Shop		 Forum
More 		Submit  Join Login


Bref Double

:iconpoetic-forms:

The Bref Double

The bref double is a French form. It is similar to the sonnet, but it need not be written in iambic pentameter (it can be in tetrameter, hexameter, or any other meter you prefer). The rhyme scheme is also different from a sonnet. The bref double contains three quatrains (four-line stanzas) followed by a final couplet.

a/x/b/c
x/a/x/c
a/x/a/b
a/b

The x standing for a line that doesn’t rhyme with any of the other lines.

An example:


Road Closed...

With crystal rain, the sky is filled
with diamond flakes that swirl and dance
to tunes that they alone may know,
unheeded by the ears of man.

The northern winds play havoc with
mere mortal plans, as drifts now build
their buttresses of pristine white
as if to mark some hidden plan.

This land is decorated, chilled,
and sealed for all to gaze with joy;
see all the children laugh, so thrilled
to witness Mother Nature’s show!

Though my intent lies thwarted, killed,
my smile grows broad at so much snow!

Copyright soulsease 2003


Sources: www.geocities.com/soulsease1/f… and elfwood.lysator.liu.se/farp/th…
:iconpoetic-forms:

Bref Double by poetic-forms

Watch
/ / / ©2004-2018 poetic-forms
The bref double poem, compiled by
Add a Comment:
 
Preview   Submit Comment
:icontoctictoctic:
TocTicTocTic Featured By Owner Mar 22, 2009
What makes a Bref Double not a sonnet?
Reply
:iconvampirexxxwitch:
vampirexXxwitch Featured By Owner Mar 31, 2009  Student Traditional Artist
The rhyme scheme of the sonnet is different, and so is the metre.
Reply
:icontoctictoctic:
TocTicTocTic Featured By Owner Mar 31, 2009
I'll keep that in mind. Thank you!
Reply
:iconformfreak:
FormFreak Featured By Owner Aug 14, 2006
Great site! However, your definition of the Bref Double is a bit off! Check out [link] for an excellent definition, which I've also confirmed in standard printed texts on poetry forms.

Here's what it says:

It is composed of three quatrains and a couplet, all isosyllabic. It has three rhymes: a, b, and c. It has five lines (x) that are not part of the rhyme scheme. The c rhyme ends each quatrain (here's where it differ, importantly, from what's posted here). The a and b rhymes are found each somewhere within the three quatrains and once in the couplet. Each of the rhymes only occurs three times.

Thus, possible combinations could be:

a/x/a/c
b/x/b/c
x/x/x/c
a/b

or

a/x/x/c
b/x/x/c
a/b/x/c
b/a

etc.

However, a/x/b/c x/a/x/c a/x/a/b a/b, which is commonly cited, will not work as the third c rhyme is not used and b ends the third quatrain. the a rhymes also occurs 4 times.

I think that someone made an initial error online with the form some time ago and it's simply been propagated ever since.

While you've created a form that’s cool and many seem to like, it is not a traditional Bref Double!
Reply
:iconinallgoodtime:
Inallgoodtime Featured By Owner Oct 6, 2005
err... *poetic-forms :)
Reply
:iconjeffhoppdotnet:
jeffhoppdotnet Featured By Owner Sep 26, 2005  Professional Traditional Artist
this is interesting. I used to, and still do, get alot of ideas for song lyrics....the concepts I think are pretty good, but when I write them using poetic verse, there always seems something not correct. The meter is wrong or I am breaking some rule that I am not aware of. I would like to learn more about different types of structures....if you have any examples of other forms I would like to see them.
Reply
:iconinallgoodtime:
Inallgoodtime Featured By Owner Oct 6, 2005
there's a link to a crap-load of forms on the front page of :devpoeticforms: it's in the journal somewhere. At least it was last time I looked. It's pretty handy.
Reply
:iconjeffhoppdotnet:
jeffhoppdotnet Featured By Owner Oct 6, 2005  Professional Traditional Artist
thanks....i will look.
Reply
:iconifrozenspiriti:
IfrozenspiritI Featured By Owner Jan 28, 2005
Cool, I'm excited to give this a try... :)
Reply
:iconacauseremains:
ACauseRemains Featured By Owner Dec 8, 2004
I haven't yet thanked anyone for giving the descriptions of the forms....
so...

Thank you.
Reply
:iconjaxom:
Jaxom Featured By Owner Sep 20, 2004
groovy, you mind if i do one of these and copy your explination of what it is?
Reply
:iconpoetic-forms:
poetic-forms Featured By Owner Sep 20, 2004   Writer
No, not at all, just give poetic-forms the credit for the write-up.
Reply
:iconrebeccaa:
RebeccaA Featured By Owner Sep 18, 2004
So typically French
Reply
:iconatrocity-of-life:
Atrocity-of-life Featured By Owner Sep 9, 2004
Very nice example. Maybe I'll try this in french if I ever feel adventurous.
Reply
:iconezo:
ezo Featured By Owner Sep 9, 2004  Hobbyist Artisan Crafter
Wow! I really like this one. The rhyme scheme is so subtle.
Reply
:icondarkcrescendo:
darkcrescendo Featured By Owner Sep 7, 2004  Hobbyist Writer
An interesting structure. I shall have to try this one sometime.

Benedictions!
Reply
Add a Comment:
 
Preview   Submit Comment
×

:iconpoetic-forms: More from poetic-forms

ClerihewThe Clerihew is a form of comic verse invented by Edmund Clerihew Bentley, and championed by his friend, the novelist Gilbert Keith Chesterton. It consists of four lines of irregular length, rhymed AABB, or two uneven couplets, if you prefer to think of it that way.
Clerihews are almost always biographical, and the first line usually consists solely of the subject's name, perhaps the most famous example being:
    Sir Christopher Wren
    Said, "I am going to dine with some men.
    If anyone calls,
    Say I am designing St Paul's."
    (Bentley)
They may also be about a non-human subject:
    The art of Biography
    Is different from Geography,
    Geography is about maps,
    But Biography is about chaps.
    (Bentley)
  
Or, indeed, about a fictional ch
Sapphic Verse
Sapphic Verse
Made famous by the greek poetess Sappho of Lesbos, c 600 BC - the Sapphic stanza is a metric poetic form spanning 4 lines.
The form has 3 hendecasyllabic lines - Each consisting of the following metric feet: trochee, trochee, dactyl, trochee, trochee
The fourth, concluding line has a Dactyl followed by a Trochee - this last line is known as the Adonic or Adonean line.
A brief note on the metric feet used in Sapphic Verse -
A Trochee is a two syllable foot, which follows a 'DAH-dah' rhythm
e.g 'TRO-chee'
A Dactyl is a three syllable foot, which follows a 'DAH-dah-dah' rhythm
e.g 'DAC-tyll-ic'
An example:
'Sapphics' by Algernon Charles Swinburne
Saw the white implacable Aphrodite,
Saw the hair unbound and the feet unsandalled
Shine as fire of sunset on western waters;
Saw the reluctant. . .
to show the metric pattern -
SAW the / WHITE im- / PLACable / APHro- / DIte
SAW the / HAIR un- / BOUND and the / FEET un- / SANDalled
SHINE as / FIRE of / SUNset on / WESTe
The Ghazal
The Ghazal is an adaptation of a Persian form of poetry used to honor emperors and noblemen. A part of this poem broke off and evolved into the Ghazal. It is not a very commonly used English form as it was introduced only recently.
The Ghazal is a string of 5-15 couplets, with each couplet being able to stand alone as a complete thought and/or poem. At the end of the second line of every couplet is a 1-3 word long refrain. The word before the refrain is a rhyme that carries through the entire poem. A rhyming scheme would look like that: AA, BA, CA, DA, and so on.
The first and last couplets are special. In the first couplet, called matla, the rhyme is used in both lines. Often in the last couplet, the author's penname is used. The last couplet is the most personal one of the poem, and expresses something from the author's point of view.
Here is a Ghazal by Erin A. Thomas.
Left Barren
Once bright homes in blossom, now dead fallen,
They lay by the spinning blade's head fallen.
Palindromes
Sotades invented palindromes in Greek-ruled Egypt, back in the 3rd century BC. In fact, palindromes were once known as "Sotadic verses." He was thrown into the sea (wrapped in lead) by King Ptolemy II, for insulting the king in one of his verses.
They were quite popular in the 1800's, but have not shared much popularity since around the 1930's.
Palindrome comes from the Greek words "palin" (again or back) and "dramein" (to run). So if you read that backwards, it translates loosely into "to run back."
The palindrome simply reads the same forwards and backwards, usually with a central focal point from where it begins to read backwards. There are several ways to write palindrome poems, three are presented here, along with examples.
1. It can be read backwards, with the same words, such as the example below.
Example:
Love/Hate Relationship
by Paula Brown
Love
Mimics hate:
Passionate always, forging forward.
Unquiet rage screams
Poetry.
Tangled mercilessly;
Emotion
—mirrors—
Emotion,
Ottava Rima
Ottava Rima is an eight-line form, originally Italian, having either eleven syllables per line or a line of iambic pentameter—the commonly accepted English use of the form being iambic pentameter.
The rhyme scheme is A-B-A-B-A-B-C-C, which is a moderately rigorous rhyme scheme.  This makes ottava rima an excellent stepping-stone toward writing sonnets.
The earliest known use of ottava rima is in the works of Giovanni Boccaccio, who wrote several minor poems in the form and then used it as a stanza form in several of his longer works.  This act propelled ottava rima to the primary form for epic poetry in Italy for roughly two centuries.
Ottava rima is relatively unpopular in English literature ;  several works have been produced by Romantic poets such as Shelly and Lord Byron.
We shall leave you to your writing after an example from Don Juan by Lord Byron :
    "Go, little book, from this my solitude!
   &
Terza Rima
The terza rima is a traditional poetic form whose most renowned offspring is Dante's 'The Divine Comedy' (ca. 1300).
Obviously it wasn't first written in English, but it works just as well and is very pleasant in my opinion, especially when it's read aloud/performed.
The form is best written in iambic pentameter:
The sheep was killed by wings of fire and ice;
(the SHEEP | was KILLED | by WINGS | of FIRE | and ICE)
And yes, I know that example is horrible, but it gets the point across
The rhyming scheme is as follows:
a-b-a, b-c-b, c-d-c, d-e-d, e-e
Here is an example from Shelley's 'Ode to the West Wind':
O wild West Wing, thou breath of Autumn's being, (a)
Thou, from whose unseen presence the leaves dead (b)
Are driven, like ghosts from an enchanter fleeing, (a)
Yellow, and black, and pale, and hectic red, (b)
Pestilence stricken multitudes: O thou (c)
Who chariotest to their dark wintry bed (b)
The winged seeds, where they lie cold and low
Rondel, Rondel Prime
* A note: In my studies of these forms (Rondeau, Rondel, Rondelet, Roundel, Rondine, etc) it becomes increasingly clear that there is little accurate information. To the best of my knowledge, this is accurate although I had to wade through acres of mislabeled works and forms to accumulate this much. Keep in mind that most definitions of these forms are rather broad and ambiguous due to the fact most people think the forms are all interchangeable or there is only one or two forms for all these different names. The truth, as I have discovered it, is rather drastically different.
Rondel:
          The Rondel is a French style of lyrical poetry that is made up of two quatrains followed by a quintet. This gives us a total of 13 lines (that can be of any length) to contain the two rhymes that follow a scheme of: ABba abAB abbaA where A and B are the refrains.
          The following is an exam
The Rictameter
A rictameter is an interesting, and visually beautiful type of poem. When centered, it looks much like a diamond. It is similar in idea to a haiku as far as the spirit of the poem, but seems to be an evolution of a cinquain.
To form a rictameter, you start with a line of two syllables, then consecutively increase each syllable number in the next lines by two, until you reach ten syllables in the fifth line. Then, you start decreasing by two syllables, until you reach the same two syllable line you started with.
The syllables would look something like this per line: 2,4,6,8,10,8,6,4,2.
If you wish to experiment with a rictameter, there are a number of ways to do so, one of which, the simplest, is to not use the same 2 syllable word from line one in line nine. There are also "double rictameters" which is basically one poem, of two rictameters in a row, which again is very visually expressive. There is also the inverted rictameter, in which you start with a ten syllable line, go down to a
The Glosa
The glosa is an early Renaissance form that was developed by poets of the Spanish court in the 14th and 15th centuries. In a glosa, tribute is paid to another poet. The opening quatrain, called a cabeza, is by another poet, and each of their four lines are imbedded elsewhere in the glosa.
The opening quatrain is followed by four stanzas, each of which is generally ten lines long, that elaborate or "glosses" on the cabeza chosen. Each ending line (10th line) of the four following stanzas is taken from the cabeza.
The usual rhyme scheme of a glosa is final word rhyming of the 6th, 9th and the borrowed 10th lines.
Example
Irish Pride and Prejudice
(Glosa verse by Darren Anderson)
In the deserts of the heart
Let the healing fountain start,
In the prison of his days
Teach the free man how to praise.
W.H. Auden
In memory of W.B. Yeats
A putrid scene of civil conflict
returns without regret,
festering in dead hearts,
lacking the fortitude to forgive.
Waiting, we long for
View Gallery

Featured in Collections

Writing Tips N Tutorials by Leopold002

Pantoums
The pantoum, or pantun, is a form originating in Malaysia which was brought to the French language by Ernest Fouinet (not Victor Hugo, contrary to popular belief). It was popularized by Victor Hugo and later Charles Beaudlaire. In a pantoum, the lines are interlocking and the first line is identical to the last line, which gives the poem a static or a cyclical feeling.
A pantoum has no set meter, but many use iambic tetrameter in the style of a ballad. The poem is comprised of any number of quatrains rhyming ABAB. Personally, I enjoy those which rhyme ABAB-BABA-ABAB and so on with only two sets of rhymes, but that is not required of a pantoum. The main ingredient in this intriguing and haunting form is the repetition.
The main element of a pantoum is the fact that the second and fourth lines of a stanza become the first and third lines of the next stanza respectively. Illustrated with letters representing the line, the structure is ABCD/BEDF/EGFH and so on. In the last stanza, s
The Conachlonn
The conachlann is a simple bardic form of chain verse. The last word of one line, starts as the first word of the next line. You have a bit of slight leeway, as you will see in the examples. This is a medieval Irish poetic form.
Amergin's invocation of Ireland is a very famous conachlann.
Ailim iath n-erend
Ermac muir motach
Motach sliab sreatach
Sreatach coill ciotach
Ciotach ab eascach
Easach loc lindmar
Lindmar tor tiopra
Tiopra tuath aenach
Aenach righ teamra
Teamair tor tuatach
Tuata mac milead
Mile long libearn
Libearn ard Ere
Ere ard diclass
Eber dond digbas
Diceadal ro gaet
Ro gaet ban breissi
Breissi ban buaich
[Be nadbail heriu]
Herimon or tus [hir]
hir Eber ailseas
Ailim iath n-erend
(The poem translated, translator was unattributed on the web)
I invoke the land of Eire:  
much coursed by the fertile sea.  
Fertile is the fruit-strewn mountain  
fruit strewn by the showery wood showery is the river of waterfalls  
of waterfa
The Ballade and Chant Royale
The Ballade
The ballade is one of the fixed forms that became so popular in France in the 14th century. The name derives from the Old Provençal ballada, a song sung while dancing. One of the first poets given credit for perfecting the style and popularizing the form is Guillaume de Machaut.
The poem consists of three stanzas of eight lines each, followed by an envoy of four lines. Each stanza uses the same fourth, and last line, and these are also respectively, the second, and last line of the envoy. The form ends up looking like this.
a-b-a-B-b-c-b-C
a-b-a-B-b-c-b-C
a-b-a-B-b-c-b-C
b-B-c-C
One thing that makes this form a bit more challenging, is that the stanzas all share the same rhyme. By this I mean that throughout the poem, ALL of the a\'s rhyme, and All of the b\'s, and all of the C\'s. As for meter, ballades can come in any meter, as long as it\'s consistant throughout the poem.
Ballades are suited to a wide range of subjects. The repeated lines make it a good form for a

Helpful Guides by LitterBugs

Rannaicheacht Ghairid
Irish Poetry -- Background and Information
The bard's spoken language lent itself to the natural rhythm and rhyme, and  alliteration, consonance and repetition were very important to the Irish poet.  Until the 5th Century, the only written form of Irish was Ogham, used only for carving into trees and gravestones. Therefore, poetry was oral, and based on sound structures so they would be easy to remember. When crafting medieval Irish poetry, remember that it is cyclical and the last line should end with the first syllable word or the complete line or thought, bringing it around again to the beginning.
Praise poetry was commonly practiced by the poets and there were various meters used, such as dán díreach ("straight or strict verse"). Poems were often sung to musical accompaniment. Some thought the bards had supernatural powers that came with their words. Satire, not to be confused with the modern form of satirical humor, was a poetic practice greatly feared. It was used to ridic
The Triolet
Triolet- Write-Up
History:
The triolet (pronounced as tree-oh-lay) is one of the many fixed forms of verses we have today. It was invented in medieval France, and has been preserved through modern literature.
Back in the medieval ages, the triolets were short witty poems that had a ten-syllable meter to it. It was perhaps due to the lightness of this structure that the triolet was often used to express humour, although it has been said that some of the first English triolets were of spiritual content.
Form:
A triolet is a French verse of eight lines and two rhymes. Out of these eight lines, five of them are repeated or refrained lines. In the following illustration, these five lines are represented by the alphabet A/a:
A – first line of the poem
B – second line of the poem
a – rhymes with the first line
A – identical to the first line
a – rhymes with the first line
b – rhymes with the second line
A – identical to the first line
B – identical to the second line
Thus, it is
The Acrostic
An acrostic poem is created by arranging the first letter of each line so that they flow in alphabetical order, or form a word or phrase. Rhyme and meter aren't issues in this style of poetry, which causes some to consider it not poetry at all. Also, the only set length is that of what you choose to represent with the first letters. However, it's been around for thousands of years. This style was common among the Greeks and derived from the Greek words akros, "at the end," and stichos, "line". It was used by Latin playwrights and Medieval monks; it was popular in the Middle High German and Italian renaissance periods. If it please ya, learn more from the links below.
An example:
Mounting the sky, higher and higher;
Oblivious to we who dwell below;
Only she feels the warmth of the sun
Now that he has set.
The subject of this poem is the "moon", as indicated by the bolded letters.
Links:
http://humanities.byu.edu/rhetoric/Figures/A/acrostic.htm
http://members.fortunecity.com/mrk/help/acr

Poetry Guides by CRLiterature

Sestinas
The word \"sestina\" comes from the Italian sesto, or six. The sestina is originally a French form, and a very old one, originating in the twelfth century in the work of Arnaut Daniel, a troubadour. It\'s lyrical and relies on the repetition of six key words and does not normally rhyme. The sestina\'s length lends itself to poems that tell stories or otherwise travel thematically, and its final stanza makes for a strong conclusion.
The form has six sextets and a final tercet. Many sestinas are in iambic pentameter, but it is not necessary; but whatever meter is chosen is usually maintained throughout a single poem--so a sestina might be in pentameter or quadramater, but not generally both.
So far, of course, it sounds simple enough; but in fact the sestina is possibly the single most difficult verse form to write, because while there is no rhyme pattern, there are six words used to end the lines of each stanza, and repeated in a carefully proscribed order until the final tercet. Essent
The Tetractys
The tetractys, made famous by Pythagoras, has become a modern poetry form. Ten was thought to be a number of power, and by having the lines leading up to the last line equal ten, it seemed logical for the creator of the tetractys poetry form to name it such.
A tetractys has in total, five lines. The syllables are as follows:
First Line - 1 syllable
Second Line - 2 syllables
Third Line - 3 syllables
Fourth Line - 4  syllables
Fifth Line - 10 syllables
In any formatting, it gives a triangle shape. It can be reversed, starting with the ten lines, and moving downwards for a "reversed tetractys." There are also what is called "double tetractys" in which two you have a tetractys followed immediately by a second tetractys. A normal tetractys followed by a reversed tetractys would give you a diamond shape.
There is no set rhyme scheme for a tetractys, you can choose to rhyme or not. Here are two examples from Ray Stebbing, who credits himself with coming up with this form:
Bulk
teete
A Guide to Visual Poetry"Concrete poetry is poetry in which the typographical arrangement of words is as important in conveying the intended effect as the conventional elements of the poem..." ~Wikipedia
Visual poetry, also known as concrete poetry, is fun to write because you have colors, textures, and words all at your power to manipulate. You've probably seen visual poetry before, where a poem is written in the shape of what it describes, like "Pyramids":
                    A
               glimmer
         of hope through
      the heat, that simple
  materials in simple shapes
can stand as skyscrapers fall.
It's a start, but as a visual poet you've got way more power than this.
Font - Finally, after years of 9 pt. Arial (or whatever it is th
View More

More from DeviantArt

The SonnetThe Sonnet
A sonnet is a fourteen-line lyric poem, with a rhyme scheme that is more or less fixed. Normally sonnets are written in iambic pentameter verse, and the thought pattern follows the structure very closely.
The Italian or Petrarchan Sonnet
In the 14th century, Petrarch, an Italian poet, made sonnet form famous by writing a series of love sonnets. The Italian sonnet consists of an octave or octet (eight lines) which describes the subject or introduces a problem, and a sestet (six lines) which comments on or resolves it. The octave consists of 2 quatrains, each rhyming abba. The sestet consists of two tercets, which rhyme in various ways: cde cde, or cdc dcd, for example. The final tercet normally makes a climactic statement.
The Shakespearean, Elizabethan, or English Sonnet
These sonnets consist of three quatrains with independent rhymes, and a concluding rhyming couplet: abab cdcd efef gg. The quatrains may provide 3 examples of a theme or 3 approaches to a problem, or the fir
How to Write Villanelles           Villanelles can be quite discouraging; they look simple but are actually quite difficult. However, when mastered, it becomes “technically easy” according to Conrad Geller.  Just like riding a bike, right?  The name Villanelle is derived from the Italian villa, or country house, which is where aristocrats went to “refresh” themselves.  Strangely enough, the form is originally French and only appeared in the English language in the lat 1800s (19th century).  Out of the 19 lines in a Villanelle, only two rhymes are used.  Furthermore, two lines repeat throughout the poem; usually the first and last lines of the first stanza are repeated interchangeably throughout the second, third, fourth, and fifth stanzas (starting with the first line of the first stanza) until the last stanza where both are repeated in the same stanza.
     
How to Create Visual Poetry        “Concrete poetry, also known as Visual Poetry and shape poetry, is a type of poetry in which the arrangement and overall look of the words is just as important at conveying the effect/message as the words and rhymes in poetry do themselves.” 1
        Created in Brazil by Max Bill and Öyving Fahlström – two Eupoean artists - Concrete poetry and “its early methods were described in the Brazilian group Noigandres' manifesto "Pilot Plan for Concrete Poetry."(2)  It is during this period that Concrete Poetry was intended to be abstract and not allude to any specific piece of poetry or identifiable shape.  When the 1960’s came to the forefront of everyone’s mind, concrete poetry became less abstract and was adopted by poets as a specific form rather than simply a combination of literature and visual art.  A few early pioneers of the vi
Haiku exercise for beginnersThe haiku is about one moment, an instant in life captured. Where the poem is a painting, the haiku is a photograph showing the single comparison or eccentricity that makes nature so wonderful.
The advantage the haijin has over the photographer is that he is not restricted to showing, but can also let the reader hear and feel the image. Some haiku make comparisons from different times of the day or year, combining this into a single image. Where the photographer has a myriad of colour to work with the haiku poet can draw from a palette of, at the last count 450,000 words.
The strict form of the haiku may cause some people to baulk at them. Many beginners and young poets may well think: OMG! 5-7-5! Haiku are so hard! Well, if you subtract the five-seven-five format, and add a vivid imagination things suddenly become easier. The 5-7-5 form is not necessary to produce a haiku in a true minimalist spririt.
Minimalism dictates that you focus on one single image and allows you to make
A word about haiku - MS JamesA word about haiku - by Michael James
I believe there are a few basic precepts about haiku that are largely overlooked, or just flat out just not taught in most basic literary (poetic) courses. Everyone seems to know that a haiku is supposed to be written in the structure of 5-7-5 syllables per line respectively, but there is much more going on than just a simple syllable constraint. I shall attempt to give a brief overview of the main points about haiku.
First off, the 5-7-5 syllable structure most often cited as being the sole 'structural rule' of haiku is based on the original Japanese constraint. However, the Japanese language and more specifically their word structure differ from English in a critical way when it comes to the definition of this structure. In the Japanese language, each sound unit is called an onji as opposed to our syllable. This unit of measure for a word is considerable more concise than what we use to define a syllable (typically only
Lesson 2 - More MeterQUOTE OF THE DAY
"A poet who makes use of a worse word instead of a better, because the former fits the rhyme or the measure, though it weakens the sense, is like a jeweler, who cuts a diamond into a brilliant, and diminishes the weight to make it shine more."
  - Horace Walpole
While every metrical poem will have a base meter to serve as its backbone, many poets often find that writing in ten-syllable iambic sentences, for example, is too limiting for their purposes, either because pure meter doesn't provide enough variation for proper emphasis or because it quickly gets dull and tedious, or a combination of the two.
You might have noticed this limitation when you wrote your blank verse in the last lesson.  Often it occurs that there is something you want to say that simply will not work in your base meter, that you have to sound like Yoda to get your words into the proper meter, or that you feel that a different foot "feels right" in a certain place. &
Handout 1 - More on ScansionMore on Scansion
If scanning a line of verse is difficult for you, do not fret.  As the cliché goes, practice makes perfect.  In this lesson, I'll go over some of the tricks of scansion and offer some ways to more easily identify a line's meter.
Take this opening line of one of Shakespeare's most famous sonnets, titled either "Sonnet 18" or by the first line:
Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?
Your first task should be to identify polysyllabic words that can only be pronounced in one way.  "Compare" and "summer's" are two such words, an iamb and a trochee, respectively:
         ˘  /              /  ˘
Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?
Saying "COMpare" or "sumMER'S" would sound awkward, as this is not how they are pronounced in normal speech.  We have another hint in "a," which is part o
'Poeticks: On Imagery' 2 of 3
Chapter 4: Quality of imagery
4-1: Figure of Speech
We have already heard from deviantArt writers about the importance of "figure of speech" within imagery.
To make out a clearer picture of "imagery" from the writer's point of view, let us take take a closer look. You may find fyoot's Terms and Techniques a useful guide along the way, and other online resources to complement what we are about to explore. We will not go over the whole gamut of writing techniques here for that is not the main purpose, but here, let us look at how a variety of figure of speech may be used in a single piece of poetry.
We will dissect T.S. Eliot's "The Love Song for J. Alfred Prufrock" solely from a figure-of-speech point of view. For those who have not read it, we prefer that you peruse it once through before continuing this section. http://www.bartleby.com/198/1.html
What we would like readers to note is a) how figures of speec
Show and TellShow and Tell
The idea behind what constitutes 'telling' is probably the most often confused by critics who are new to poetry.
The general notion of it has been around for centuries in all types of literature, but the approach to it was tightened considerably in the 1920s by those of the Modernist school of thought – most notably TE Hulme, HD and Ezra Pound who adapted many tenets of the French school of Symbolism into Imagism.
This leaves us with the current poetic climate, which shuns the idea of a pseudo-poet narrator (as favoured in lyrical poetry – Shelley's Ode to the West Wind, for example) in favour of less intrusive accounts.
The guidelines that it encourages are pretty logical, and mostly just serve to crystallize a critical paradigm present long before it was given this name. It's simply a matter of narrative viewpoint.
If I say 'The man is sad' I am intruding upon the narrative with my own opinion.
If I say 'The man is crying' then the reader makes up their own mind
Browse More Like This · Shop Similar Prints

Featured in Groups

Not currently featured in any groups.

Details

Submitted on
September 7, 2004
File Size
1.5 KB
Link
Thumb

Stats

Views
7,307
Favourites
8 (who?)
Comments
16