two basic types of sonnets: the Italian and the English.
The Italian sonnet (also known as the Petrarchan sonnet, from the fourteenth-century Italian poet Petrarch) divides into two parts. The first eight lines (the octave) typically rhyme abbaabba. The final six lines (the sestet) may vary; common patterns are cdecde, cdcdcd, and cdccdc. Very often the octave presents a situation, an attitude, or a problem that the sestet comments upon or resolves, as in John Keats’s “On First Looking into Chapman’s Homer.”
On First Looking into Chapman’s Homer1 1816
Much have I traveled in the realms of gold, And many goodly states and kingdoms seen; Round many western islands have I been
Which bards in fealty to Apollo2 hold.
Oft of one wide expanse had I been told That deep-browed Homer ruled as his demesne; Yet did I never breathe its pure serene3
Till I heard Chapman speak out loud and bold:
Then felt I like some watcher of the skies
When a new planet swims into his ken;
Or like stout Cortez4 when with eagle eyes
He stared at the Pacific — and all his men
Looked at each other with a wild surmise —
Silent, upon a peak in Darien.
Considerations for Critical Thinking and Writing
- FIRST RESPONSE. How do the images shift from the octave to the sestet? How does the tone change? Does the meaning change as well?
- What is the controlling metaphor of this poem?
- What is it that the speaker discovers?
- How does the rhythm of the lines change between the octave and the sestet? How does that change reflect the tones of both the octave and the sestet?
- Does Keats’s mistake concerning Cortés and Balboa affect your reading of the poem? Explain why or why not.
The Italian sonnet pattern is also used in the next sonnet, but notice that the thematic break between octave and sestet comes within line 9 rather than between lines 8 and 9. This unconventional break helps to reinforce the speaker’s impatience with the conventional attitudes he describes.
The World Is Too Much with Us 1807
The world is too much with us; late and soon,
Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers;
Little we see in Nature that is ours;
We have given our hearts away, a sordid boon!
This Sea that bares her bosom to the moon;
The winds that will be howling at all hours,
And are up-gathered now like sleeping flowers;
For this, for everything, we are out of tune;
It moves us not. — Great God! I’d rather be
A Pagan suckled in a creed outworn;
So might I, standing on this pleasant lea,
Have glimpses that would make me less forlorn;
Have sight of Proteus rising from the sea;
Or hear old Triton blow his wreathèd horn.
Considerations for Critical Thinking and Writing
- FIRST RESPONSE. What is the speaker’s complaint in this sonnet? How do the conditions described affect him?
- Look up “Proteus” and “Triton.” What do these mythological allusions contribute to the sonnet’s tone?
- What is the effect of the personification of the sea and wind in the octave?
Connection to Another Selection
- Compare the theme of this sonnet with that of Gerard Manley Hopkins’s “God’s Grandeur.”
The English sonnet, more commonly known as the Shakespearean sonnet, is organized into three quatrains and a couplet, which typically rhyme abab cdcd efef gg. This rhyme scheme is more suited to English poetry because English has fewer rhyming words than Italian. English sonnets, because of their four-part organization, also have more flexibility about where thematic breaks can occur. Frequently, however, the most pronounced break or turn comes with the concluding couplet.
In the following Shakespearean sonnet, the three quatrains compare the speaker’s loved one to a summer’s day and explain why the loved one is even more lovely. The couplet bestows eternal beauty and love upon both the loved one and the sonnet.
Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day? 1609
Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?
Thou art more lovely and more temperate:
Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May,
And summer’s lease hath all too short a date.
Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines,
And often is his gold complexion dimmed;
And every fair from fair sometime declines,
By chance, or nature’s changing course, untrimmed.
But thy eternal summer shall not fade,
Nor lose possession of that fair thou ow’st1
Nor shall death brag thou wand’rest in his shade,
When in eternal lines to time thou grow’st.
So long as men can breathe or eyes can see,
So long lives this, and this gives life to thee.
Considerations for Critical Thinking and Writing
- FIRST RESPONSE. Describe the shift in tone and subject matter that begins in line 9.
- Why is the speaker’s loved one more lovely than a summer’s day? What qualities does he admire in the loved one?
- What does the couplet say about the relation between art and love?
- Which syllables are stressed in the final line? How do these syllables relate to the line’s meaning?
Sonnets have been the vehicles for all kinds of subjects, including love, death, politics, and cosmic questions. Although most sonnets tend to treat their subjects seriously, this fixed form does not mean a fixed expression; humor is also possible in it. Compare this next Shakespearean sonnet with “Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?” They are, finally, both love poems, but their tones are markedly different.
My mistress’ eyes are nothing like the sun 1609
My mistress’ eyes are nothing like the sun;
Coral is far more red than her lips’ red;
If snow be white, why then her breasts are dun;
If hairs be wires, black wires grow on her head.
I have seen roses damasked red and white,
But no such roses see I in her cheeks;
And in some perfumes is there more delight
Than in the breath that from my mistress reeks.
I love to hear her speak, yet well I know
That music hath a far more pleasing sound;
I grant I never saw a goddess go:
My mistress, when she walks, treads on the ground.
And yet, by heaven, I think my love as rare
As any she,1 belied with false compare.
Considerations for Critical Thinking and Writing
- FIRST RESPONSE. What does “mistress” mean in this sonnet? Write a description of this particular mistress based on the images used in the sonnet.
- What sort of person is the speaker? Does he truly love the woman he describes?
- In what sense are this sonnet and “Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?” about poetry as well as love?
Connection to Another Selection
- Compare the way this speaker depicts his “mistress” to that of the speaker in Andrew Marvell’s “To His Coy Mistress.” Which speaker is more persuasive?
I will put Chaos into fourteen lines 1954
I will put Chaos into fourteen lines
And keep him there; and let him thence escape
If he be lucky; let him twist, and ape
Flood, fire, and demon — his adroit designs
Will strain to nothing in the strict confines
Of this sweet Order, where, in pious rape,
I hold his essence and amorphous shape,
Till he with Order mingles and combines.
Past are the hours, the years, of our duress,
His arrogance, our awful servitude:
I have him. He is nothing more nor less
Than something simple not yet understood;
I shall not even force him to confess;
Or answer. I will only make him good.
Considerations for Critical Thinking and Writing
- FIRST RESPONSE. How do you understand “Chaos” as the subject of this poem? Why would a poet want to contain Chaos? What else could be done with it?
- What type of sonnet is this?
- Chaos is personified in the poem, and is understood to be male. Does that mean that Order is necessarily female? Or is the speaker’s voice assumed to be female? Does gender matter to the poem?
Connection to Another Selection
- Write an essay comparing the understanding of poetry’s meaning or function in this poem and in one or more of the poems of the “Poetic Definitions of Poetry.”
Unholy Sonnet 1998
Breath like a house fly batters the shut mouth.
The dream begins, turns over, and goes flat.
The virus cleans the attic and heads south.
Somebody asks, “What did you mean by that?”
But nobody says, “Nothing,” in response.
The body turns a last cell into cancer.
The ghost abandons all of his old haunts.
Silence becomes the question and the answer.
And then — banal epiphany — and then,
Time kick starts and the deaf brain hears a voice.
The eyes like orphans find the world again.
Day washes down the city streets with noise.
And oxygen repaints the blood bright red.
How good it is to come back from the dead!
Considerations for Critical Thinking and Writing
- FIRST RESPONSE. This poem is one of forty-eight sonnets Jarman published under the title “Unholy Sonnets,” clearly an allusion to John Donne’s Holy Sonnets from the seventeenth century. Do you see any traditional Judeo-Christian religious themes in this poem?
- Does this Shakespearean sonnet build an argument the same way that other examples of that form do?
- If you were asked to make a case that the underlying subject of this poem is either sleep or death, which would you choose? How different would these two interpretations be?
Shakespearean Sonnet 2010
With a first line taken from the tv listings
A man is haunted by his father’s ghost.
Boy meets girl while feuding families fight.
A Scottish king is murdered by his host.
Two couples get lost on a summer night.
A hunchback murders all who block his way.
A ruler’s rivals plot against his life.
A fat man and a prince make rebels pay.
A noble Moor has doubts about his wife.
An English king decides to conquer France.
A duke learns that his best friend is a she.
A forest sets the scene for this romance.
An old man and his daughters disagree.
A Roman leader makes a big mistake.
A sexy queen is bitten by a snake.
Considerations for Critical Thinking and Writing
- FIRST RESPONSE. How many Shakespearean plays can you identify from the fourteen encapsulated plots that make up this poem?
- Discuss the significance of the title.
- CREATIVE RESPONSE. Try your hand at creating a poem — a sonnet or another form — in whole or in part from TV listings.
Villanelle
The villanelle is a fixed form consisting of nineteen lines of any length divided into six stanzas: five tercets and a concluding quatrain. The first and third lines of the initial tercet rhyme; these rhymes are repeated in each subsequent tercet (aba) and in the final two lines of the quatrain (abaa). Moreover, line 1 appears in its entirety as lines 6, 12, and 18, while line 3 appears as lines 9, 15, and 19. This form may seem to risk monotony, but in competent hands a villanelle can create haunting echoes, as in Dylan Thomas’s “Do Not Go Gentle into That Good Night.”
Do Not Go Gentle into That Good Night 1952
Do not go gentle into that good night,
Old age should burn and rave at close of day;
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
Though wise men at their end know dark is right,
Because their words had forked no lightning they
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Good men, the last wave by, crying how bright
Their frail deeds might have danced in a green bay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
Wild men who caught and sang the sun in flight,
And learn, too late, they grieved it on its way,
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Grave men, near death, who see with blinding sight
Blind eyes could blaze like meteors and be gay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
And you, my father, there on the sad height,
Curse, bless, me now with your fierce tears, I pray.
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
Considerations for Critical Thinking and Writing
- FIRST RESPONSE. How does Thomas vary the meanings of the poem’s two refrains: “Do not go gentle into that good night” and “Rage, rage against the dying of the light”?
- Thomas’s father was close to death when this poem was written. How does the tone contribute to the poem’s theme?
- How is “good” used in line 1?
- Characterize the men who are “wise” (line 4), “Good” (7), “Wild” (10), and “Grave” (13).
- What do figures of speech contribute to this poem?
- Discuss this villanelle’s sound effects.
The House on the Hill 1894
They are all gone away,
The House is shut and still,
There is nothing more to say.
Through broken walls and gray
The winds blow bleak and shrill:
They are all gone away.
Nor is there one to-day
To speak them good or ill:
There is nothing more to say.
Why is it then we stray
Around the sunken sill?
They are all gone away,
And our poor fancy-play
For them is wasted skill:
There is nothing more to say.
There is ruin and decay
In the House on the Hill:
They are all gone away,
There is nothing more to say.
Considerations for Critical Thinking and Writing
- FIRST RESPONSE. What connotations does “on the hill” suggest to you?
- Is this poem about a house or something else?
Connection to Another Selection
- Compare the images and themes of “The House on the Hill” with those of Robert Frost’s “Desert Places.”
Sestina
Although the sestina usually does not rhyme, it is perhaps an even more demanding fixed form than the villanelle. A sestina consists of thirty-nine lines of any length divided into six six-line stanzas and a three-line concluding stanza called an envoy. The difficulty lies in repeating the six words at the ends of the first stanza’s lines at the ends of the lines in the other five six-line stanzas as well, but in a very specific order that varies from stanza to stanza. Those words must also appear in the final three lines, where they often resonate important themes. The sestina originated in the Middle Ages, but contemporary poets continue to find it a fascinating and challenging form.
Sestina 1872
I saw my soul at rest upon a day
As a bird sleeping in the nest of night,
Among soft leaves that give the starlight way
To touch its wings but not its eyes with light;
So that it knew as one in visions may,
And knew not as men waking, of delight.
This was the measure of my soul’s delight;
It had no power of joy to fly by day,
Nor part in the large lordship of the light;
But in a secret moon-beholden way
Had all its will of dreams and pleasant night,
And all the love and life that sleepers may.
But such life’s triumph as men waking may
It might not have to feed its faint delight
Between the stars by night and sun by day,
Shut up with green leaves and a little light;
Because its way was as a lost star’s way,
A world’s not wholly known of day or night.
All loves and dreams and sounds and gleams of night
Made it all music that such minstrels may,
And all they had they gave it of delight;
But in the full face of the fire of day
What place shall be for any starry light,
What part of heaven in all the wide sun’s way?
Yet the soul woke not, sleeping by the way,
Watched as a nursling of the large-eyed night,
And sought no strength nor knowledge of the day,
Nor closer touch conclusive of delight,
Nor mightier joy nor truer than dreamers may,
Nor more of song than they, nor more of light.
For who sleeps once and sees the secret light
Whereby sleep shows the soul a fairer way
Between the rise and rest of day and night,
Shall care no more to fare as all men may,
But be his place of pain or of delight,
There shall he dwell, beholding night as day.
Song, have thy day and take thy fill of light
Before the night be fallen across thy way;
Sing while he may, man hath no long delight.
Considerations for Critical Thinking and Writing
- FIRST RESPONSE. How are the six end words — “day,” “night,” “way,” “light,” “may,” and “delight” — central to the sestina’s meaning?
- Number the end words of the first stanza 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, and 6, and then use those numbers for the corresponding end words in the remaining five stanzas to see how the pattern of the line-end words is worked out in this sestina. Also locate the six end words in the envoy.
- Underline the images that seem especially vivid to you. What effects do they create? What is the tone of the sestina?
- CRITICAL STRATEGIES. Read the section on psychological strategies in Chapter 42, “Critical Strategies for Reading.” Write a brief essay explaining why you think a poet might derive pleasure from writing in a fixed form such as a villanelle or sestina. Can you think of similar activities outside the field of writing in which discipline and restraint give pleasure? How might this reflect an author’s personal psychology?
All-American Sestina 1996
One nation, indivisible
two-car garage
three strikes you’re out
four-minute mile
five-cent cigar
six-string guitar
six-pack Bud
one-day sale
five-year warranty
two-way street
fourscore and seven years ago
three cheers
three-star restaurant
sixty-
four-dollar question
one-night stand
two-pound lobster
five-star general
five-course meal
three sheets to the wind
two bits
six-shooter
one-armed bandit
four-poster
four-wheel drive
five-and-dime
hole in one
three-alarm fire
sweet sixteen
two-wheeler
two-tone Chevy
four rms, hi flr, w/vu
six-footer
high five
three-ring circus
one-room schoolhouse
two thumbs up, five-karat diamond
Fourth of July, three-piece suit
six feet under, one-horse town
Considerations for Critical Thinking and Writing
- FIRST RESPONSE. Discuss the significance of the title. What is “All-American” about this sestina?
- How is the structure of this poem different from that of a conventional sestina? (What structural requirement does Mayers add for this sestina?)
- Do you think important themes are raised by this poem, as is traditional for a sestina? If so, what are they? If not, what is being played with by using this convention?
Connection to Another Selection
- Describe and compare the strategy used to create meaning in “All-American Sestina” with that used by E. E. Cummings in “next to of course god america i.”
Bilingual Sestina 1995
Some things I have to say aren’t getting said
in this snowy, blond, blue-eyed, gum-chewing English:
dawn’s early light sifting through persianas closed
the night before by dark-skinned girls whose words
evoke cama, aposento, sueños in nombres
from that first world I can’t translate from Spanish.
Gladys, Rosario, Altagracia — the sounds of Spanish
wash over me like warm island waters as I say
your soothing names: a child again learning the nombres
of things you point to in the world before English
turned sol, tierra, cielo, luna to vocabulary words —
sun, earth, sky, moon. Language closed
like the touch-sensitive moriviví whose leaves closed
when we kids poked them, astonished. Even Spanish
failed us back then when we saw how frail a word is
when faced with the thing it names. How saying
its name won’t always summon up in Spanish or English
the full blown genie from the bottled nombre.
Gladys, I summon you back by saying your nombre.
Open up again the house of slatted windows closed
since childhood, where palabras left behind for English
stand dusty and awkward in neglected Spanish.
Rosario, muse of el patio, sing in me and through me say
that world again, begin first with those first words
you put in my mouth as you pointed to the world —
not Adam, not God, but a country girl numbering
the stars, the blades of grass, warming the sun by saying,
¡Qué calor! as you opened up the morning closed
inside the night until you sang in Spanish,
Estas son las mañanitas, and listening in bed, no English
yet in my head to confuse me with translations, no English
doubling the world with synonyms, no dizzying array of words
— the world was simple and intact in Spanish —
luna, so, casa, luz, flor, as if the nombres
were the outer skin of things, as if words were so close
one left a mist of breath on things by saying
their names, an intimacy I now yearn for in English —
words so close to what I mean that I almost hear my Spanish
heart beating, beating inside what I say en inglés.
Considerations for Critical Thinking and Writing
- FIRST RESPONSE. Of the forms we have introduced, why do you think a sestina is a particularly appropriate form for the poet to choose to express the tension between her two languages?
- Of the six sestina words — the ones that conclude each line — one is varied from stanza to stanza. Write a brief essay on why the poet might choose to vary that one particular word.
- How would you describe the relationship between Spanish and English in this poem?
Connection to Another Selection
- Compare the dilemma expressed in this poem to one or more of the poems in Chapter 29, “A Study of Julia Alvarez.” Are similar tensions evident there? If not, what other concerns come to the foreground?
Epigram
An epigram is a brief, pointed, and witty poem. Although most rhyme and they are often written in couplets, epigrams take no prescribed form. Instead, they are typically polished bits of compressed irony, satire, or paradox. Here is an epigram that defines itself.
What Is an Epigram? 1802
What is an epigram? A dwarfish whole;
Its body brevity, and wit its soul.
These additional examples by David McCord and Paul Laurence Dunbar satisfy Coleridge’s definition.
Epitaph on a Waiter 1954
By and by
God caught his eye.
Theology 1896
There is a heaven, for ever, day by day,
The upward longing of my soul doth tell me so.
There is a hell, I’m quite as sure; for pray,
If there were not, where would my neighbors go?
Considerations for Critical Thinking and Writing
- FIRST RESPONSE. In what sense is each of these three epigrams, as Coleridge puts it, a “dwarfish whole”?
- Explain how all three epigrams, in addition to being witty, make a serious point.
- CREATIVE RESPONSE. Try writing a few epigrams that say something memorable about whatever you choose to focus on.
Limerick
The limerick is always light and humorous. Its usual form consists of five predominantly anapestic lines rhyming aabba; lines 1, 2, and 5 contain three feet, while lines 3 and 4 contain two. Limericks have delighted everyone from schoolchildren to sophisticated adults, and they range in subject matter from the simply innocent and silly to the satiric or obscene. The sexual humor helps to explain why so many limericks are written anonymously. Here is one that is more concerned with physics than physiology.
There was a young lady named Bright 1923
There was a young lady named Bright,
Whose speed was far faster than light,
She set out one day,
In a relative way,
And returned home the previous night.
This next one is a particularly clever definition of a limerick.
The limerick’s never averse 1982
The limerick’s never averse
To expressing itself in a terse
Economical style,
And yet, all the while,
The limerick’s always a verse.
Considerations for Critical Thinking and Writing
- FIRST RESPONSE. How does Perrine’s limerick differ from others you know? How is it similar?
- Scan Perrine’s limerick. How do the lines measure up to the traditional fixed metrical pattern?
- CREATIVE RESPONSE. Try writing a limerick. Use the following basic pattern.
You might begin with a friend’s name or the name of your school or town. Your instructor is, of course, fair game, too, provided your tact matches your wit.
Haiku
Another brief fixed poetic form, borrowed from the Japanese, is the haiku. A haiku is usually described as consisting of seventeen syllables organized into three unrhymed lines of five, seven, and five syllables. Owing to language difference, however, English translations of haiku are often only approximated, because a Japanese haiku exists in time (Japanese syllables have duration). The number of syllables in our sense is not as significant as the duration in Japanese. These poems typically present an intense emotion or vivid image of nature, which, in the Japanese, is also designed to lead to a spiritual insight.
Under cherry trees date unknown
Under cherry trees
Soup, the salad, fish and all…
Seasoned with petals.
After Bashō 1984
Tentatively, you
slip onstage this evening,
pallid, famous moon.
Last night it rained 1921
Last night it rained.
Now, in the desolate dawn,
Crying of blue jays.
A Dent in a Bucket 2004
Hammering a dent out of a bucket
a woodpecker
answers from the woods
Considerations for Critical Thinking and Writing
- FIRST RESPONSE. What different emotions do these four haiku evoke?
- What differences and similarities are there between the effects of a haiku and those of an epigram?
- CREATIVE RESPONSE. Compose a haiku. Try to make it as allusive and suggestive as possible.
Ghazal
The ghazal form originated in Arabic poetry in the seventh and eighth centuries. Over the next thousand years its popularity spread from the Arabian peninsula to Persia, India, and other parts of Asia, the Middle East, Africa, and Spain. Its theme, historically, deals with love: both the pain one feels upon separation and the beauty that love brings despite this pain. The form is slightly more flexible than some we have described, partly since the form evolved over centuries and was often accompanied by music, but it is always written in couplets, usually between five and fifteen in number.
Ghazal 4 1864
Though beyond compare is the beauty of the full moon,
More beautiful is my beloved who shines like the sun at noon.
She will not let me kiss her but keeps her eyes on my heart to see:
She says to herself, “It is a good bargain if I get him for free.”
As my face lights up when I set eyes upon her
She thinks my illness has passed, I must be better.
Let us see what lovers get from the gods they hold dear,
A soothsayer predicts this will be a lucky year.
We all know the truth about paradise, I fear,
But Ghalib, the illusion keeps the heart in good cheer.
Considerations for Critical Thinking and Writing
- FIRST RESPONSE. The poet addresses himself in the final line (“Ghalib” was his pen name). What is the effect of this self-address?
- Who seems to be a stronger individual in the poem: the speaker or his lover? Why?
- Discuss the emphasis on vision or the visual in this poem.
Connection to Another Selection
- Write an essay comparing the themes, relationships, and imagery of “Ghazal 4” and Shakespeare’s “My mistress’ eyes are nothing like the sun.”
Hip-Hop Ghazal 2007
Gotta love us brown girls, munching on fat, swinging blue hips,
decked out in shells and splashes, Lawdie, bringing them woo hips.
As the jukebox teases, watch my sistas throat the heartbreak,
inhaling bassline, cracking backbone and singing thru hips.
Like something boneless, we glide silent, seeping ’tween floorboards,
wrapping around the hims, and ooh wee, clinging like glue hips.
Engines grinding, rotating, smokin’, gotta pull back some.
Natural minds are lost at the mere sight of ringing true hips.
Gotta love us girls, just struttin’ down Manhattan streets
killing the menfolk with a dose of that stinging view. Hips.
Crying ’bout getting old — Patricia, you need to get up off
what God gave you. Say a prayer and start slinging. Cue hips.
Considerations for Critical Thinking and Writing
- FIRST RESPONSE. This poem identifies itself as a ghazal in its title, but it also identifies the cultural context as hip-hop. Do the ghazal form and hip-hop sensibility cooperate or are they at odds with one another?
- What effect does the repetition of “hips” at the end of more than half the lines have on the poem? How about the rhyming words that precede “hips” in each instance?
- Is this a poem of seduction or of empowerment (or both)?
Connection to Another Selection
- As in Ghalib’s “Ghazal 4,” the poem that immediately precedes it, in “Hip-Hop Ghazal” the poet names and addresses herself in the final couplet. (This feature is not strictly a rule in the ghazal form, but it is not uncommon.) Write a brief essay about the effect of this convention on your understanding of individual identity in the ghazal.
Elegy
An elegy in classical Greek and Roman literature was written in alternating hexameter and pentameter lines. Since the seventeenth century, however, the term elegy has been used to describe a lyric poem written to commemorate someone who is dead. The word is also used to refer to a serious meditative poem produced to express the speaker’s melancholy thoughts. Elegies no longer conform to a fixed pattern of lines and stanzas, but their characteristic subject is related to death and their tone is mournfully contemplative.
On My First Son 1603
Farewell, thou child of my right hand,1 and joy.
My sin was too much hope of thee, loved boy;
Seven years thou wert lent to me, and I thee pay,
Exacted by thy fate, on the just day.2
Oh, could I lose all father3 now. For why
Will man lament the state he should envý? —
To have so soon ’scaped world’s and flesh’s rage,
And, if no other misery, yet age.
Rest in soft peace, and asked, say, “Here doth lie
Ben Jonson his best piece of poetry,”
For whose sake henceforth all his vows be such
As what he loves may never like too much.
Considerations for Critical Thinking and Writing
- FIRST RESPONSE. Describe the tone of this elegy. What makes it so emotionally convincing?
- In what sense is Jonson’s son “his best piece of poetry” (line 10)?
- Interpret the final two lines. Do they seem consistent with the rest of the poem? Why or why not?
Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard 1751
The curfew tolls the knell of parting day,
The lowing herd wind slowly o’er the lea,
The plowman homeward plods his weary way,
And leaves the world to darkness and to me.
Now fades the glimmering landscape on the sight,
And all the air a solemn stillness holds,
Save where the beetle wheels his droning flight,
And drowsy tinklings lull the distant folds;
Save that from yonder ivy-mantled tower
The moping owl does to the moon complain
Of such, as wandering near her secret bower,
Molest her ancient solitary reign.
Beneath those rugged elms, that yew tree’s shade,
Where heaves the turf in many a moldering heap,
Each in his narrow cell forever laid,
The rude forefathers of the hamlet sleep.
The breezy call of incense-breathing Morn,
The swallow twittering from the straw-built shed,
The cock’s shrill clarion, or the echoing horn,
No more shall rouse them from their lowly bed.
For them no more the blazing hearth shall burn,
Or busy housewife ply her evening care;
No children run to lisp their sire’s return,
Or climb his knees the envied kiss to share.
Oft did the harvest to their sickle yield,
Their furrow oft the stubborn glebe has broke;
How jocund did they drive their team afield!
How bowed the woods beneath their sturdy stroke!
Let not Ambition mock their useful toil,
Their homely joys, and destiny obscure;
Nor Grandeur hear with a disdainful smile
The short and simple annals of the poor.
The boast of heraldry, the pomp of power,
And all that beauty, all that wealth e’er gave,
Awaits alike the inevitable hour.
The paths of glory lead but to the grave.
Nor you, ye proud, impute to these the fault,
If Memory o’er their tomb no trophies raise,
Where through the long-drawn aisle and fretted vault
The pealing anthem swells the note of praise.
Can storied urn or animated bust
Back to its mansion call the fleeting breath?
Can Honor’s voice provoke the silent dust,
Or Flattery soothe the dull cold ear of Death?
Perhaps in this neglected spot is laid
Some heart once pregnant with celestial fire;
Hands that the rod of empire might have swayed,
Or waked to ecstasy the living lyre.
But Knowledge to their eyes her ample page
Rich with the spoils of time did ne’er unroll;
Chill Penury repressed their noble rage,
And froze the genial current of the soul.
Full many a gem of purest ray serene,
The dark unfathomed caves of ocean bear:
Full many a flower is born to blush unseen,
And waste its sweetness on the desert air.
Some village Hampden, that with dauntless breast
The little tyrant of his fields withstood;
Some mute inglorious Milton here may rest,
Some Cromwell guiltless of his country’s blood.
The applause of listening senates to command,
The threats of pain and ruin to despise,
To scatter plenty o’er a smiling land,
And read their history in a nation’s eyes,
Their lot forbade: nor circumscribed alone
Their growing virtues, but their crimes confined;
Forbade to wade through slaughter to a throne,
And shut the gates of mercy on mankind,
The struggling pangs of conscious truth to hide,
To quench the blushes of ingenuous shame,
Or heap the shrine of Luxury and Pride
With incense kindled at the Muse’s flame.
Far from the madding crowd’s ignoble strife,
Their sober wishes never learned to stray;
Along the cool sequestered vale of life
They kept the noiseless tenor of their way.
Yet even these bones from insult to protect
Some frail memorial still erected nigh,
With uncouth rhymes and shapeless sculpture decked,
Implores the passing tribute of a sigh.
Their name, their years, spelt by the unlettered Muse,
The place of fame and elegy supply:
And many a holy text around she strews,
That teach the rustic moralist to die.
For who to dumb Forgetfulness a prey,
This pleasing anxious being e’er resigned,
Left the warm precincts of the cheerful day,
Nor cast one longing lingering look behind?
On some fond breast the parting soul relies,
Some pious drops the closing eye requires;
Even from the tomb the voice of Nature cries,
Even in our ashes live their wonted fires.
For thee, who mindful of the unhonored dead
Dost in these lines their artless tale relate;
If chance, by lonely contemplation led,
Some kindred spirit shall inquire thy fate,
Haply some hoary-headed swain may say,
“Oft have we seen him at the peep of dawn
Brushing with hasty steps the dews away
To meet the sun upon the upland lawn.
“There at the foot of yonder nodding beech
That wreathes its old fantastic roots so high,
His listless length at noontide would he stretch,
And pore upon the brook that babbles by.
“Hard by yon wood, now smiling as in scorn,
Muttering his wayward fancies he would rove,
Now drooping, woeful wan, like one forlorn,
Or crazed with care, or crossed in hopeless love.
“One morn I missed him on the customed hill,
Along the heath and near his favorite tree;
Another came; nor yet beside the rill,
Nor up the lawn, nor at the wood was he;
“The next with dirges due in sad array
Slow through the churchway path we saw him borne.
Approach and read (for thou canst read) the lay,
Graved on the stone beneath yon aged thorn.”
The Epitaph
Here rests his head upon the lap of Earth
A youth to Fortune and to Fame unknown.
Fair Science frowned not on his humble birth,
And Melancholy marked him for her own.
Large was his bounty, and his soul sincere,
Heaven did a recompense as largely send:
He gave to Misery all he had, a tear,
He gained from Heaven (’twas all he wished) a friend.
No farther seek his merits to disclose,
Or draw his frailties from their dread abode
(There they alike in trembling hope repose),
The bosom of his Father and his God.
Considerations for Critical Thinking and Writing
- FIRST RESPONSE. The poem presents a dichotomy between those who die unremembered and those whose names live on after their deaths. Does it resolve the differences between these two groups or does it just present them as a fact?
- Do you understand the poem more as a commentary on life or on death?
- Characterize the speaker: Is he gloomy? Morose? Philosophical? Passionate? Dispassionate? Choose other adjectives if none of these seems perfect.
Connection to Another Selection
- Discuss the theme of human insignificance in this poem and in Robert Frost’s “Desert Places.”
Elegy of Color 2018
Green shutters — white house.
Paper whites in the weak western light.
Brown mouse and its brown hush
across the stairs, four daughters
brushing long brown hair. Brown
beer in Black Label cans, black bible
on the nightstand. Baby Jesus
on the wall — incarnadine cheeks.
Shimmering red rosary beads. Red
garnet of my claddagh ring. A leak
yellowing in the ceiling. The many
colors of my father singing. I was blessed
and I was blessed, like foreheads, like palm
wisps, like water my mother bought
from the church — colorless, colorless.
Considerations for Critical Thinking and Writing
- FIRST RESPONSE. If this poem did not have “elegy” in the title, would you classify it as an elegy? Why or why not?
- The poem covers many topics. What would you identify as its central subject?
- What is the effect of the speaker repeating the phrase “I was blessed” in lines 12 and 13?
Ode
An ode is characterized by a serious topic and formal tone, but no prescribed formal pattern describes all odes. In some odes the pattern of each stanza is repeated throughout, while in others each stanza introduces a new pattern. Odes are lengthy lyrics that often include lofty emotions conveyed by a dignified style. Typical topics include truth, art, freedom, justice, and the meaning of life. Frequently such lyrics tend to be more public than private, and their speakers often use apostrophe.
Ode on Solitude 1700
Happy the man, whose wish and care
A few paternal acres bound,
Content to breathe his native air,
In his own ground.
Whose herds with milk, whose fields with bread,
Whose flocks supply him with attire,
Whose trees in summer yield him shade,
In winter fire.
Blest, who can unconcernedly find
Hours, days, and years slide soft away,
In health of body, peace of mind,
Quiet by day,
Sound sleep by night; study and ease,
Together mixed; sweet recreation;
And innocence, which most does please,
With meditation.
Thus let me live, unseen, unknown;
Thus unlamented let me die;
Steal from the world, and not a stone
Tell where I lie.
Considerations for Critical Thinking and Writing
- FIRST RESPONSE. This poem is singularly populated. What distinction does the speaker make implicitly between solitude and loneliness?
- Explain why “Ode on Solitude” can be accurately described as an ode.
- How does the happy contentment expressed by the language in the first stanza anticipate the resolute wish expressed in the final stanza.
Connection to Another Selection
- Write an essay comparing the themes of “Ode on Solitude” and Thomas Gray’s “Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard.”
Parody
A parody is a humorous imitation of another, usually serious, work. It can take any fixed or open form because parodists imitate the tone, language, and shape of the original. While a parody may be teasingly close to a work’s style, it typically deflates the subject matter to make the original seem absurd. Parody can be used as a kind of literary criticism to expose the defects in a work, but it is also very often an affectionate acknowledgment that a well-known work has become both institutionalized in our culture and fair game for some fun. Read Robert Frost’s “The Road Not Taken” and then study this parody.
The Lover Not Taken 1984
Committed to one, she wanted both
And, mulling it over, long she stood,
Alone on the road, loath
To leave, wanting to hide in the undergrowth.
This new guy, smooth as a yellow wood
Really turned her on. She liked his hair,
His smile. But the other, Jack, had a claim
On her already and she had to admit, he did wear
Well. In fact, to be perfectly fair,
He understood her. His long, lithe frame
Beside hers in the evening tenderly lay.
Still, if this blond guy dropped by someday,
Couldn’t way just lead on to way?
No. For if way led on and Jack
Found out, she doubted if he would ever come back.
Oh, she turned with a sigh.
Somewhere ages and ages hence,
She might be telling this. “And I —”
She would say, “stood faithfully by.”
But by then who would know the difference?
With that in mind, she took the fast way home,
The road by the pond, and phoned the blond.
Considerations for Critical Thinking and Writing
- FIRST RESPONSE. To what degree does this poem duplicate Frost’s style? How does it differ?
- Does this parody seem successful to you? Explain what you think makes a successful parody.
- CREATIVE RESPONSE. Choose a poet whose work you know reasonably well or would like to know better and determine what is characteristic about his or her style. Then choose a poem to parody. It’s probably best to attempt a short poem or a section of a long work. If you have difficulty selecting an author, you might consider Herrick, Blake, Keats, Dickinson, Whitman, Hughes, or Frost, as a number of their works are included in this book.
We Old Dudes 2006
We old dudes. We
White shoes. We
Golf ball. We
Eat mall. We
Soak teeth. We
Palm Beach; We
Vote red. We
Soon dead.
Considerations for Critical Thinking and Writing
- FIRST RESPONSE. Consider the poem’s humor. To what extent does it make a serious point?
- What does the reference to Palm Beach tell you about these “old dudes”?
- CREATIVE RESPONSE. Write a poem similar in style that characterizes your life as a student.
Connection to Another Selection
- Compare the themes of “We Old Dudes” and Brooks’s “We Real Cool.” How do the two poems speak to each other?
Picture Poem
By arranging lines into particular shapes, poets can sometimes organize typography into picture poems of what they describe. Words have been arranged into all kinds of shapes, from apples to light bulbs. Notice how the shape of this next poem embodies its meaning.
In Medias Res1 1985
His waist
like the plot
thickens, wedding
pants now breathtaking,
belt no longer the cinch
it once was, belly’s cambium
expanding to match each birthday,
his body a wad of anonymous tissue
swung in the same centrifuge of years
that separates a house from its foundation,
undermining sidewalks grim with joggers
and loose-filled graves and families
and stars collapsing on themselves,
no preservation society capable
of plugging entropy’s dike,
under his zipper’s sneer
a belly hibernation-
soft, ready for
the kill.
Considerations for Critical Thinking and Writing
- FIRST RESPONSE. Explain how the title is related to this poem’s shape and meaning.
- Identify the puns. How do they work in the poem?
- What is “cambium” (line 6)? Why is the phrase “belly’s cambium” especially appropriate?
- What is the tone of this poem? Is it consistent throughout?