Bleh.

[kiya]

I think . . . maybe . . . I am turning the corner on this sick, or whatever it is. (Mostly it's been manifesting as lots and lots of chills. Possibly also lack of appetite, possibly also hypersomnia; it's hard for me to tell with hypersomnia, as that's my major depression symptom.) But at two am I had a sudden burst of, "HUNGRY. FEED ME." So I made myself a steak, and then sat and shivered for a while. But progress, maybe. Have also consumed ludicrous quantities of garlic-and-lemon-chicken-soup, but that was earlier.

Need to do my classwork for middle_egyptian and my Feri homework. Current excuse: feel bad. More blankets please.

Have half-formulated thoughts about death and death rituals that I may need to write up as a post. (*pokes jackals with a stick, as per usual*)

Have need to dig up formal poetry structures too and see which one this thing in my head wants to come out as because if I don't come up with an alternative it's going to be stuck as a sestina and I hate sestinas. (I do not, however, hate run-on sentences.) English majors please advise.

More blankets please.

Cold and incoherent.

Comments

[lanthinel.livejournal.com]

ardaniel asked me to poke my head in and offer English major assistance.

In terms of forms, there are, of course, lots to choose from, depending on what you're wanting to do.

Sonnets, despite all the talk about Shakespearean, Spenserian, Petrarchan, and so forth, have been vehicles for adaptation for centuries. The big limiting factors on a sonnet are (1) some kind of rhyme scheme, (2) iambic pentameter (generally speaking), and (3) a "turn" that occurs roughly around line 8-9 that leads to some sort of realization, commentary, or resolution for the subject matter of the first 8 lines.

The traditional ode, from what I gather, is rather loose in terms of metrics, but is structured as strophe, antistrophe, and epode. My understanding of the traditional ode structure is spotty, but traditional odes are essentially "choral" pieces. The strophe is one chorus of speakers, the antistrophe is the "response" to the first chorus (contrasting or however you like), and the epode is the point where both choruses sing as one. However, in practice, odes tend to be very varied ("Ode to the West Wind" by Shelley, "Ode on a Grecian Urn" by Keats, and countless more).

Heroic verse tends to operate along rhymed couplets of iambic pentameter. The rhyming couplets will bring a lot of attention to the rhyme words and the "poeticness" of the piece.

Literary ballads are poems composed of quatrains where the lines follow a 4-3-4-3 pattern in terms of beats/stresses. Examples include "Mary Had a Little Lamb," "La Belle Dame Sans Merci" (Keats) and I think "Tam Lin." I believe the most common rhyme scheme for these is ABBA, although ABAB is also pretty common, I think.

Elegies are mourning poems, generally speaking. There is also the elegiac form, which is essentially line pairs of dactylic hexameter followed by a pentameter line, but this is much more of a classical meter. Milton's "Lycidas," Shelley's "Adonais," and Thomas Gray's "Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard" are structured elegies that tend more towards a pentameter.

Some English writers have experimented with variations on the haiku (and its related variants) form. Although the typical haiku is merely the 5-7-5 bit we learned in grade school, several Japanese poets used an expanded form that cycled through essentially layered haikus: "choka," 5-7 5-7 5-7 5-7-7; "tanka," 5-7-5 / 7-7; and "sedoka," 5-7-7-5-7-7. Obviously, this is more of a metrical experiment in something different than the typical English forms, but I always thought it was a very interesting idea to try working with.

The general tercet form has various uses, often times following an ABA BCB CDC rhyme scheme in the terza rima form. Terza rima poems or sections of the poem end in a single line or couplet (usually ending, rhyme-wise, as CDC D or CDC DD). No line limit, no set metrics, although i.p. is the usual in English, of course. Shelley's "Ode to the West Wind" incorporates a terza rima structure.

A villanelle is another tercet derivation following a very specific form (I'll let you read that to get the idea).

There's the Spenserian stanza, which is verses of nine lines - eight are i.p and the last is iambic hexameter - following the rhyme of ababbcbcc. This can produce a very...musical poetry. Tennyson's "The Lotos-Eaters" is an example.

(con't)

[lanthinel.livejournal.com]

These are perhaps the less arcane forms (not counting the overt artifice of the sestina). The choice of strophe/stanza length (i.e., couplets, tercets, quatrains, or larger bodies) will automatically divide the poem into discrete units of meaning.* Rhyme scheme choice will influence how "poetic" the piece sounds (or at least how "sing-songy"). Subtler rhyme schemes (i.e., in which the rhyme may not be immediately apparent) will have different effects, of course, compared to much more overt schemes (like in the heroic couplet).

Of course, one can also play against type, as it were. Adapting an elegiac form for something contrary to "mourning," for example. Wikipedia has a list of forms you can take a look at in terms of formal structure. Your best bet is going to be to look at examples, get an idea of how they work, and then see what inspires you.

*Although this can be done with any form or poem, these sorts of regular stanzas are much more overt, of course.

[ibnfirnas.livejournal.com]

You might try looking into the qasida ode, which is Bedouin and of which I'm very fond. Most of its conventions have to do with subject matter if you're not doing it in Arabic, mind, but it's worth looking into. It's all about the journy through the desert.

And what about quatrains? They have some of the same appeal as a sestina, for me, at least.