Reading a Poem: Sound, Meter and Form

Part one treated the single line as evidence: its voice, its meter and its sound. This second part builds those lines into larger shapes. The unit's governing idea still holds: form is evidence, and a poem's stanza and fixed form tell you what kind of meaning to expect, from the sonnet's turn to the elegy's consolation. We move in two steps: first the stanzas and fixed forms the exam expects you to recognize on sight, from the couplet to the villanelle; then method, how to name a form by counting and hear a meter quickly, the traps that cost points, and the capstone that puts the unit back together.

Now the larger shapes: the stanzas that group lines, and the fixed forms the exam expects you to recognize on sight.

The smallest stanza is the couplet.

ENL 0023 Couplet and Heroic Couplet

A couplet is a pair of successive lines that rhyme and share a meter. A closed couplet ends both lines on a pause; an open couplet runs on. The heroic couplet is rhymed iambic pentameter, used by Chaucer and, the standard account says, perfected by Dryden and Pope. Two rhyming lines, five beats each. Heroic names the meter, not the subject.

Three- and four-line stanzas come next.

ENL 0024 Tercet, Terza Rima, Quatrain

A tercet is a three-line stanza and a quatrain a four-line one. Terza rima links tercets in a chain: the middle line of each rhymes with the first and third of the next, aba bcb cdc. It came from Italian; Shelley's "Ode to the West Wind" uses it in English. Three, four, and three-in-a-chain. Terza rima interlocks; plain tercets need not.

Then three longer stanzas with Italian and English roots.

ENL 0025 Rhyme Royal, Ottava Rima, the Spenserian Stanza

Rhyme royal is seven pentameter lines, ababbcc, brought into English by Chaucer. Ottava rima is eight, abababcc, an Italian form later used for mock-heroic, as in Byron's Don Juan. The Spenserian stanza, invented for The Faerie Queene, is nine: eight pentameters and an alexandrine, ababbcbcc. Seven, eight and nine lines. Rhyme royal's definition here rests on one source.

The sonnet arrived in English from Italy.

ENL 0026 The Petrarchan Sonnet

A sonnet is a fourteen-line poem, usually in iambic pentameter. The Petrarchan or Italian sonnet divides into an octave rhymed abbaabba and a sestet, often cdecde or cdcdcd. The octave sets out a situation; the sestet answers it. Wyatt brought the form into English. Eight lines, then six. The sestet's scheme varies; the octave's does not.

Shakespeare's form divides the fourteen lines differently.

ENL 0027 The Shakespearean Sonnet

The Shakespearean or English sonnet rhymes abab cdcd efef gg: three quatrains and a closing couplet. The quatrains develop the subject and the couplet sums it up or turns it. Shakespeare's hundred and fifty-four sonnets, published together in sixteen-oh-nine, gave the form his name. Three quatrains and a couplet. The final couplet often carries the turn.

Spenser built a third kind of sonnet.

ENL 0028 The Spenserian Sonnet and the Sonnet Sequence

The Spenserian sonnet interlocks its quatrains, abab bcbc cdcd ee, so each quatrain borrows a rhyme from the last. A sonnet sequence is a group of sonnets unified by subject, usually a speaker's unhappy love for a distant beloved, after Petrarch. Sidney, Spenser and Shakespeare all wrote sequences. Interlocked quatrains; sonnets in a series. Each sonnet in a sequence also stands alone.

Every sonnet turns somewhere.

ENL 0029 The Volta

The volta is the turn in a poem, a shift in thought or feeling. In the Petrarchan sonnet it usually comes at line nine, where the sestet begins; in the Shakespearean, often at the couplet. Find the turn and you usually find the question. Line nine, or the couplet. The word is new; the device is old.

The ballad tells a story in song.

ENL 0030 The Ballad and the Ballad Stanza

A ballad is a narrative poem, often sung, usually in quatrains rhyming abcb, with refrains and repetition. Coleridge borrowed the form: "It is an ancient Mariner, / And he stoppeth one of three." Folk ballads are anonymous and passed on orally. A story in rhymed four-line stanzas. A literary ballad imitates a folk one.

The ode is the formal lyric of praise.

ENL 0031 The Ode: Pindaric, Horatian, Irregular

An ode is a long, formal lyric that praises or reflects on its subject. The Pindaric ode, after the Greek Pindar, moves in three parts: strophe, antistrophe and epode. The Horatian ode repeats one stanza; the irregular ode varies its stanzas freely. A formal poem of praise or meditation. Keats's odes use regular stanzas of his own design.

The elegy mourns, and sometimes in shepherds' clothes.

ENL 0032 Elegy and Pastoral Elegy

An elegy is a poem of mourning or serious reflection, usually for a death. The pastoral elegy mourns through shepherds and rural landscape: it invokes the Muse, shows nature grieving, questions death, and ends in consolation. Milton's "Lycidas," Shelley's "Adonais" and Arnold's "Thyrsis" belong to it. Mourning, then consolation. The shepherds are poets in disguise.

The lyric is a single voice's feeling.

ENL 0033 Lyric, Song and Aubade

A lyric is a short poem expressing personal feeling, usually in the first person; the word comes from the Greek lyre, and early lyrics were sung. A song is a lyric written to be sung. An aubade is a dawn poem, often of lovers parting at daybreak. One voice, one feeling, often musical. Aubade means dawn, not evening.

The epic sets a high style for great subjects.

ENL 0034 Epic and Mock Epic

An epic is a long narrative poem on a serious subject in an elevated style, centred on a hero whose fate decides a people's. A mock epic applies that grand style to a trivial subject, as in Pope's Rape of the Lock. Grand style, great or trivial subject. It mocks the subject, not the epic.

One character speaks; someone silent listens.

ENL 0035 The Dramatic Monologue

A dramatic monologue is a poem spoken by one character, not the poet, to a silent listener at a critical moment. We learn what the listener does only through the speaker, who reveals his own character. Browning's "My Last Duchess" is the standard example. One speaker, one silent listener. The speaker is a character, never the poet.

Last among the forms, the villanelle repeats itself.

ENL 0036 Villanelle and Other Fixed Forms

A villanelle is nineteen lines: five tercets and a quatrain, on two rhymes, with two refrains. The first and third lines alternate as the last line of each tercet and close the poem together. Dylan Thomas's "Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night" is the glossary's example. Nineteen lines, two refrains. The refrains carry the meaning by repetition.

Finally, method: how to name a form and hear a meter quickly, and the traps that catch careful readers.

Many form questions can be answered by counting.

ENL 0037 Naming a Form From the Shape on the Page

Many form questions can be settled by counting before reading. Start with the number of lines: fourteen suggests a sonnet, nineteen a villanelle. Then look at the stanza breaks, an octave and a sestet for the Italian sonnet, three quatrains and a couplet for the English one. Letter the rhyme scheme to confirm, then scan a line for the meter, and listen for the voice, since a single character speaking to a silent listener marks a dramatic monologue. The caution is about excerpts: fourteen lines taken from a longer poem are not a sonnet, so look for a title or a closing couplet before naming one.

The exam leaves no time for slow scansion.

ENL 0038 Hearing Meter in a Passage Under Time

The exam allows no time for slow scansion, so meter is answered by ear and by elimination. Read one line silently at speaking pace and listen for the pulse: two-beat units that rise or fall, or three-beat gallops with two light syllables before each stress. Count the beats in that one line rather than its syllables, then check a second line, and strike out every option that the pulse and the count rule out. The unit's warning is that syllable counting misleads, because elision and light syllables change the total; five beats matter more than ten syllables.

Four traps catch even careful readers.

ENL 0039 The Traps in Form and Meter Questions

Four traps recur. Blank verse is confused with free verse, though blank verse keeps its meter. Assonance is confused with alliteration, though assonance repeats vowels. An excerpt of fourteen lines is mistaken for a sonnet. And the speaker of a dramatic monologue is mistaken for the poet. Meter, vowels, excerpts, voices. Each trap swaps two near neighbours.

The capstone puts the unit back together.

ENL 0040 What a Poem's Form Tells You

The capstone gathers the unit into one purpose: every term exists to help you read what a poem does. Begin with who speaks, since the speaker is not the poet, and with the tone the words project and the mood the reader feels; diction and syntax carry both. Then hear the line, end-stopped or enjambed, and its meter, named by foot and count, with blank verse keeping its meter and free verse giving it up, and with the older measures of Old English stress and Hopkins's sprung rhythm beside them. Rhyme and sound bind the lines, from the couplet to the villanelle, and the fixed forms, sonnet, ode, elegy, ballad and monologue, each signal a kind of meaning. The closing caution is the unit's governing idea in reverse: terms are tools for reading, never the answer to a meaning question on their own.

This second part put lines into shapes. We named the stanzas from the couplet to the Spenserian stanza, and told the three sonnets apart, finding the turn at line nine or at the couplet. We identified the ballad, the ode, the elegy and its pastoral form, the lyric and aubade, the epic and mock epic, the dramatic monologue and the villanelle. We practised naming a form by counting and hearing a meter by its pulse, and closed on the four traps and the capstone: terms are tools for reading, never the answer on their own. Unit two, Reading for Meaning: Figure, Tone, Style, Drama and Narrative, turns from how a poem is built to what its figures, characters and narrators mean.