Poetic Forms

Sonnets and more

Poetic Forms
The term poetic form indicates the way that a poem is structured by recurrent patterns of rhythms and words.
We must look at stanzas (meter, line length and rhyme) and verse (blank or free)
Hamilton, Sharon. Essential Literary Terms With Exercises . New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 2007. Print.

Verse
Blank Verse
Free Verse
Unrhymed iambic pentameter (5 feet/line)
Blank means that the poetry is not rhymed. Iambic pentameter refers to the fact that each line contains five iambs, or metrical feet, consisting of a stressed syllable followed by an unstressed syllable.
Also called open form verse
Yet it still keeps line divisions deliberate which separates it from prose.

Iambic Pentameter
Iambic Pentameter has:
Ten syllables in each line
Five pairs of alternating unstressed and stressed syllables
The rhythm in each line sounds like: ba- BUM / ba- BUM / ba- BUM / ba- BUM / ba- BUM
http://shakespeare.about.com/od/shakespeareslanguage/a/i_pentameter.htm

Iambic Pentameter Examples
If mu- / -sic be / the food / of love , / play on
( Twelfth Night by William Shakespeare I.i.1)
Is this / a dag- / -ger I / see be- / fore me?
( Macbeth by William Shakespeare II,I, 33)
Each pair of syllables is called an iambus. You’ll notice that each iambus is made up of one unstressed and one stressed beat (ba- BUM ).
http://shakespeare.about.com/od/shakespeareslanguage/a/i_pentameter.htm

This is?
Rebellious subjects, enemies to peace, Profaners of this neighbor-stained steel-- Will they not hear? What ho, you men, you beasts, That quench the fire of your pernicious rage With purple fountains issuing from your veins!
( Romeo and Juliet by William Shakespeare I.i. 84- 88)

And this is?
I celebrate myself, and sing myself, And what I assume you shall assume, For every atom belonging to me as good belongs to you. I loaf and invite my soul, I lean and loaf at my ease observing a spear of summer grass.
(“Song of Myself” by Walt Whitman)

Couplet
A pair of rhymed lines of the same length and meter.
Rhymed pairs of lines in Iambic Pentameter are termed heroic couplets
Hamilton, Sharon. Essential Literary Terms With Exercises. New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 2007. Print.

Tercet (Triplet)
Is a group of three lines, usually sharing the same rhyme.
Whenas in silks my Julia goes,
Then, then, methinks, how sweetly flows,
The liquefaction of her clothes.
(“Upon Julia’s Clothes” by Robert Herrick)
The line length may be the same or it may vary
And as the smart ship grew
In stature, grace, and hue,
In shadowy silent distance grew the Iceberg too.
(“The Convergence of the Twain” by Thomas Hardy)
Hamilton, Sharon. Essential Literary Terms With Exercises . New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 2007. Print .

Quatrain
Consists of four lines and is the most common stanza form in English poetry.
May use a variety of meter and rhyme schemes. The most frequent rhyme scheme is that in which the second and forth line rhyme (abcb)

Refrain
Is a word, a phrase, or a group of lines repeated at intervals in a poem.
It is a common feature of folk ballads and of Elizabethan songs.

Sonnet
Is a Lyric poem, written in a single stanza that usually consists of fourteen lines of iambic pentameter.

Italian Sonnet (Petrarchan)
Named after Petrarch, an Italian poet who introduced the form in the early fourteenth century.
Divided into an opening octave- a group of eight lines, and a concluding sestet-a six line unit.
The rhyme scheme is usually fixed. The opening octave is abba abba, but that of the sestet may vary (ced ced, or cdc cdc, or cdc dcd.

English Sonnet (Shakespearean)
Nicknamed after it’s most famous practitioner.
Features three quatrains and a final couplet.
Rhyme scheme usually goes abab cdcd efef gg.

This is an example of???
When I consider how my light is spent,
Ere half my days in this dark world and wide,
And that one talent which is death to hide
Lodged with me useless, though my soul more bent
To serve therewith my Maker, and present
My true account, lest He returning chide;
"Doth God exact day-labor, light denied?"
I fondly ask. But Patience, to prevent
That murmur, soon replies, "God doth not need
Either man's work or His own gifts. Who best
Bear His mild yoke, they serve Him best. His state
Is kingly: thousands at His bidding speed,
And post o'er land and ocean without rest;
They also serve who only stand and wait."

And this is an example of???
Let me not to the marriage of true minds Admit
impediments.
Love is not love Which alters when it alteration finds,
Or bends with the remover to remove:
O no! it is an ever-fixed mark
That looks on tempests and is never shaken;
It is the star to every wandering bark,
Whose worth's unknown, although his height be taken.
Love's not Time's fool, though rosy lips and cheeks
Within his bending sickle's compass come:
Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks,
But bears it out even to the edge of doom.
If this be error and upon me proved,
I never writ, nor no man ever loved.

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Poetic Forms

by Medway High School on Oct 06, 2009

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