Poetry: Structure and Argument

This is Unit Nine of Analyzing and Interpreting Literature, part one of two: poetic structure and argument, the last of the four poetry craft units. Unit eight closed by setting form outside and structure inside. Here is this unit's governing idea, and it pays off on a single word at the head of a line: form is the pattern a poem sits in, structure is the route its thinking takes through that pattern, and the exam asks about the second far more often than the first. A structural claim has to be pointable, so this unit is about finding the line where a poem's thinking moved. We begin with the four-stage shape and with theme, which the glossary defines and which decision D6 says must be attributed. Then the two sonnet types, defined from the glossary by their rhyme schemes, and what each allots a poet. Then the volta and the couplet, two terms the glossary omits. Then Sonnet twenty-nine, worked line by line to its inverted word. Last, the opening of Sonnet seventy-three, a sonnet that does not pivot at all. By the end you will be able to separate structure from form and attribute a theme. To define both sonnet types by scheme. To find a turn by its marker and weigh a couplet. To follow Sonnet twenty-nine whole. And to begin Sonnet seventy-three as accumulation.

Five entries to start: structure against form, the poem as an argument you can point at, the four-stage shape, theme as the glossary defines it, and theme kept apart from subject.

Pattern outside, thinking inside.

AIL 0801 Structure Against Form

Form is the pattern a poem sits in; structure is the route its thinking takes through that pattern. A sonnet's form is fourteen lines. Its structure is where the claim changes direction. The exam asks about the second more often than the first, so the exam favours structure questions over form.

Point at the line where it moves.

AIL 0802 A Poem as an Argument

Many short poems state a position, develop it, complicate it, and settle it. Reading for that movement gives a passage a shape you can point at. Unit one's rule holds: an answer must be pointable, and a structural claim points at the line where the movement happened; structure claims must be locatable.

Set out, elaborate, turn, close.

AIL 0803 Problem, Development, Turn, Resolution

The commonest shape in English lyric runs in four stages: a situation is set out, elaborated, then altered by a turn, then closed. Not every poem uses all four, and the stages need not be evenly sized. The shape is a reading tool rather than a rule poems obey, a tool and not a rule.

A theme is a claim, not a feature.

AIL 0804 Theme, as the Anchor Defines It

The glossary gives theme as the message or insight into human experience an author offers readers, and notes broad themes such as family, love and war. A theme is a claim about the poem, so decision D6 applies and it gets attributed rather than stated as fact; themes are attributed, not asserted.

About, against says-about.

AIL 0805 Theme Against Subject

A subject is what a poem is about; a theme is what it says about that. Sonnet seventy-three's subject is ageing and its theme is a claim about what ageing does to love. Options confusing the two are common, and the subject-level option is always the weaker of the pair.

Four entries on the two sonnet types: the Petrarchan scheme and its octave and sestet, the Shakespearean scheme with its three quatrains and a pair, and what each type makes easy for a poet.

Eight lines, then six.

AIL 0806 The Petrarchan Sonnet

The glossary defines the Petrarchan sonnet by its rhyme scheme: A B B A A B B A, then C D E C D E. The first eight lines share two rhymes and the last six introduce three new ones. That division of eight and six is the form's whole structural argument; the scheme itself makes the division.

The octave asks, the sestet answers.

AIL 0807 Octave and Sestet

The glossary defines an octave as an eight-line stanza and a sestet as six. In a Petrarchan sonnet the octave sets a problem and the sestet answers it. The rhyme scheme changes at exactly the point the thinking changes, which is why the form survived; rhyme and thought change together.

Three quatrains and a pair.

AIL 0808 The Shakespearean Sonnet

The glossary defines the Shakespearean sonnet by its scheme: A B A B C D C D E F E F, then G G. Three quatrains, each with its own rhymes, and a closing pair. Twelve lines of development, then two of summation, which is a different offer from eight and six.

The scheme allots the moves.

AIL 0809 What Each Type Makes Easy

Eight and six suits a problem with one answer. Three quatrains and a couplet suits three attempts at a thing and a verdict. The scheme is not decoration: it determines how many moves a poet has and how much room each one gets, so the count of moves follows the rhyme.

Four entries on the turn and the couplet: the volta in its standard sense, the markers that find it, the couplet the glossary never defines, and the couplet that claims more than it earned.

The turn, and where it falls.

AIL 0810 The Volta

The volta is the turn: the point where a sonnet's argument changes direction. The glossary has no headword for it, so this is the standard term and sense. In a Petrarchan sonnet it falls at line nine; in a Shakespearean one at line nine or line thirteen; the glossary omits this term.

Look for the marker first.

AIL 0811 Finding the Volta

Look for a conjunction at a line's opening: yet, but, so, and then. Look for a change of tense, or a shift from describing to addressing. The turn is nearly always marked mechanically, and looking for the marker beats reasoning about the sense; mechanical signals come before interpretation.

Two lines, and a verdict.

AIL 0812 The Couplet

A couplet is two consecutive rhyming lines, and the glossary gives it no headword despite defining the form that ends with one. In a Shakespearean sonnet the couplet delivers the verdict, and its rhyme makes it sound conclusive whether or not its argument is; it sounds conclusive regardless.

The ending can outrun the argument.

AIL 0813 When a Couplet Overreaches

Because a couplet sounds final, it can assert more than the twelve lines earned. Readers have argued that several of Shakespeare's couplets do exactly that. Noticing the gap between what a poem demonstrated and what its ending claims is a genuine reading skill and an examinable one; this reading is attributed, not settled.

Eight entries on Sonnet twenty-nine: the situation, the accumulating octave, the paradox at its bottom, yet at line nine, the lark, the octave answered term by term, the couplet's inverted word, and why this is the standard example.

The complaint reaches no one.

AIL 0814 Sonnet Twenty-Nine: The Situation

The poem opens in disgrace with fortune and men's eyes, with the speaker all alone beweeping his outcast state and troubling deaf heaven with his bootless cries. Bootless means unavailing, the shifted sense unit three trained. Heaven is deaf, so the complaint is going nowhere at all.

A chain of wishes, unresolved.

AIL 0815 The Accumulating Octave

The next lines pile up: looking on himself and cursing his fate, wishing to be like one more rich in hope, featured like him, desiring this man's art and that man's scope. The grammar is a chain of participles with no main resolution, and the syntax enacts being stuck; the grammar itself is stuck.

The bottom of the poem.

AIL 0816 "With What I Most Enjoy Contented Least"

Line eight closes the complaint on a paradox: he is least contented with what he most enjoys. Unit seven defined paradox as a seeming contradiction that resolves. Here it marks the bottom of the poem, and a turn has to follow because the position cannot develop further; a paradox marks the lowest point.

One word turns the whole poem.

AIL 0817 The Volta at Line Nine

Line nine opens with the word yet, and the poem turns on it. Yet in these thoughts himself almost despising, he happens to think on the beloved. One conjunction, placed at the head of the ninth line, is the entire structural hinge of the poem, and here the governing idea pays off.

The simile answers the complaint.

AIL 0818 The Lark

After the turn his state rises like the lark at break of day arising from sullen earth, singing hymns at heaven's gate. The simile answers the octave point for point: earth against heaven, silence against hymns, and the deaf heaven of line three now has a gate.

The same terms, reversed.

AIL 0819 Answering the Octave Term by Term

A well-made turn does not change the subject; it revisits the same terms and reverses them. Reading a volta therefore means checking which earlier words return. The exam's inference questions often rest on exactly that correspondence, and it is visible on the page; check which earlier words return.

State returns, inverted.

AIL 0820 "I Scorn to Change My State With Kings"

The couplet says that remembering the beloved's sweet love brings such wealth that he then scorns to change his state with kings. State is the poem's own word from line two, now inverted from outcast to enviable. The verdict is earned because the word was tracked from the second line.

Everything visible, nothing inferred.

AIL 0821 Why This Sonnet Is the Standard Example

One marked turn, a simile that answers the complaint, and a couplet that reverses a repeated word. Every structural feature is visible without interpretation. A candidate who can describe this poem's movement can describe most Shakespearean sonnets, because the movement is fully on the page.

Four entries that open Sonnet seventy-three: a sonnet that accumulates instead of pivoting, its first quatrain's season, the line that corrects itself twice, and the second quatrain's day.

Accumulation, not pivot.

AIL 0822 Sonnet Seventy-Three: A Different Shape

This poem has no single turn. Its three quatrains each offer a separate image for the same thing, and the couplet draws a consequence. Where Sonnet twenty-nine pivots, this one accumulates, which is the second structural pattern the exam uses; not every sonnet has a volta.

A year, and an emptied choir.

AIL 0823 The Season

The first quatrain offers that time of year when yellow leaves, or none, or few, hang upon boughs which shake against the cold, bare ruined choirs where late the sweet birds sang. The scale is a year, and the image is a church stripped of its singers; the scale here is a season.

The line corrects itself twice.

AIL 0824 "Or None, or Few"

The phrase yellow leaves, or none, or few corrects itself twice inside four words, and the order is strange: none is more extreme than few, and it comes first. The speaker is revising downward and then softening. The hesitation is the characterisation, and none precedes few, which is backwards.

A day, and a second death.

AIL 0825 The Day

The second quatrain moves to the twilight of such day as after sunset fades in the west, which black night by and by takes away, death's second self that seals up all in rest. The scale has shrunk from a year to a single day; the interval has shortened.

That is structure against form, the sonnet types, the turn and the couplet, Sonnet twenty-nine whole and seventy-three begun, with the governing idea paid off on yet. You can separate the route of a poem's thinking from the pattern it sits in, point at the line where the movement happened, use the four stages as a tool, and attribute a theme while keeping it apart from the subject. You can define the Petrarchan sonnet as eight and six and the Shakespearean as three quatrains and a pair, and say that the scheme allots the moves. You can define the volta and the couplet the glossary omits, find a turn by yet, but, so, then, and weigh a couplet that may claim more than it earned. You can follow Sonnet twenty-nine from bootless cries through the stuck octave and its paradox to yet at line nine, the lark answering the octave term by term, and state inverted from outcast to kings. And you can open Sonnet seventy-three as accumulation, with its season and its day and a line that corrects itself twice. Part two brings the fire.