English 1f95

E.E. Cummings (1923) poem 1(a normal in terms of contemporary poetics (these days)
Cummings puts line breaks where line breaks don’t belong
Disruptive visual means in terms of breaking up the letters of the poem
(a leaf falls) loneliness the title has a 1 and the first line has an “l” … looks the same, the web of connotation goes beyond the meaning of the words and connects to visual means a (visual pun) in the word loneliness, you have l then one then l (when you’re lonely, you are by yourself and he tried to exaggerate that by using 1 and l) there are 3 one’s in the word loneliness and Cumming’s makes you realize that narrative poetry tells a story lyric poetry expresses moods, feelings, moments
Donald Hall:
“Yeats said that he finished poem made a sound like the click of the lid on a perfectly made box [[…] The rhymes and line lengths of the sonnet are too gross o contribute greatly to that sense of resolution. The click is our sense of lyric form”
“the sonnet is too gross” = denotative level of gross = too much, form may have connotations on its own by the form, you can discover some of the choices author’s have made for their poem

Form
Form: structure or shape, the way its parts fit together to form a whole
Poetic Form: the design of a poem described in terms of rhyme, metre, line length, and stanzaic patter
Closed Form: regular patterns, eg. Epics, ballads, villanelle, sestina, Petrarchan sonnet, terza rima, rondelle, haiku (dr seuss)
Open Form: irregular patterns, eg. Free verse (vers libre), prose poems (Cummings poem)
“Despite what its name suggests, closed form poetry does not have to be confining or conservative.” (760) closed forms give the impression of being old fashioned and dull let us choose how we use the form wisely, and let us not feel restriceted by the form if we must be constrained, and let us use that form in constraint to use and create poetry if its dull, you’re not doing it properly, not grabbing hold of the muse in that constraint very few poets write in closed form now when a poet makes this choice, it adds a certain meaning to their work when a poet in the 21st century makes a closed form poet, they are standing up and saying “I am willing to go there!” hundred years ago poet could write a bok about free verse, people would think he was crazy if you’re not writing in a way that people will understand, they won’t there is no poem without form

Aspects of Form Blank Verse: unrhymed poetry with each line written in a set of five stressed and five unstressed syllables (ie. Iambic pentameter)
Stanza: a group of two or more lines with the same metrical pattern separated by blank space from other groups of lines
Strophe: a group of two or more lines without the same pattern

Aspects of Stanzas
Couplet: two rhyming line with similar length and metre
Heroic couplet: two rhyming lines of iambic pentameter with a weak pause at the end of the first line (comma, semi-colon, hyphen) followed by a strong pause after the second (full-stop)
Tercet: 3 line stanza with similar line length
Quatrain: 4 line stanza with similar line length and a set rhyme scheme. The Ballad Stanza alternates lines of 8 and 6 syllables

Shakespeare vs. Petrarch
Shakespearean Sonnet: 14 lines divided into 3 quatrains and a concluding couplet (abab cdcd efef gg) all written in iambic pentameter
Petrarchan Sonnet: 14 lines divided into divided into an octave and a sestet (abba abba cde cde) all written in iambic pentameter (8 lines to the problem, 6 lines to the answer)
Who chooses between these lines makes a very specific choice
Francesco Petrarchan was an ancient Italian poet
Shakespeares poem are devoted to telling a problem (12/14) lines, constantly complaining
(p 763)