Writing Help 129 | - ☆ Freelance Writer
Apr 06, 2013 | #1
Poetic Terms You Have to Learn
As we discussed briefly in the previous article, knowing the constituent parts of a poem is of the utmost importance to being able to speak and write about it successfully. One of the greatest temptations, especially when a poem is arranged in free verse (without common discernable patterning), is to speak of its parts and sections as if they were actually pieces of prose writing. By reading what follows, and remembering that there is a whole other language devoted to the study of poetry, you will not fall into the all-too-common traps students find it very hard to avoid.
First of all, some confusion has arisen over the use of the term verse, and it has become fairly widely used as a synonym for line, when the two are actually not synonymous at all. Properly used, verse is used to describe language that is structured by meter and rhythm. It is similar in this sense to poetry, although a single line found on a birthday card which is composed in a rhythmical fashion counts as verse, whereas poetry is used to describe such arrangements that are more substantial and evocative. The sing-song slogan you hear on the radio in the morning is verse, but it is not poetry. Alternatively, the term can also be used to describe the smallest divisions of the Bible and other holy texts, regardless of their meter and rhythm.
Moving onto more acceptable terminology, then, we come to the most basic unit of poetic production, the line. Most of us have an excellent idea what this is, but for the sake of complete clarity I have included two numbered lines below:
The end of all our summers came so fast 1
It's sad that nothing golden ever lasts 2
As you can see, a line need be nothing more than a series of words that begins on one side of the page and ends sometime before it reaches the other side. Of course, it is common in poetry for a line to have extra features that set it apart, and the lines above are no exception. First, each line contains ten syllables, which is a common length for regular poetic lines in English. Next, each line has a dominant stress pattern you can hear when you read it; read the lines one after the other and try to hear the pattern. This is an important aspect of poetry, and it will be covered in depth in a later article. Finally, we can see that there is a rhyme word that marks the end of each line, another common poetic device. Each line in a poem is often capitalized, regardless of where a sentence would normally (grammatically) begin. Again, none of these considerations is necessary, but they are very common and important to be aware of.
The next division is the stanza, which is an ordered group of lines separated from other groups of lines in the same poem. In order to show you what this means, I have included two three-line stanzas below:
The end of all our summers came so fast,
I can't believe our time has run so short.
It's sad that nothing golden ever lasts.
Whenever I have thought about the end,
About the troubles time will steer out way,
I'm only glad I've had you as my friend.
As you can see, the most obvious demarcation between stanzas in a poem is the clear white space between them. This is all that is really needed, but as was the case for lines above, there are often other factors that serve to denote one stanza from the next. For example, stanzas are often of a regular length, and a common pattern of rhyme exists between each stanza. In this example, we can see that lines 1 and 3 in each stanza rhyme, while line two does not. This is known as a poem's rhyme scheme, but again that is something we will be exploring in a future article.
Verse, Line, Stanza
As we discussed briefly in the previous article, knowing the constituent parts of a poem is of the utmost importance to being able to speak and write about it successfully. One of the greatest temptations, especially when a poem is arranged in free verse (without common discernable patterning), is to speak of its parts and sections as if they were actually pieces of prose writing. By reading what follows, and remembering that there is a whole other language devoted to the study of poetry, you will not fall into the all-too-common traps students find it very hard to avoid.
First of all, some confusion has arisen over the use of the term verse, and it has become fairly widely used as a synonym for line, when the two are actually not synonymous at all. Properly used, verse is used to describe language that is structured by meter and rhythm. It is similar in this sense to poetry, although a single line found on a birthday card which is composed in a rhythmical fashion counts as verse, whereas poetry is used to describe such arrangements that are more substantial and evocative. The sing-song slogan you hear on the radio in the morning is verse, but it is not poetry. Alternatively, the term can also be used to describe the smallest divisions of the Bible and other holy texts, regardless of their meter and rhythm.Moving onto more acceptable terminology, then, we come to the most basic unit of poetic production, the line. Most of us have an excellent idea what this is, but for the sake of complete clarity I have included two numbered lines below:
The end of all our summers came so fast 1
It's sad that nothing golden ever lasts 2
As you can see, a line need be nothing more than a series of words that begins on one side of the page and ends sometime before it reaches the other side. Of course, it is common in poetry for a line to have extra features that set it apart, and the lines above are no exception. First, each line contains ten syllables, which is a common length for regular poetic lines in English. Next, each line has a dominant stress pattern you can hear when you read it; read the lines one after the other and try to hear the pattern. This is an important aspect of poetry, and it will be covered in depth in a later article. Finally, we can see that there is a rhyme word that marks the end of each line, another common poetic device. Each line in a poem is often capitalized, regardless of where a sentence would normally (grammatically) begin. Again, none of these considerations is necessary, but they are very common and important to be aware of.
The next division is the stanza, which is an ordered group of lines separated from other groups of lines in the same poem. In order to show you what this means, I have included two three-line stanzas below:
The end of all our summers came so fast,
I can't believe our time has run so short.
It's sad that nothing golden ever lasts.
Whenever I have thought about the end,
About the troubles time will steer out way,
I'm only glad I've had you as my friend.
As you can see, the most obvious demarcation between stanzas in a poem is the clear white space between them. This is all that is really needed, but as was the case for lines above, there are often other factors that serve to denote one stanza from the next. For example, stanzas are often of a regular length, and a common pattern of rhyme exists between each stanza. In this example, we can see that lines 1 and 3 in each stanza rhyme, while line two does not. This is known as a poem's rhyme scheme, but again that is something we will be exploring in a future article.