English

ENG 102: English Composition II

Lecture Notes #4

Additional Forms of Poetry

As you can see from the list of poetry terms and definitions, there are other forms of poetry besides the sonnet.

I. blank verse: unrhymed iambic pentameter

A poem that is written in blank verse has the same rhythm as the sonnet form. (Refer back to your sonnet lecture notes. Iambic pentameter consists of five feet (units) of an unstressed syllable followed by a stressed syllable. The differences from the sonnet form are: 1) there is no prescribed number of lines to the poem; 2) there is no rhyme scheme. These lines from the following Robert Frost poem illustrate the iambic pentameter; however, if you look at the ends of the lines, you will see that there is no rhyme scheme .

u / u / u / u / u /

“I let my neighbor know beyond the hill;

u / u / u / u / u /

And on a day we meet to walk the line”

Robert Frost lived much of his life in rural Vermont and wrote many poems about nature and rural life. This poem is about two neighbors whose adjoining properties are separated by a stone wall. (This is not a brick wall that is cemented, but one made of large stones just piled on top of each other, frequently seen in New England.) After a rough New England winter, some of the stones become dislodged, so at “spring mending-time,” the two neighbors meet to fix the wall. They meet at one end of the wall to “walk the line,” each picking up and replacing the boulders that have fallen on his respective side. A conflict arises when one of the neighbors questions the need for the wall. Read the poem carefully. Try to identify: 1) each neighbor’s view of the wall; 2) the reasons for his view; 3) the outcome of the conflict.

Robert Frost

Mending Wall

Something there is that doesn't love a wall,

That sends the frozen-ground-swell under it,

And spills the upper boulders in the sun;

And makes gaps even two can pass abreast.

The work of hunters is another thing:

I have come after them and made repair

Where they have left not one stone on a stone,

But they would have the rabbit out of hiding,

To please the yelping dogs. The gaps I mean,

No one has seen them made or heard them made,

But at spring mending-time we find them there.

I let my neighbor know beyond the hill;

And on a day we meet to walk the line

And set the wall between us once again.

We keep the wall between us as we go.

To each the boulders that have fallen to each.

And some are loaves and some so nearly balls

We have to use a spell to make them balance:

‘Stay where you are until our backs are turned!’

We wear our fingers rough with handling them.

Oh, just another kind of out-door game,

One on a side. It comes to little more:

There where it is we do not need the wall:

He is all pine and I am apple orchard.

My apple trees will never get across

And eat the cones under his pines, I tell him.

He only says, ‘Good fences make good neighbors.’

Spring is the mischief in me, and I wonder

If I could put a notion in his head:

‘Why do they make good neighbors? Isn't it

Where there are cows? But here there are no cows.

Before I built a wall I'd ask to know

What I was walling in or walling out,

And to whom I was like to give offense.

Something there is that doesn't love a wall,

That wants it down.’ I could say ‘Elves’ to him,

But it's not elves exactly, and I'd rather

He said it for himself. I see him there

Bringing a stone grasped firmly by the top

In each hand, like an old-stone savage armed.

He moves in darkness as it seems to me,

Not of woods only and the shade of trees.

He will not go behind his father's saying,

And he likes having thought of it so well

He says again, ‘Good fences make good neighbors.’

II. free verse: poetry in lines of irregular length, usually unrhymed

While blank verse has no rules about rhyme, it still has rules governing rhythm because of the iambic pentameter. Free verse has no rules about rhyme or meter. A good way to think of free verse is that it is free of rules. You can tell just by looking at the following poem that there are no end rhymes and that all of the lines have a different length. A lot of modern poetry is written as free verse.

The following free verse poem is about a person who is in the audience at a lecture given by an astronomer, a scientist who studies the stars and planets, etc. The astronomer is speaking on the stage with all of his scientific props to an approving and receptive crowd. About halfway through the poem, the speaker suddenly feels the need to leave the lecture hall, goes outside, and looks up at the stars.

Walt Whitman When I Heard the Learn’d Astronomer When I Heard the Learn’d Astronomer

When I Heard the Learn'd Astronomer

When I heard the learn'd astronomer,

When the proofs, the figures, were ranged in columns before me,

When I was shown the charts, the diagrams, to add, divide, and measure them,

When I sitting heard the learned astronomer where he lectured with much applause in the lecture room,

How soon unaccountable I became tired and sick,

Till rising and gliding out I wander'd off by myself,

In the mystical moist night-air, and from time to time,

Look'd up in perfect silence at the stars.