Saturday, July 29, 2023

Most Popular Poetry Styles by Devi Nina Bingham

Meter

There are two types of poetry: formal and free verse, and meter is only used in formal verse. “Meter” is the “Repetition of evenly spaced series of beats in a poem” (Strand & Boland, 2000). At one time, all poetry was metrical, as it was during the Renaissance. Today’s poetry is written in different forms and meters, or without meter, known as “free form,” though Shakespeare wrote his plays in what is called “blank verse.” 

 

Three types of meters include stresses or accents, and syllables: Accentual, Syllabic, and Accentual-Syllabic. Meters are composed of “poetic feet,” defined as “patterns of stressed and unstressed syllables” (Strand & Boland, 2000). Of the “poetic foot,” there are two main categories: the “Rising Meter” and the “Falling Meter.” In “Rising Meter” poems, unstressed syllables come first. There are two types of Rising Meters: “Iambic” and “Anapestic.” Of the Falling Meters, the stressed syllables come first, and there are two types: “Trochaic” and “Dactylic.” 

 

To “scan” a poem is to identify its meter and the number of feet it contains. The Greek word for the study of metrics is “prosody,” which is to number how many poetic feet a poem has. To calculate feet in a line of poetry, add the metric units. The meter of a poem is always determined by the rhythm of its first line. Most English poems are Iambic and have five feet of Iambs known as a pentameter. However, they can also be written in these metrics: Trochee, Anapest, and Dactyl. There are two variations on these forms: Spondee and Pyric. 

 Defining Poetry and Poetics

 

It is difficult to differentiate “poetry” from “poetics,” as the two are nearly interchangeable, as are the words “poet” and “poem.” If “poetry” is a noun, then “poetics” is a verb. “Poetry” is a finished poem, whereas “poetics” is the act of literary creation, the process. Simply put, poetics attempts to explain how a poem is structured rather than interpret its meaning (PEPP, 2012). 

 

Classical Poetics

 

There are two perspectives or philosophies of Poetics: Western poetics, and Classical. Western refers to the West’s Literary Criticism of poetry, while Classical theory is Greek in origin. In “Ion,” the philosopher Plato described poetry as artistic inspiration that comes from outside of oneself. He argued that poetry is written “in a state of divinely inspired madness” (Plato, Ion, 380 BCE). In the “Republic,” Plato stated that poetry emanates from emotion rather than rational thought, and therefore is inferior art. Next, the Greek philosopher Aristotle, who was Plato’s student, divided poetry into two: epics, and tragedies, although he added a third category of comedy to his “Poetics” (Aristotle, Poetics, 4th Century BCE). 

 

Western Poetics-Overview

 

Periods of Western history have helped to define poetry. For example, the Romantic Era produced Medieval and Early Modern poetry, and these authors were more concerned with teaching morals through their poems and expressing deep feelings than with form. Western poetic Literary Criticism includes technique, conventions, and strategies. Writing techniques have been used among poets to varying degrees over time, such as the technique of self-disclosure. Described as “The image of the poet within the poem, like a painter’s self-portrait…” (PEPP, 2012), this technique creates a more intimate connection between the reader and the poet. Free speech is another technique that has enabled poets to contribute to the betterment of society: “The mandate to serve as guard and witness has not lost its force.” When free speech is stifled, dissident poets give a voice to the oppressed (PEPP, 2012). 

 Poetry

 

The term “poetry” originated in Europe and included a variety of metrics and forms. Poetic form and utility have evolved in step with society. During the 1800-1900s, poetry was lyrical and in short narrative form. Ballads and folk songs were also considered poetry. In the 20th Century, “oral poetry” became popular. Contemporarily, social activism is the foundation for poetic criticism.

 

Differing definitions of poetry arose in various parts of the world. The German philosopher Hegel defined poetry as “inner representation,” while in the 1900s, the ideal poetry in France was musical, aesthetically pleasing, and emotionally intense (PEPP, 2012). Yet, throughout history, poetry has been criticized as little more than socialist propaganda. 

 

The Enlightenment/Renaissance

 

Poetic criticism sprung up during the Enlightenment that compared poetry to other art forms. England’s Shakespeare, Italy’s Leonardo di Vinci, and Germany’s Lessing (Laokoon, 1766) asserted that Horace’s (65-8 BCE) belief "that poetry should resemble a painting” was incorrect. These arguments about the importance of poetry have been termed “medium specificity.” 

 

Romanticism and New Criticism

 

           In the 1800s, poets, literary critics, and philosophers broke with Aristotle and sided with the Expressionists. “In the West, people took to describing and evaluating poetry based on its success or failure in eloquently and accurately communicating a writer’s innermost thoughts, feelings, experiences, fantasies and dreams…fidelity of moral purpose matter less than a given writer’s intensity, sincerity, passion, and ingenuity” (PEPP, 2012). As for morality in modern poetry, “Indecorous or lowly content and mannered or otherwise distorted depictions of the external world are excusable as long as poets obey the dictates of their imagination and conscience” (PEPP, 2012). 


Emanual Kant and Hegel provided the philosophical argument that one’s mind constructs the external world, what has been called "The Romantic Doctrine." Kant explained that poetry was a work of art instead of moral instruction. He felt that poetry should be judged on its aesthetics. Schiller (1795) made a case for “art for art’s sake.” These perspectives gave poets autonomy from the restraints of politics and history, allowing them to be imaginative artisans. This philosophy has been called “The Expressive School of Poetics” (PEPP, 2012). 

 

Postmodernism

 

Early in the 20th Century, Russian poet formalists moved away from Expressionism and emphasized a poem’s construction, function, language, and prosody. Next, “New Criticism” in America sought to analyze these factors. As a reaction to New Criticism, Structuralism developed after WW2 in France, reversing this trend of attention to form. It focused on culture, and poetry’s place within said culture as compared to similar poetic works. 

 

Modern Poetics and Poetry: Post-Structuralism and the New Historicists

 

Post-Structuralism

 

In the 1970s and 1980s, Post-Structuralism was popularized by universities. Philosopher Martin Heidegger suggested that “Art was the best vehicle for pondering how and why the world exists” (Heidegger, 1927). Post-Structuralists opposed the ideas of Structuralism by claiming that it was impossible to accurately describe an ever-changing culture and its systems. Derrida was a Post-Structuralist who focused on language and texts to interpret a work. Then there was a shift away from linguistics and towards analyzing poetry according to social, cultural, economic, and political systems. Finally, philosopher Foucault presented all texts as a part of “networks of power and knowledge” (Foucault, 1975). 

 

 New Historicists

           

Contemporary activism has become the foundation for new poetic criticism. “The composition and interpretation of poetry are often related to contemporary activist projects” (PEPP, 2012). Transnationalism in poetics looks at how poetry “takes shape and operates transnationally across and despite nation-state boundaries” (PEPP, 2012). Another modern approach to poetry is to “incorporate those disciplines of linguistics, psychology, neuroscience, and philosophy of mind” (PEPP, 2012). This approach has been labeled “Cognitive Poetics” and seeks to understand how cognition informs poetic structure and response. 

 

Public universities and the internet have profoundly revolutionized the definition and scope of poetics. Poets can find a platform for their work at university-sponsored “poetry readings” and at local coffee shop open mics. They can display their work online, and give and receive critique via internet poetry groups, and contests. Anyone can self-publish and sell their poetry if they are willing to navigate sites such as Amazon.com and BarnesandNoble.com. Poetics is no longer for the university-educated only. It is no longer a local phenomenon, and it has more than a national reach. Modern poetics is a worldwide pastime and a beloved online hobby for millions. For talented poets, it can be a path to literary fame, though as ever, it seldom brings with it fortune. As a result, career poets are a dying breed. This is expressed best poetically:

 

A Fading Light

Nina Bingham

 

The poetic soul revives

when listeners sit and stay.

“Pay the poet’s tab,” I plead,

“since he labored for a day.”

 

Not worth a cup of coffee?

Though he chased your cold away,

and warmed your neighbor’s weary bones,

and made the pretty girl say,

“I haven’t felt this happy

since it was the month of May.”

 

It is worth a cup of coffee,

it is worth a whole damned meal

what he offers is a treasure

that lesser men will surely steal.

 

A poet is a fading light

whose words are but a whisper

whose shadow can’t escape the night

as Autumn cold turns crisper.

 

Honor the artist now, my friend

while he thanks you for to listen

as the day will come

when the poet is gone

leaving an empty cistern.

 

Dimly

and dimmer still

time creeps

leading the young astray

 

sweeping aside

yesterday's child

turning him

old and grey.

 

Fortunate you

whom the poet spoke to

for he only wanted to play.

 

His prose will then stand

and speak for the man

when his light has faded away.

 Caesura-The Latin derivative means, “To cut off a caesura occurs in a verse where the metrical flow is suspended or cut off. It altars the rhythm of a meter. Otherwise, poetry would be monotonous. Studies have shown that English patterns of syllabic variation of Caesura is not strictly adhered to. Contemporary Meaning of Caesuras-Any space, break, or pause in tempo, a break in syntax.

There are many different types of Caesuras:

  1. Initial Caesura-When the metrical flow is “cut” at the beginning of a line.
  2. Medial Caesura-When this cut or pause occurs in the middle of a line.
  3. Terminal Caesura-When there’s a cut at the end of the verse.
  4. Penthemimeral-Caesura appearing after the first long syllable of the third foot.
  5. Chaucer Caesura-Used Caesuras in his iambic pentameter.
  6. Shakespeare Caesura-Used Caesuras in his “blank verse.”
  7. Alexander Pope Caesura-18th Century poet that used caesuras to create balance or symmetry.
  8. Free Verse Caesura-Free verse uses caesuras in unexpected places to represent a more realistic way that people think and speak.
  9. Ezra Pound and E.E. Cummings-Used unconventional patterns for verses.
  10. Charles Olson and Allen Ginsberg-Felt that poetic verses and lines should be units of natural breath, so they used caesuras between phrases.

2. Metrical Pause-Missing syllables in accented verse.

3. Diaresis-Pause at the end of a foot of poetry.

4. English Verse and Caesura-Varies according to genre (dramatic, narrative, or lyric, rhymed couplets, or blank verse).

5. Jakob Schipper-Promoted doctrine that Caesura was essential to the structure of iambic pentameter, and variation in Caesura placement is deliberate.

6. Masculine and Feminine Line Endings:

1. Masculine-A Caesura that follows a stressed syllable.

2. Feminine-A Caesura that follows an unstressed syllable.

7. Epic Caesura-An epic or unstressed syllable not counted as part of the metrical pattern.

8. Lyrical Caesura-An unstressed syllable that is counted as part of the pattern.

Enjambment-The continuation from one line to the next without pause. The opposite of end-stopped line, usually for poetic effect. In England, enjambment was used by Elizabethans for dramatic, narrative verse. Wordsworth, Keats, Hopkins, and 20th Century Poets W.C. Williams and E.E. Cummings used it. However, enjambment can give readers mixed messages: The closure of the metrical pattern at line end implies a pause, while the incompletion of the phrase says: go on. In the 19th Century, “hard enjambment” was used that was “so striking it cannot help but be felt.”

1.     Hexameter-Mostly end-stopped, as is Sanskrit verse (no enjambment).

2.     Old Germanic Verse-Often used enjambment where rhythm was unknown.

 

End-Stopped: Those lines that meter, syntax, and sense conclude at line end. A single line can be end-stopped, but it normally applies to the couplet. The opposite of run-on or enjambment. 

 

Accentual Verse-Verse organized by stresses, not syllables. It operates by two rules:

1.     The stress controls the verse.

2. The stresses must be natural-speech stresses. You measure the lines in 2,3, or 4 stresses.

There are several different kinds of accentual verse:

1.     Folk Verse-Including nursery rhymes, cheers, chants, slogans, jingles, ballad, hymns, popular songs, oral poetry, “doggerel,” literary verse, German knittelvers, Russian Dolnik verse.

Stanza-History

Strand and Boland define “stanza” as any unit of reoccurring meter and rhyme used in a pattern in a single poem (Strand, Boland, 137). Their opinion is that there is almost no precise formal history for the stanza. However, the PEPP (2012) gives an elaborate history for it. The word “stanza” originated from Italian meaning “room.” A stanza has been described as a box-like unit, or a “room.” Dante’s Divine Comedy written in 1320 was composed in Italian, and Dante created the use of the stanza for his narrative poem. By the end of the Middle Ages, poets were using patterns in poetry. A Stanza was used to “maintain tension between narrative and lyric elements (Strand, Boland, 139). During the Renaissance, it was used to emphasize wit. And during the Romantic period, it was used for drama.

Identifying a Stanza

To judge a stanza, one must evaluate it based on its form, syntax, content, and figuration. Stanzas often contain verb forms, tenses, and moods. Poetic lines are organized according to alliteration, syntax, lineation, meter, and arc of thought. Stanzas are sequential and identified by intervals. They usually have an isomorphic line before and after them. Between the stanza will be a complete or strong rhyme, refrain, proverb, or aphorism, dialogue, lengthened, shortened, or a “tail rhyme.” In England, there is a long tradition of end rhyme finishing a stanza. There are several types of stanzas: the “blues stanza,” and the “ballad stanza.” There are also “spacious stanza forms”: ballad, pseudo-ballad, long-live alliterative stanzas, ottava rima, rhyme royal, tail-rhyme stanzas, and Spencerian stanza.

There was another form of stanza made popular in the 16th Century called a “sestina.” It has seen a resurgence of popularity in 20th Century American poetry.  Another type of stanza called the “ghazal” which is Persian became popular in the 20th and 21st Centuries, and English poetry and free verse began to be used in China in the 20th Century, to name just a few different styles of stanzas used in modern poetry.

Terza Rima

Dating to the 13th Century, the Terza Rima, which is Italian for “third rhyme” is a classic form of poetry with three-line stanzas called “tercets” which have a rhyming pattern. The pattern is fixed:

Aba

Bcb

Cdc

Ded (Wikipedia, 2023).

It ends with a single line or a couplet that repeats the rhyme of the middle line of the previous tercet. Terza Rima can be used in combination with iambic pentameter. Terza Rima rhymes give the effect of “echo and expectation.” As a line is read, there is an expectation of another rhyme to complete the rhyming scheme. It has been used since the Romantic era by poets such as Thomas Hardy, Yeats, T.S. Eliot, and others.

Ottova Rima

Due to the popularity of Lord Byron’s Don Juan, Ottova Riva is Italian prosody in a stanza with a rhyming structure of:

Ab

Ab

Ab

Cc

It evolved as oral poetry first and was used in religious verse in the 13th Century in Italy. It became a popular form of Italian narrative verse, and in the 15th Century was widely used. During the Renaissance, Spain and Portugal used it as Italy had for narrative purposes.

English poets, notably Edmund Spenser, used this form, but it was not until Lord Byron used it masterfully that it gained worldwide appreciation. Ottova Riva includes various moods including serious, comic, and satiric mixed with narrative and discourse. Yeats is known as the modern master of this form, but many other modern English language poets have used it.

Quatrain

A stanza of 4 lines which are usually rhymed, and it is the most common stanza form in European poetry. It is the traditional hymn stanza. In the Middle Ages it became standardized in the iambic tetrameter. Also, it was used in ballads and nursery rhymes. It follows one of the following rhyme patterns: abab or xbyb, known as “cross rhyme.” This is the rhyme scheme of the “sonnet.” In a complete poem the quatrain is often an epigram. In a hymn, the quatrains can be common meter or measure, long meter, and short meter.

Ballad                                                                                                                                    

The word “ballad” comes from the Italian, “ballare” meaning to dance. It has the same root as the word “ballet.” They are found in America, Europe, Africa, and Australia. Ballads are thought to have originated from folk songs read as oral performance. However, some scholars argue they originated from dances and rituals, and others say they originated with one balladeer.

The subject matter was most often comedy or melodrama with subjects and moods including death, murder, suicide, disgrace, mystery, bawdy, macabre, brutal, sinister, preachy, erotic, pious, obscene, lost love, supernatural events, or recent events. Perhaps the easiest way to describe the ballad is to say it is ominous narrative storytelling and “accentual verse,” and the subject is usually “tabloid” with the voice of a “drunken rogue” (Frye, 2005, Strand, Boland, 2000). The ballad presents a story involving a protagonist and a small cast of characters or group, usually dealing with a catastrophe. European ballads centered on two or three characters who were melodramatic, and it used repetition, or redundancy by repeating lines or phrases.  

Format

Ballads use simple words and short lines, vivid images and musical themes that are common and communal (Strand, Boland, 2000). It is a closed form narrative where the 2nd and 4th lines rhyme, and the format should be abab, or abcd. The quatrain is customary, though sometimes a 6-line stanza is used that rhymes in format xbxbxb. It doesn’t matter how many syllables there are because it is the meter that matters, either 4, or 3 beats to a line. Scholars argue about meter saying it is accentuated, while others say it is accentual and syllabic. Still others say it is foot verse with metrical pauses.

History

There are many different types of ballads, including ballad operas. The first recorded ballad was, “Judas” from the 14th and 15th Century (Frye, 2005, Strand, Boland, 2000). In the 16th Century, Luther’s German hymnody was adopted by English Protestantism and made use of the ballad meter. Protestant hymns still use the ballad meter, also called “common, short, or half.” In the 18th Century, older ballad texts were transcribed and gained popularity, and were often written as satire. In the 19th Century, an English scholar by the name of Child produced 5 volumes of transcribed ballads. During the Romantic era the subjects were expressionism and sensibility. The ballad became popular during the 20th Century during Modernism, and the New Criticism. Today’s ballads are mostly musical, slow, and sentimental.

Ballad and Hymn Meter-Definition

Ballad Meter is also called “Ballad Stanza,” and it is the meter of the traditional ballad. Ballad meter is defined as quatrains that alternate iambic tetrameter with iambic trimeter that rhyme in the 2nd and 4th lines. This is the same as “hymn meter” also called “common meter” whose quatrains can rhyme abab. However, the ballads can vary in quatrains and rhyme scheme. Sometimes an iambic heptameter, couplets are used in ballads as in Thayer’s, “Casey at the Bat” (PEPP, 2012).

Broadside Ballad

Called The Broadside or a Journalistic Ballad, this was a song reproduced on a sheet of paper and sold like a newspaper on the streets and in shops. In the late 1600’s it was popular for several years.

In the U.S., the Blues Ballad developed which was a type of Broadside ballad that was melancholy in tone. And from the 17th to 20th Centuries in Germany, pictorials were added to Journalistic Ballads.

The Ode

            The word “ode” means to sing or chant. The ode is the most formal and complex of lyric poetry, usually of considerable length that tells a story. Historically, the ode has been used on magistrate’s birthdays, funerals, coronations, celebrations, and at dedications of monuments at public events, and is serious in tone.

            In Greek literature, the ode was used in song and dance. They were written for performance in the Dionysiac theatre, or the Agora for athletic victories. The tone of a Greek ode was intensely emotional, and the subject matter included divine myths. These strophes reflected a dance pattern, then the strophe is repeated in reverse, called an anti-strophe.

            Another form of Greek ode were Homer’s Hymas, where we get the word “hymns” from. These were used to invoke a deity, followed by a narrative genealogy establishing lineage, a petition for a favor from the Gods, and it concluded with a vow to serve that God. John Ket’s “Ode to Psyche” is structured in this way.

In Latin literature, the odes were associated with Horace who took his lyrical style from Alcaeus and Sappho. The tone was peaceful and thoughtful instead of intense and was intended for private reading rather than in the theatre. Horace wrote an ode for Augustus though Horace is more noted for writing the epigram.

The anacreontic ode was discovered in the 16th Century and credited to Anacreon who wrote 600 poems. However, the original poems span 1,000 years. These lines were short and the subjects were simple, about love and drinking.

Around the globe, the ode was alive and well. Italian and French odes were written in the 15th and 16th Centuries. In the 17th Century, Boileau in France and in the 18th Century, Victor Hugo wrote more personal odes. In the 20th Century, Catholic devotion was explored through the ode. In Spain in the 20th Century, the odes were popular. In Germany, Weckerlin wrote odes in the 16th Century, and in the mid-18th Century, Klopstock used Lutheran psalms as models for his odes. In the 19th Century, Holderlin wrote mystical odes that were non-rhyming.

In England, Edmund Spenser wrote poetry based on the odes, and Milton wrote “On The Morning of Christ’s Nativity” in stanzaic form. In 1656, Cowley wrote odes that became popular favorites, titling them Pindarique Odes. Only Mark Akenside wrote odes in the style of Horacio, and in the 17th Century, Marvall wrote his Cromwell ode. In the 18th Century, John Dryden wrote, “Song for St. Cecelia’s Day” and “Alexander’s Feast.” In the mid 1800’s, Thomas Gray and William Collins used personification and allegory to write odes. Wordsworth wrote English odes, as well as Keats, and Lord Tennyson.

Villanelle

            The word “villanelle” means, “a rustic song,” or “a peasant.” It is a 19-line poem that follows a strict form consisting of five tercets (3-line stanzas) followed by one quatrain (4-line stanza). The rhyme scheme is ABA for the tercets, and ABAA for one quatrain. The first and third lines of the first tercet are repeating refrains that alternate as the last line of every tercet and are repeated as the final two lines of the last quatrain. Villanelles do use a meter, but one can use any type.

            Its use began in the 16th Century when the only rule was to use the repeating refrains. There was also the villanella, which was popular in Italy that imitated oral folk-dance tunes of the region. In the 17th Century, in Italy, the villanellas were musicals and not poetry. The villanella was known as “a peasant song.” In 1751, a rhyming dictionary of prosody was published so that by the 19th Century, the villanelle was agreed upon as a poem having a set schema.

            In the 19th Century, French poets believed the villanelle to be as antique as the triolet, rondeau, and the ballade. In 1878, Joseph Bolmier published a volume of 19-line villanellas. Poets including Oscar Wilde, Andrew Long, and E.A. Robinson wrote 19-line villanellas that cemented the 19-line rule.

            This form became popular in England, although the English thought of it as a French form of poetry. Dylan Thomas’ “Do not go gently into that good night” became a worldwide sensation and is a villanelle. In 1976, Elizabeth Bishop wrote, “One Art,” that was hailed as a post-modern villanelle. New Formalism had established itself as a literary movement at this time, and writers challenged the villanelle’s traditional rules, and thus, other hybrid forms of the villanelle were created.

Sestina

The most complex of the verse forms used by the troubadours. Composed of six stanzas of six verses, followed by an envoi of three lines, all rhymed and all decasyllabic (10 syllables per line). The same six end words occur in each stanza, but in an order that fits a shifting pattern. The final stanza, the envoi, is composed of three verses with two repeating words per line.

History of the Sestina

Arnaut Daniel is said to have created the Sestina (1180-95). It became popular in Italy with Danta and his contemporaries, in Spain, and in Portugal. In the 17th Century, it became popular in Germany where poets experimented with it. In the 19th Century it became popular again. In the 20th and 21st Centuries it has become popularized by American poets, too. This is because the Sestina allows aspiring poets to practice their skill with a challenging poetic form. It is still being used in universities in America.

The Rondeau-History

Originally a 15th Century French poetic form, the Rondeau was a term for all rounds that could be danced to with a singer. A lead singer would sing the verses, and a chorus of dancers would sing the repeating chorus. By the 16th Century, the Rondeau had replaced all other poetic forms, then disappeared, but resurfaced again in the 17th Century. In the 19th Century it was revived when poet Banville experimented with its form, as did poets in the 19th and 20th Centuries. In England, the Rondeau was not popular until the 19th Century due to Banville’s poetry. German poets took to the form in the 19th Century as well. Canadian poet McCrae’s “In Flanders’s Fields” (1915) was the most popular Rondeau which commemorated the first world war.

The poem is composed of two rhymes, with 8 or 10 syllables, and the first word or phrase of that first line is used as a repeating line called the “rentrenment” which is a word derived from the Middle Ages. It usually did not rhyme. If the repeating line is curtailed in any poetry, the term “rentrenment” can be applied. Traditional length was 12 or 15 versus, though if the rentrenments were not considered to be a verse then 10 or 13 versus in 2 or 3 stanzas. The construction would be:

The 12 line in 2 stanza Rondeau is: abbaabR, abbaR

The 12 lines in 3 stanzas Rondeau is: abba, abR, abbaR.

The 15 lines in 2 stanzas Rondeau is: aabbaaabR, aabbaR.

The 15-line Rondeau in 3 stanzas is: aabba, aabR, aabbaR.

The Rondeau Redouble

The Rondeau Redouble is a poetic form originating in the 1500’s, but it was not until the 19th Century that it was used in the form of 24 lines in six quatrains, plus the rentrenment, and built as follows:

ABAB, babA, abaB, babA, abab, babaR.

The Rondel

Like the term Rondeau, the Rondel originated from a round song with a refrain. A 13th Century poet gave five schemes for the Rondel, and one of them was later renamed the triolet. 15th Century poet’s Rondels were rigidly held to form. In the 19th Century, Banville used a 13-line scheme, while the English preferred the more sonnet-like 14-line scheme. It is formulated as two rhymes, three stanzas, and a two-line refrain that repeats either two and a half or three times:

Abba, abAB, abbaA (B).

The Triolet

A French fixed form with eight lines, two rhymes, and two refrain lines patterned thus:

ABaAabAB.

It may be split into two quatrains, or written in stanzas, although typically one strophe. The line length and meter are not fixed. In the 13th Century it was not considered a form but a variant of the Rondel.

Triolet-History

In the 16th Century the Triolet went out of fashion. In the 17th Century it was used in political advertisements in “attack triolets” which were sung to popular tunes. A Frenchman produced a collection of “Noble Triolets” that became popular. An English poet, Carey, used used the form for religious poems. In the 19th Century, French poets used it in stanza form. Thomas Hardy achieved success with this form in England. Even Americans were having success with it. By the 20th Century the triolet was used in The Saturday Evening Post, and among popular poets such as S. Plath, and D. Thomas. When New Formalism became popular, The Triolet became popular again with McPherson, Cope, and A.E. Stallings, and Marilyn Nelson authored an 8-poem Triolet sequence that was epic in nature.

Cento

The definition of “cento” is “patchwork” in Latin, which is an apt description of this ancient poetic form. Centos were written of Homer’s lines from the Iliad and the Odyssey, and Virgil’s writings in later Roman periods. During the Renaissance, Cicero’s treatise on government was compiled into a Cento in 1608. Centos are occasionally still published, as in the case of Bandeira’s “Antologia” of versus from his writing. In summary, a Centro is a collage made from other verses of poetry. Usually different lines from the same poet.

Clerihew

A clerihew is one stanza of light verse consisting of two couplets offering humorous biographic information that turns eulogies into bawdy or comical commentary on the subject, with a rhyme scheme of aabb.

Limerick

In England, the limerick was the most popular form of light verse because it was bawdy or nonsense. It got its name in the 19th Century, although it was used before that. The earliest examples are from the 13th century. It wasn’t until Edward Lear’s “A Book of Nonsense” in 1846 that the term became associated with the form recognized today. Famous authors including Lord Tennyson, and Rudyard Kipling used it.

The limerick’s form is five lines rhyming aabba. The 1, 2, and 5th lines have 3 stresses. The 3 and 4 lines have 2 stresses. The last line historically provides the punchline. It is conjectured that French veterans brought the form to Ireland to the town of Limerick in the 1700s after the French war, and that these limericks were originally nursery rhymes published as, Mother Goose’s Melodies in 1791.

Shakespearean Sonnet

In Italian, the word “sonnet” means, “a little song or sound” which describes the 14-line poem aptly. Usually, it is written in Iambic Pentameter and has the rhyme scheme of: ababcdcd ef. The final two verses are called the “volta” or “turn,” wherein the couplet states the meaning of the poem or turns it on its head. It is also divided into three quatrains followed by the couplet.

The current form of the Shakespearean Sonnet originated in the Italian court in 1205. In 1230, d ‘Arezza invented the rhyme scheme of abbaabba, which became the standard, and Dante and Petrarch popularized its usage. In the 15th and 16th Centuries, the sonnet was exported to France, Spain, Portugal, Netherlands, Poland, Germany, Scandinavia, Russia, and England. The sonnet arrived in England from Italy in 1503.

In 18th Century England, multiple poets revived the sonnet, such as Thomas Grey, and Thomas Warton. In the 19th Century, Wordsworth wrote 500 sonnets. Anna Seward and John Keats also employed the sonnet by using the Shakespearean format, as did other poets including D.G. Rosetti, Christina Rosetti, Elizabeth Barret Browning who utilized the sonnet during the Romantic period. In the 20th Century, Yeat’s “Leda and the Swan” was a sonnet that was popular.

In America, the sonnet was not used until the 18th Century when Col. David Humphreys introduced it, and then Longfellow used the Italian form to popularize it. Other famous poets such as Robert Frost and e.e. Cummings wrote sonnets. In the 20th and 21st Centuries, sonnets have been written on diverse subject matter, including free verse renditions.

Petrarchan

The term “Petrarchan” means “an imitation” of Italian poet Francesco Petrarch’s writings (1304-74). He wrote a form of troubadour poetry, and Dante followed him. Features of the classic Petrarchan sonnet include descriptions of the beloved’s physical beauty, wordplay, paradoxes, and oxymorons. The theme was unrequited love, and alternations between desire and abstinence. Both amateur writers and professional poets popularized this form of the sonnet, but professionals also used it to enlist support for their literary projects.

In the 14th and 15th Centuries, poets began borrowing Petrarch’s style (such as Chaucer), and by the 16th Century it was the dominant style in Italy, and most of Europe. It was even used during the Romantic period. Petrarchism stepped on the stage in England first in the 1520’s during the court of Henry V111 with knightly sonnets. In 1595, Sir Edmund Spenser published Petrarchal sonnets about marriage. Fifteen years later, Shakespeare published his “Sonnets” in 1609. Because of its wide acceptance and usage, Petrarch’s style of sonnet is one of the more important forms in early modern poetry.

Works Cited

The Princeton Encyclopedia of Poetry and Poetics. Greene, Roland, et al., 4th edition. Princeton University Press, 2012.

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