The break from patterns
Poets also require more variation than is possible in both meter and rhyme patterns; in long poems, for example, where the meaning and mood are continually changing. They can transform, in this case, to one of many more free forms of poetry.
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Like much of the poetry that was written in the 1920s, The Poet (1921), by Russian-born
painter Marc Chagall, marks a break with conventional patterns and depends largely on
evocative, abstract images for its effect. |
One technique that a poet might use is called irregular rhyme. Poetry is rhymed in this style, but has no constant meter; at irregular intervals, only the rhymes often arrive. It is often used by the French poet Jules Laforgue (1860-87), and it appears in the early poetry of the American-born poet T. S. Eliot (born in 1888). The form has a certain meter but no rhyme and hence is called blank verse. It was first developed by the poet Trissino in Italy (1478-1550) and was adopted by the Earl of Surrey (1518-47) into English poetry in the 16th century. It saw its greatest use in later that century in William Shakespeare's dramatic tragedies, and in John Milton's* epic Paradise Lost in the 17th century.
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In Paradise Lost (1667), England's John Milton used blank verse to give his own inter-
pretation of the Biblical story of Creation. The poem told of the fall of Satan and the rebel
angels, illustrated here by 19th-century artist J. M. W. Turner.*. |
However, also in these types, some poets objected to the constraints and wrote free verses (with neither rhyme nor meter). Free verse isn't an innovation of the 20th century, although it is commonly used today in poetry. This was used by ancient Greek writers such as Euripides*; and it appears in the work of the Italian poet Torquato Tasso*, the French poet Jean de la Fontaine (1621-95), and the English poet John Milton. Below is an excerpt from "Samson Agonistes" by Milton:
Just are the ways of God,
And justifiable to men;
Unless there be who think not God at all,
If any be, they walk obscure;
Free verse authors are more concerned with sentences or lines than with the foot and syllables. The rhythms of their poetry are primarily determined by the anticipated emotional effects: As has been said, one word isolated in a line has a powerful influence. Similarly, short, jerky lines will also offer a feeling of tremendous anticipation or emotion; the illusion is of a man passionately vomiting out his words.
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| two
writers who broke away from the poetic conventions of their times.
19th-century French poet Jules Laforgue (caricature, rejected meter, and
used irregular rhyme; |
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| 16th- century Italian poet Trissino (seen in the engraving, above) pioneered the use of blank verse. |
It is used by many contemporary poets in only this on modern society; for example, the Russian Vladimir Mayakovski (1893-1930) wrote many poems in this type praising communism and criticizing its opponents. One of his poems was called "At the top of my voice." But other poets have written short lines that contain slower rhythms, which give the poetry quite the opposite effect-like the feeling of melancholy in these lines by T.S. Eliot from "The Hollow Men" (1925):
Is it like this
In death's other kingdom
Waking alone
At the hour when we are
Trembling with tenderness
At the other side from the free verse with short lines is the kind of poetry composed by America's Walt Whitman (1819-92), whose work has influenced contemporary poetry greatly. Whitman typically used long lines and fluid rhythms, but with their structured vocabulary and such other tactics as repetition, his poems avoided sounding like prose. Such techniques give his work a "chanting" influence, comparable to sections of the King James Bible translation (for example, some of the Psalms, which are also free verses). Below are Whitman's lines:
I have heard what the talkers were talking, the talk of
the beginning and the end,
But I do not talk of the beginning or the end.
There was never any more inception than there is
Nor any more youth or age than there is now,
And will never be any more perfection than there is
now,
Nor any more heaven or hell than there is now.
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17th-century French poet Jean de la Fontaine wrote fables like
"The Council of the Rats" in free verse that was more direct than the conventional
rhyming couplet. Modern Russian poet Vladimir Mayakovski (below, right) used free
verse to give an explosive effect to his poems attacking non-communist societies. |
Only because the free verse does not meet strict meter guidelines, we shouldn't say it doesn't have a rhythm. The form of the best free verse is decided in about the same way as composers pattern their music — evitating the repetition of a normal beat by "tick-tock" A good poem should be written "in the sequence of the musical phrase, not in the sequence of the metronome." according to modern American poet Ezra Pound (born 1885). To put it more simply: rhythm is necessary for both poetry and music, but a fixed rhythm is not.
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