This week: Understanding Poetry Forms Edited by: Lilli 🧿 ☕ More Newsletters By This Editor
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"You can find poetry in your everyday life, your memory, in what people say on the bus, in the news, or just what’s in your heart."
~ Carol Ann Duffy
"Poetry is language at its most distilled and most powerful."
~ Rita Dove
"Poetry is one of the ancient arts, and it begins as did all the fine arts, within the original wilderness of the earth."
~ Mary Oliver
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If you’re not familiar with a lot of poetry, reading, writing, or reviewing poetry can seem intimidating at first. There are countless poetic forms and styles, and a lot of them have rigid rules and structures to follow, which can lead to a feeling of reluctance.
Perhaps English class wasn’t one of your best subjects and you struggled to remember the differences between a sonnet and a haiku. Those early introductions to poetry can either turn you into a lover or a hater of poetry altogether. Either way, we can all, myself included, benefit from brushing up and learning about some of the different poetry forms out there. Doing so can lead to a great love and understanding of this wonderful art form.
This week we will take a closer look at a couple of poetry forms. I hope you enjoy and even give these forms a try!
The Villanelle
This structured poem is 19 lines long and features plenty of repetition. They are generally ordered into five three-line stanzas, followed by one stanza with four lines.
Villanelles follow a rhyming scheme; in this case, it’s ABA ABA ABA ABA ABA ABAA. You’ll notice that there are only two rhyming sounds (A and B) in the rhyming scheme of a villanelle. As I mentioned, there’s a lot of repetition, both in the rhyme and in the lines of the poem. The first line of the poem is repeated in the 6th, 12th, and 18th lines, and the 3rd line is repeated in the 9th, 15th, and 19th lines.
A villanelle is highly structured, which can be challenging at first, but it can also be rewarding when it comes to writing your own poetry; sometimes the constraints of a few rules help to give your creativity more direction.
‘The House on the Hill’
by Edwin Arlington Robinson
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 …
The Ode
An ode is a type of lyrical poem, originally meant to be sung. They're typically short and praise an individual, idea, or event.
Odes originated in Ancient Greece and were performed to celebrate athletic victories. The word 'ode' even comes from the Greek word 'aidein', which means 'to sing'.
There are three types of Odes:
Pindaric Ode
The Pindaric ode, which is also known as the Greek ode, is named after a Greek poet who wrote songs to be performed. While irregular in length and rhyme, they're consistently made up of three parts. These are the strophe, antistrophe and epode.
The strophe usually consists of two or more lines that are repeated together. The antistrophe is structured in the same way as the strophe, but presents an opposing theme or idea. Finally, the epode concludes the poem - it typically has a distinct meter.
Horatian Ode
The Horatian ode was named after a 1st-century BC poet named Horace. These odes are written with a calm tone and are usually about love, joy, or writing. They're made up of around two quatrains.
Irregular Ode
Irregular odes are ones that don't fit either the Pindaric or Horatian ode forms. There is no set rhyme scheme.
Ode to Autumn
by John Keats
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.
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 watches 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 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 skies.
Reviewing as a Learning Tool:
Before tackling an unfamiliar poetry form, take some time to read and review someone else’s poem written in the same form. Compare the form rules to what they have written; rhymes, syllable counts, etc.
This is a trick that has helped me to understand a variety of poems. This is not to imply I’m some sort of expert in poetry forms, but it has helped me to understand and has increased my interest in trying more forms. |
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Comments from my last Poetry Newsletter, "The Power of Poetry"
~Lifelessons~ wrote:
I would love to say I love all poetry!! I do really. Then I found prose poetry, well that has been my niche and I find it so beautiful. In any way, dark or light can be so intriguing. It's a moment in a small story told with poetic devices. Something everyone should try.
Monty wrote:
Have tried a bit in German as my first wife was German. One needs a German to read a German poem and it does not sound harsh. |
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