If you've always wanted to try structured poetry but didn't know how to start

Feiss

Feiss

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Oh my God you guys. Check out The Ode Less Traveled by Stephen Fry. Get it on your Kindle, get it on your mp3 player, get a paper copy and just SMELL IT.

He goes through the elements of structured poetry very charmingly. I'm starting to hear the Iamb in daily conversation. I actually did a class today w/ my students on Iambic Pentameter in order to teach them about phonology.

Each chapter is followed with practical exercises, for example, today I tried adding caesura and enjambment to iambic pentameter. Here's an example

end stopped blank verse iambic pentameter - Outside my window

The whir of longhaul wheels have filled the dawn
she sweeps the floor and rustles the leaves for me

with caesura and enjambment, similar meaning

The dawn is wielded, by the whirring trucks
that stir the strokes she sets on trembling leaves

Anyways. thought I'd share. It's a great great great book. It's firing up my love of poetry again.

BTW - you more experienced form poets out there, is that a proper enjambment on the second couplet? The thought is supposed to continue to the second line, right?
 
kborsden

kborsden

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Feiss said:
The dawn is wielded, by the whirring trucks
that stir the strokes she sets on trembling leaves

Anyways. thought I'd share. It's a great great great book. It's firing up my love of poetry again.

BTW - you more experienced form poets out there, is that a proper enjambment on the second couplet? The thought is supposed to continue to the second line, right?
Click to expand...

'trucks | that' is not enjambed. That's an end-line caesura. As I'm sure you're aware now, a caesura is a natural pause, a slightly extended breath between words -- and common for line-breaking in longer sentences. Enjambment is the straddling of a phrase over 2 or more lines by unnatural rhythmic breaking:

The dawn is wielded, by the soft whirring
trucks that stir strokes she sets on trembling leaves

You force the reader over into the next line because the rhythm in context of the verse is incomplete until the eye meets the rest of the phrase on the next line. Sort of a slight off-set to the meter, or subtle alteration in rhythmic cadence. It is for this reason that enjambment can be used for framing internal phrase, or highlighting tongue-in-cheek taboos or allowing the reader to read the phrase to mean one thing that alters course once the phrase completes.

I answered a similar question here.

I recently wrote a Terza Rima Sonnet in swaggered alexandrine, using caesura and enjambment to pace the long lines. I marked out the pauses and breaths for one critter
 
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Feiss

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DAMN AND BLAST!

you are saying a simple break in a clause isn't enjambment?

Wikipedia says this:

On her white breast a sparkling cross she wore
Which Jews might kiss, and infidels adore.

is enjambment. If so, isn't the breaking similar?



Thanks for your help, btw. I really want to figure it out. sorry about the damn and blast, I just like saying it.
 
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kborsden

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Just noticed -- the comma after 'wielded' isn't necessary. The in-line caesura is there already, no need to force it with marking (although this was common in 17th century poetry, but I personally believe our use of language has moved on since then).

In the Sonnetized Terza Rima I linked to, I used some extreme enjambment in one particular tercet:

formless as a whisper |caesura| in exhaled motions; profound < enjambment
>as dreams in sifted light |caesura|broken by tears, she drifts – { pseudo-end-stop (by punctuated, re-coursed thought)
desire beneath, |caesura| and behind the veil of the unbound.
Click to expand...

Feiss said:
On her white breast a sparkling cross she wore
Which Jews might kiss, and infidels adore.

is enjambment. If so, isn't the breaking similar?
Click to expand...

Can't you feel the meter pull after 'wore' though? That can't be said for 'trucks/that'.

In theory, all mid sentence line-breaks are the result of enjambment as enjambment simply means 'to straddle' in French, but for actual structural terminology it's more on the method of how that is implemented and the effect it has on the consistency of meter and the extremity of it. If the line is broken mid sentence or mid-thought by way of caesura then the break is a caesura and not fully representative of a true enjambment as the meter isn't coupled to the straddling. When we speak of caesura and enjambment that is what we consider, meter and phrase.
 
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Feiss

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Ah, I put it there cause I'm practicing.

I feel kind of ashamed actually. Or more like chagrined. I've been writing poetry for so long, but I didn't know any of these things. I've used enjambment, certainly, but to use it with intent, not just happy circumstance like "oh, look! breaking the line here works great" is much more difficult
 
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