Poetry: Closed and Open Form

This is Unit Eight of Analyzing and Interpreting Literature, part one of two: closed form and open form, the third of the three poetry approaches. Unit seven closed by saying that where a figure sits inside a form is part of its meaning. Here is this unit's governing idea, and it pays off on McKay: a poem's form is a set of counts, lines, beats to a line, and a rhyme pattern, and all three can be measured from the page without knowing the poem. That makes form questions the most reliably winnable items on the paper for a candidate who measures before reading. We start with the two families, closed and open, and the anchor's own term for the first, regular verse. Then six fixed forms from the glossary, with the anchor's chosen poem for each, quoted where it is public domain and named where it is not. Then blank verse, closed in metre and open in rhyme, and the refrain. Then McKay's Harlem Shadows, whose refrain enacts walking and whose eighteen lines settle a sonnet guess in seconds. Last, open form: free verse defined by what it lacks, and what organises it instead. By the end you will be able to treat form as three counts. To identify six fixed forms by count or by occasion. To place blank verse between the families. To read a refrain as argument and count McKay out of the sonnet. And to say what organises a poem with no metre.

Four entries to start: form as three counts, the two families and the glossary's term for the first, and what a fixed form demands of a poet and gives back to a reader.

Three counts identify most forms.

AIL 0701 Form as a Measurable Thing

A poem's form is a set of counts: lines, beats to a line, and a rhyme pattern. All three can be measured from the page without knowing the poem. That makes form questions the most reliably winnable items on the paper for a prepared candidate, because measurement does not need recall.

Pattern inherited, or pattern invented.

AIL 0702 Closed Form and Open Form

A closed form follows a pattern set before the poem began. An open form invents its own shape as it goes. The glossary has no headword for either phrase; its term for the first family is regular verse, which it uses inside its rhyme-scheme definition, so the anchor says regular verse instead.

The requirements come first.

AIL 0703 What a Closed Form Demands

A fixed form arrives with requirements the poet did not choose: so many lines, in such a metre, rhyming thus. Meeting them constrains what can be said. The constraint is the point, and an exam question may ask what a form's difficulty contributed to the poem; the constraint is the poem's material.

Expectation becomes an instrument.

AIL 0704 What a Closed Form Gives Back

A reader who knows the form knows what is coming and can feel a departure. Expectation becomes an instrument the poet can satisfy or frustrate. That is why a broken pattern in a regular poem carries weight a free-verse line cannot carry, since a break only registers against a pattern.

Ten entries on the fixed forms: the sonnet and the anchor's Browning, the villanelle and what its repetition does, the ballad and its stanza, the ode and Keats, the elegy, and the haiku, the one syllabic form.

Fourteen lines is the hard rule.

AIL 0705 The Sonnet as a Fixed Form

The glossary defines a sonnet as a fourteen-line regular-verse poem usually in iambic pentameter. Fourteen is the hard requirement; the metre is usual rather than obligatory. Unit nine takes the sonnet's internal argument, which is a separate matter from its outward measurements. The metre is usual, not required.

The form counts and so does the poem.

AIL 0706 The Anchor's Sonnet

The anchor sets Elizabeth Barrett Browning's poem counting the ways of love as its sonnet example, published in eighteen fifty. Counting is literally the poem's method, which makes it a useful case: the form's fourteen lines and the poem's enumeration reinforce each other. Published eighteen fifty, it is public domain.

Nineteen lines, two lines repeating.

AIL 0707 The Villanelle as a Fixed Form

The glossary defines a villanelle as nineteen lines in five tercets and a quatrain, turning on two repeated lines. Nineteen lines with heavy repetition is a signature no other form has, so the count alone identifies it. Both poems the glossary names are in copyright and are named only.

Same words, new surroundings.

AIL 0708 What a Villanelle's Repetition Does

A repeated line returns in a new context each time and changes meaning without changing words. That is the form's entire mechanism, and a question about a villanelle will usually ask about it. The reader's job is to notice what the surroundings have done to the line; ask what the return has changed.

A story in rhymed quatrains.

AIL 0709 The Ballad as a Fixed Form

The glossary defines a ballad as a narrative poem usually in quatrains rhyming A B C B. Two features identify it: the story and the alternating rhyme. The anchor's ballad chapter uses Service's poem about a cremation, published nineteen seven, and narrative is the first test to apply.

Four beats, then three, alternating.

AIL 0710 The Ballad Stanza

The common ballad stanza alternates four-beat and three-beat lines, the tetrameter and trimeter of unit six. The alternation is what makes the form singable, and it is why hymns share the shape. Count the beats across two lines rather than one to hear it, because one line alone hides the alternation.

Long, formal, reflective, no fixed count.

AIL 0711 The Ode as a Fixed Form

The glossary describes the ode as a long formal poem presenting a poet's philosophical views on subjects such as nature, art, death and human emotion. Its form is looser than the sonnet's: length and formality identify it rather than a line count, and no line count identifies an ode.

One poem, three question types.

AIL 0712 Keats and the Ode

The anchor's ode chapter uses Keats on the nightingale, published eighteen nineteen. Unit seven worked its fifth stanza for imagery. The same poem serves a form question, an imagery question and a tone question, which is the pattern this exam relies on; the exam reuses passages this way.

Identified by occasion, not by count.

AIL 0713 The Elegy as a Fixed Form

The glossary defines an elegy as a poem commemorating the death of someone significant in the poet's life. Like the ode it has no fixed measurements, so it is identified by occasion and purpose. The anchor's elegy chapter uses Housman on an athlete dying young, and purpose identifies this form.

Syllables counted, not beats.

AIL 0714 The Haiku as a Fixed Form

The glossary gives the haiku as three lines of five, seven and five syllables, presenting a single image. Its count is syllabic rather than metrical, which makes it the exception in this unit. The anchor's haiku chapter uses Knight, who is in copyright and is named only; this is the one syllabic form.

Three entries on the middle case: blank verse as closed in metre and open in rhyme, why that suited the stage, and the refrain as a requirement a form can carry.

Strict metre, no rhyme at all.

AIL 0715 Blank Verse as the Middle Case

Blank verse is unrhymed iambic pentameter: strict in metre, free of rhyme. It is closed in one respect and open in another, which is why unit six warned it against free verse. The anchor's blank-verse chapter uses Frost's Birches, published nineteen sixteen; closed in metre, open in rhyme.

Heightened talk, not song.

AIL 0716 Why Blank Verse Suited the Stage

Rhyme calls attention to line endings and makes speech sound composed. Removing it while keeping five beats produces verse that can pass for heightened talk. Shakespeare's plays run on it, which is why units thirteen and fourteen need this unit before they can work a scene; drama depends on this form.

The refrain can be the requirement.

AIL 0717 The Refrain in a Closed Form

A refrain is a line or phrase returning at intervals, usually at stanza ends. Unit six defined it, the glossary having no headword. In a fixed form the refrain is often the requirement itself, as the villanelle's two repeating lines are, and the glossary omits the term throughout.

Three entries on McKay: a refrain that enacts the walking it describes, form and subject saying one thing, and eighteen lines that settle a sonnet guess by counting.

Each stanza ends where it began.

AIL 0718 McKay's "From Street to Street"

McKay's Harlem Shadows runs to three six-line stanzas, and each one ends on the phrase from street to street. The repetition enacts the walking the poem describes. Published nineteen twenty-two, so it can be quoted, and it belongs to the exam's twentieth-century band; the repetition enacts the walking.

Shape and subject agree.

AIL 0719 Form Carrying the Argument

The poem's subject is women walking the streets without rest, and its shape returns to the same phrase without rest. Form and subject say the same thing by different means. A question asking what the structure contributes is answered by naming that agreement, and by naming it rather than a feeling.

Eighteen lines, so not a sonnet.

AIL 0720 Three Sestets

Harlem Shadows is not a sonnet, though its length invites the guess: eighteen lines in three sestets, where a sonnet needs fourteen. Counting first would settle it in seconds. This is unit six's warning in practice, that line count is the hard constraint, and here the governing idea pays off.

Five entries on open form: free verse as the glossary defines it, why that definition misleads, the four devices that organise it, Hughes's line break, and repetition that nothing compelled.

Neither rhyme nor set rhythm.

AIL 0721 Free Verse, as the Anchor Defines It

The glossary defines free verse as poetry without a set rhyme scheme or rhythm pattern. Both are absent, which distinguishes it from blank verse, where only rhyme is. The definition is stated by negation, and that is the source of the commonest misunderstanding about it; it is defined by what it lacks.

Organised, but not by metre.

AIL 0722 Free Verse Is Not Unshaped

Defining free verse by absence suggests it has no organisation. It has a great deal, only not metrical: line breaks, repetition, parallel grammar, and the length of the breath. A candidate who treats free verse as prose set in lines will miss every question about it, because it is not prose in lines.

Breaks, repetition, parallels, length.

AIL 0723 What Organises an Open Form

Four devices carry the work metre would have done: where lines break, how phrases repeat, whether grammatical structures run parallel, and how long a unit runs before it stops. Those four are what an open-form question asks about, and all four are visible on the page, none of them audible only.

Breaks where a voice would pause.

AIL 0724 Hughes and the Line Break

The anchor's free-verse chapter uses Hughes's poem about rivers, published nineteen twenty-one. Its lines run to markedly different lengths, and the breaks fall where a speaking voice would pause. Line length is doing the work a metre would otherwise do, so length replaces metre in this poem.

Nothing compelled this repetition.

AIL 0725 Repetition as Structure

Where a closed form repeats because the form requires it, an open form repeats because the poet chose to. The choice is therefore meaningful in a way a villanelle's refrain is not: nothing compelled it. Ask what a chosen repetition insists on, since chosen repetition means more, not less.

That is form as measurement, the fixed forms, the middle case, McKay, and open form, with the governing idea paid off on eighteen lines. You can treat form as three counts that need no recall, tell closed form from open and know the anchor calls the first regular verse, and say that a fixed form's constraint is its material and that a break only registers against a pattern. You can identify the sonnet by fourteen lines, the villanelle by nineteen with two lines repeating, the ballad by story and alternating rhyme with its four-then-three stanza, the ode and elegy by occasion rather than count, and the haiku by syllables. You can place blank verse as closed in metre and open in rhyme, hear why the stage runs on it, and define the refrain as a requirement. You can read McKay's from street to street as form agreeing with subject, and count eighteen lines to rule out the sonnet. And you can define free verse by what it lacks, refuse to read it as prose in lines, name breaks, repetition, parallels and length, and read Hughes's line break and chosen repetition. Part two gives the procedure.