puts on teacher hat
Clarification on some verse forms.
I’m remembering this from my undergraduate years, so I may be a bit vague. Still, a check of wikipedia seems to confirm what I recall.
The wikipedia article on the sonnet form is quite good actually and covers all the bases. A sonnet (sometimes called “Italian sonnet” since it originated in that language and country) is a pretty strict form for poetry. There are variations, particularly in the rhyming scheme, but it always consists of exactly 14 lines and almost always uses Iambic pentameter. That is, five metric stresses per line, and each of those five “feet” contains just two syllables with the accent on the second. Variations allow different rhyming schemes, and many sonneteers do insert an odd anapest or trochee occasionally.
Nordic/Anglo-Saxon/Teutonic alliterative verse is quite different from most of the poetry we had to read when we were in school. The classic example in English literature is the epic poem Beowulf.
Alliterative verse does not use rhyming lines, nor does it use the metrical conventions of the classical period or Romance languages, the iambs, trochees, anapests, and so forth that we had to count out and mark up back in junior high school. (Probably all that is one of the things that made so many people “hate” poetry.)
Anyway, the common alliterative form uses alliteration (that is, the beginning sounds of certain stressed syllables are supposed to match according to specific rules) and stresses. Typically there are four stresses per line (also called “lifts”,) but any number of syllables. The alliterated syllables should begin with the same sound. (Initial vowels or glottal stops and sometimes “H” are all considered to match each other. Near matches, such as “V” with “B” or “D” with “T” are sometimes used but you can “lose points” for that.)
Each line is divided into two “verses” with a pause or caesura between them. These are also sometimes called “half lines.” The first stress in each half line must alliterate with the same stress in the other half line of the same line of poetry. The second stress in the first half line may optionally alliterate with those as well, but this is not required. The final stress of the second half line (or full line) does not do so, but may alliterate with the first stress of the next line.
All this sounds more complicated than it really is. The form allows fairly easy flow of ordinary text, with some changes in word order to match the needed alliteration or stress pattern.
“Procyon Prowling” above keeps to the Beowulf form for the most part. It isn’t a sonnet, because it is too many lines, and has too few stresses per line even if we allow for omitting the rhymes as some sonnet writers have done.
Good examples of the sonnet in English are not hard to find. Shakespeare wrote many, as did his contemporaries and near contemporaries like John Donne. More modern sonnets are found especially in 19th century poetry, and one of my favorites from that time is Gerard Manley Hopkins. Hopkins played fast and loose with the form but did make it work.
And that’s the end of today’s lecture. Questions or corrections allowed.
teacher hat removed
