Download 12 Writing about Poetry

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CHAPTER CONTENTS
12 Writing
about Poetry
CHAPTER CONTENTS
What Is Poetry?
Reading: From Metrical Feet—Lesson for a Boy
Samuel Taylor Coleridge
Reader’s Guide: Rhymed Forms of Poetry
Reader’s Guide: Unrhymed Forms
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Imagining the World: Poetry
Reading: London
William Blake
Reading: Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening
Robert Frost
Reading: Singapore
Mary Oliver
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Three Poems about Social Relations
Student Model: Summaries and Essay on “London,” “Stopping
by Woods on a Snowy Evening,” and Singapore”
Melissa Pabon
Imagining the World: Topics for Essays
Poetry Casebook: Langston Hughes
Reading: The Negro Speaks of Rivers
Langston Hughes
Reading: Weary Blues
Langston Hughes
Reading: Theme for English B
Langston Hughes
Langston Hughes on Langston Hughes
Reading: The Negro Artist and the Racial Mountain
Langston Hughes
Reading: The Harlem Renaissance
Langston Hughes
Critics on Langston Hughes
Reading: Hughes as an Experimentalist
Arnold Rampersad
Reading: A Reading of “Dream Deferred”
Onwuchekwa Jemie
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353
356
358
360
362
365
365
370
370
371
372
373
374
374
375
377
377
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Divas of the Seven Deadly Sins: Sloth. Courtesy of Suzanne King, www.fortisabelgallery.com.
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CHAPTER 12 WRITING ABOUT POETRY
12 WRITING ABOUT POETRY
What is poetry?
The most ancient forms of literature were oral
rather than written, and they were poems. Songs
are the oldest genre of literary creation, and poetry
originated from songs of oral traditions around the
world. Many consider poetry the most challenging
of literary genres. Often, you have to “read between
the lines” to find a poem’s meaning and argument.
As you wrestle with the pleasures and challenges of
the poems in this book, imagine what it must have
been like to live in a time when poetry was a primary means of expressing social and cultural
meaning, and its rules and conventions were as
familiar to audiences as those of pop music are
today. Although poetry no longer holds such a central role in Western culture, readers still bring
strong expectations to a poem—for many a poem
must rhyme; for many others, a poem must not
rhyme. While at odds with each other, both of these
expectations define poetry in terms of form—the
way its thoughts and words are organized. The fact
is, many poems are rhymed, many are unrhymed,
and many are both (see, for example, T. S. Eliot’s
“The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock”).
We can also attempt to define poetry in terms of
its subject or theme, what it is about. For many
poets and many readers, poetry should talk about
love, and nothing else. And, indeed, there are more
poems about love than about any other subject.
Nevertheless, many of the earliest poems we have
are epics—long poems that tell of heroes and the
deeds that brought them fame, few of which
involved love. Although love songs may dominate
the ranks of poetry, there is not a topic, theme, or
object in the world that has not had at least a few
poems devoted to it at some point somewhere by
somebody.
Poetry may also be defined in terms of its
creator—that is, anything written by a poet. There
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I, too, dislike it.
Reading it, however, with a perfect contempt for it,
one discovers in it, after all, a place for the genuine.
—MARIANNE MOORE, “POETRY”
was a time when poems were composed by bards
and performed by minstrels who never wrote or
performed anything else besides poetry because,
for the most part, there were no other genres in
which to write. Nowadays, and for a long time, it
has been nearly impossible to make a living exclusively as a professional poet (most contemporary
poets teach writing in universities) and nearly
impossible to find a professional poet who does
not also write in other genres: reviews, essays, stories, plays, novels.
As in most genres, there will always be exceptions to any general rules about poetry. We can say
that poetry is not prose, although we will have to
make an exception for prose poems (p. 357). We
can say that poetry employs literary devices and
rules of verse, although we will have to make an
exception for poems written without literary
devices, rhyme, or meter (p. 356). No poem will
rhyme perfectly or use a single meter with absolute
consistency; what makes each poem unique are the
patterns of meaning it establishes and the specific
moments in which it breaks each pattern. Free
verse and prose poems emerged in the nineteenth
century in rebellion against the constraints and
conventions of metrical composition. Open forms
dominated poetry of the twentieth century,
although recent years have seen a return to stricter
forms. Knowledge of literary devices, rhyme, and
meter will allow you to recognize the patterns each
poem establishes; careful reading and critical
thinking will help you to recognize where and how
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WHAT IS POETRY?
these patterns are broken, and to generate arguments about the meaning of those breaks.
Prosody: An Introduction
At the heart of a poem is its rhythm, the patterns
of sounds formed by its words and lines. The
knowledge of poetic rhythm and the rhymes that
often accompany it is known as prosody. The initial steps to analyzing poetry, then, are to scan, or
identify the meter (or formal rhythm)
of the lines; to identify the structure of the stanzas,
or groupings of lines; to parse the sentences of the
poem; and to analyze when and how the poem
diverges from poetic convention.
METER
The word meter comes from the Greek verb “to
measure,” and there are various means by which to
measure the meter of a line of poetry:
• Quantitative: measured according to the length
of each vowel and consonant combination.
• Syllabic: measured according to the number of
units in each word
• Accentual: measured according to the number
of accented syllables only (as in free or open form
verse)
• Accentual-syllabic: measured according to the
number of stressed and unstressed syllables combined (as in most formal, or closed verse).
Poets have never ceased to experiment with meter,
and there is a wide variety of possibilities; we focus
here on the general principles of scansion—the act
of scanning a line of poetry. Each unit of stressed
and unstressed syllables in accentual-syllabic verse
is known as a foot. The meter of a poem is signaled by the type of foot it employs and the number of feet in each line; four, five, six, and seven are
the most common lines.
The Romantic poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge
(1772–1834) composed the poem on page 348 to
assist his sons in mastering the various types of metrical feet: the trochee, spondee, dactyl, iamb, anapest,
amphibrachys, and amphimacer. Coleridge treats the
names as they sound: like strange mythical creatures,
each with a different gait on its different feet.
Scansion is most commonly indicated by graphic
symbols:
˘
/
//
Unstressed syllable
Stressed syllable
A break between feet
A caesura, or pause near the middle of a
line which usually comes between twosyllable feet and in the middle of threesyllable feet (as in lines 4, 6, 7, and 8)
Most poems employ a single meter throughout,
with specific feet or a line here or there varied for a
particular sort of emphasis. Coleridge’s poem
changes from line to line; the number of feet,
POETIC FEET
Number of Feet
per Line
Name of Foot
Number of Feet
per Line
Name of Foot
1
Monometer
5
Pentameter
2
Dimeter
6
Hexameter
3
Trimeter
7
Heptameter
4
Tetrameter
8
Octameter
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Reading
From Metrical Feet—Lesson for a Boy
Samuel Taylor Coleridge
Trochee trips from long to short;
From long to long in solemn sort
Slow Spondee stalks, strong foot!, yet ill able
Ever to come up with Dactyls trisyllable.
Iambics march from short to long.
With a leap and a bound the swift Anapests throng.
One syllable long, with one short at each side,
Amphibrachys hastes with a stately stride—
First and last being long, middle short, Amphimacer
Strikes his thundering hoofs like a proud high-bred Racer.
˘
˘
˘
Trochee / trips // from / long to / short;
From long / to long // in sol / emn sort
Slow Spon / dee stalks, // strong foot!, / yet ill / able
˘˘
˘
˘
˘
˘ ˘ ˘
Ever to / come up // with Dactyls tri / syllable.
˘ ˘
˘
˘ Iamb / ics march // from short / to long.
˘ ˘ ˘ ˘
˘
˘
˘ ˘
With a leap / and a bound // the swift An / apests throng.
˘
˘ ˘ ˘
˘
˘
˘ (˘)
One syllab / le long, // with / one short at / each side,
˘ ˘
˘
˘
˘ ˘
(˘)
Amphibrac / hys hastes // with / a state/ ly stride–
˘ ˘ ˘
˘ ˘
First and last / being long, // middle short, / Amphimac / er
˘
˘
˘ ˘
˘
Strikes his thund / ering hoofs // like a proud / high-bred Rac / er.
however, remains constant (with one exception):
each line is a tetrameter. Here it is again, marked
for scansion.
When dealing with meter, always consider its
relation to other elements in the poem, both formal and thematic. Meter is a tool for creating patterns and breaking them: listen for the questions
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5
10
5
10
and arguments raised by both aspects of it as you
read. Here are some good initial questions to ask
about a poem’s meter:
• Is the meter prominent, as often in nonsense
verse or in poetry concerned with the stuff of
poetry, such as Coleridge’s poem above?
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WRITING EXERCISE: PLAYING WITH METER
1.
Compose a six-line stanza (a sestet), with two
lines of indeterminate length containing four
stressed syllables, and four lines of tetrameter—
one in iambs, one in trochees, one in dactyls,
one in anapests. Don’t worry about the meaning or profundity of the lines; focus only on the
rhythm. and don’t be intimidated because
you’ve never thought about meter before. Your
everyday speech has rhythms, so you just have
to talk out loud and listen to the patterns it
forms. Adapt a conversation, or a sportscast, or
• Is it regular and highly rhythmic, as in popular
music (hip-hop, for instance) and in narrative
poems (such as ballads)?
• Is it subtler and subordinated to the patterns of
speech, as in the blank verse of many of Shakespeare’s plays?
RHYME AND REPETITION
The Greek and Latin verse of the classical era was
based only on meter, and rhyme in Western poetry
did not appear until the Middle Ages. Rhyme can
2.
recount something that happened to you, or
simply write six lines of utter nonsense—it
doesn’t matter as long as the rhythm is right.
Exchange sestets with a classmate, and read
each others’ verses out loud. Can you hear the
difference between the lines? Can you agree on
the rhythm of each foot? Remember, prosody
can be very subjective, and context, accent,
and tone can change the stress of a particular
syllable.
be as varied as meter, although its rules are less
fixed. End-rhyme is the form of rhyming we recognize most easily. We generally record a poem’s
rhyme with a sequence of italicized lowercase letters, each new rhyme identified by a new letter. For
instance, Coleridge’s poem “Metrical Feet—Lessons
for a Boy” follows an aabbcc pattern, each pair of
lines sharing a new end-rhyme.
There are other varieties of rhyme and related
repetition of sounds and letters that complicate
and vary the aural effect of a poem.
END-RHYMES
Name
Definition
Example
Perfect or exact rhyme:
Sounds of final vowels and consonants
are identical
A. Masculine rhyme
Final syllables of an exact rhyme are stressed
and identical
short—sort
long—throng
side—stride
B. Feminine or
double rhyme
Unstressed rhyming syllable of an exact rhyme
follows stressed rhyming syllable
amphimacer—racer
Triple rhyme
Final three syllables are all identical
merrily—verily
(ill able—syllable if the
rhyme were exact)
Half- or off-rhyme
Only final consonant rhymes exactly
ill able—syllable
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OTHER FORMS OF RHYME AND REPETITION
Eye rhyme
Two words that look as if they rhyme but are
pronounced differently
blow—plow
Internal rhyme
At least one of the rhyming words is within
the line
“In coop and in comb the fleece
of his foam” (Gerard Manley Hopkins,
“Inversnaid,” p. 658)
Alliteration
Repetition of initial sounds
coop, comb
fleece, foam
Assonance
Repetition of vowel sounds followed by
different consonants
coop, comb, of
Consonance
Repetition of consonant sound with different
vowel sounds
“Come to my arms, my beamish
boy!”(Lewis Carroll, “Jabberwocky”)
Meter tends to have more of a subliminal effect on
us, especially affecting our sense of the tone, or attitude of the poem’s speaker toward the material of the
poem. By contrast, rhyme and repetition are overt
structuring devices, the first thing we hear (or don’t
hear) in a poem. They are extremely effective in oral
and other poetry intended for performance because
they hold the attention and guide the ear regardless of
the content of the words. Rhyme and repetition are
also vehicles of the more playful pleasures of poetry:
end-rhymes in particular create powerful expectations in each line, and waiting for the ingenious
rhyme to a difficult word can be immensely satisfying, as any afficionado of hip-hop can testify.
Rhyme and repetition help to establish associations and relationships between different words and
parts of a poem. Here are the first verse and chorus
of “The Dallas Blues,” written by Hart Wand in
1912, with words added in 1918 by Lloyd Garrett:
When your money’s gone, friends have turned
you down,
And you wander ’round just like a houn’
(a lonesome houn’)
Then you stop to say, “Let me go away from
this old town (this awful town).”
There’s a place I know folks won’t pass me by,
Dallas, Texas, that’s the town I cry! (oh hear
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me cry!)
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And I’m going back, going back to stay there
till I die (until I die).
I’ve got the Dallas blues and the Main Street
heart disease (it’s buzzin’ round)
I’ve got the Dallas Blues and the Main Street
heart disease (it’s buzzin’ ’round)
Buzzin’ ’round my head like a swarm of little
honey bees (of honey bees).
As befits a blues song, the message is direct and
the language simple. The lyrics employ masculine
end-rhymes throughout, putting a stress on the final
word of each line that is emphasized by the repeated
phrase in lines 2, 3, 5, and 6. The two triplets of
rhyme-words (aaabbb) create a question-andanswer pattern in the verse, with a strong downbeat
on the final word, “die.” The phrases at the end of
the chorus recall the a rhyme (“round”)before the
final stress of the c rhyme of “bees.”
Similarly, listen to the way the quartet of masculine end-rhymes in the first four lines of this verse
of Bob Dylan’s classic 1965 rock song “Like a
Rolling Stone” builds up a wave of rhythm that
crashes down as the final line breaks the pattern
and rhythm of the rhyme:
You said you’d never compromise
With the mystery tramp, but now you realize
He’s not selling any alibis
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WRITING EXERCISE: A PAGEFUL OF RHYMES
1.
The goal of this exercise is to generate a selection of rhyme-words all based on a specific
ending (like the -own ending in “Dallas Blues”).
You may have to play around a while with different possibilities until you find the right ending to generate enough rhymes. Your selection
should include the following type of rhymes:
• Two masculine rhymes
• Two double feminine rhymes
As you stare into the vacuum of his eyes
And ask him do you want to make a deal?
5
Even without the musical accompaniment, the
rhymes bind together the diverse and obscure meaning of the lyrics into a coherent argument expressed
by the desperation of the concluding question.
The rhythmic qualities of music make it well
suited for rhyme and repetition, but they can also
be used for powerful effect in more sparing media.
The open form of W. H. Auden’s 1940 elegy “In
Memory of W. B. Yeats,” using a sparse accentual
meter only, drives home the desolation of the
poet’s death with a series of alliterations that make
the word “dead” echo through the opening lines of
the poem. The lack of any other meter or rhyme
seems to occur in deference to the sad occasion of
a famous poet’s death, the wintry setting heightening the sense of loss:
The day of his death was a dark cold day.
Whether employed liberally or sparingly, rhyme
and rhythm create intricate and persuasive patterns
of association and argument. Enjoy their sonorous
pleasures and dissonant melodies as you read, then
consider the arguments made through those pleasures and melodies.
Poetic Diction
Many poems, especially those that closely follow a
particular metrical pattern, will shorten or lengthen
• One triple rhyme
• Two half or off-rhymes
• One eye rhyme
2.
Combine these rhymes to make either two
quatrains (four-line stanzas) or one octave
(eight-line stanza). Feel free either to write
nonsense around your rhymes or to try to
combine them into sensible verse—the rhymes
are the focus here.
a word to fit a particular rhythm, or to make a different sort of poetic argument. Elision—the dropping of letters and syllables—is marked by an apostrophe (’); when an end syllable, nearly always an ed, must be pronounced, it is marked with an accent
grave: “belov’d” has two syllables; “belovèd” has
three. In William Blake’s poem “London” (p. 358),
the poet regularly elides syllables from his words:
“I wander thro’ each charter’d street.” Written in
prose, the line would read “I wander through each
chartered street,” but this could potentially make a
ten-syllable rather than an octosyllabic line. Moreover, the elisions throughout the poem heighten the
short, clipped effect of the iambic tetrameter (four
iambic feet in each line).
Other aspects of poetic diction you will encounter
frequently involve the poet changing word order to
rhyme specific words and to emphasize the meaning of particular words or phrases. From Blake’s
“London” again: “How the Chimney-sweeper’s cry /
Every black’ning Church appalls.” In plain prose,
this would read “How the chimney-sweeper’s cry
appalls every blackening church.” The most
emphatic moments in a poem are end-stopped
lines, where the end of a line and the end of a sentence coincide. Here, Blake has altered the natural
word order to give extra weight to the word
“appalls.” Moreover, the enjambment after the first
line, at the place where “appalls” would appear in
plain prose, makes us wait for the verb our ear had
expected to find until the end of the next line.
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WRITING EXERCISE: AN EXQUISITE CORPSE
The expectations of meaning we bring to what we
read, and the effects of context and placement are so
powerful that we can find meaning even in phrases
composed randomly. The early twentieth-century
members of a poetic movement known as surrealism
invented several games of poetic composition. Here
are two of them to try at home or in class:
1.
Line by Line. Each participant writes a line of
verse or a short sentence on a blank page, and
then folds over the page so that the next participant cannot see it. Unfold the page, read the
poem aloud, and choose a title for it. If you
Word choice, too, is an important element of
poetic diction. In prose, words are primarily chosen
for their semantic, or dictionary, meaning. In poetry
they are chosen for many different reasons: semantic
meaning; etymology, or origin in another language;
aural properties, or sound; rhythmic properties; symbolism; associations; appearance on the page; placement in a line. Consequently, when puzzled by word
choice or by other aspects of poetic diction, be sure
you have considered the full range of possibilities for
the work it is doing in a poem. Remember, too, that
there may be multiple reasons for the choices a poet
has made in the search of the perfect line.
Different forms of diction create a different
mood, tone, and style in a poem. We can find
examples of formal or high diction, in the blank
verse of Shakespeare and Milton. Only proper language will be used, only genteel subjects will be
discussed, and sentence structure and phrasing will
be elegant and well-balanced. By contrast, “Dallas
Blues” and the poems included in the section on
ballads (p. 354) provide examples of low or informal diction, which uses colloquial, everyday language to discuss topics that are not always suited
for polite company. Diction can also be concrete,
used to describe material things, such as the airport ashtrays and blue cloth in Mary Oliver’s
“Singapore” (p. 362); or abstract, used to describe
phenomena such as emotions or philosophical
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2.
choose, you may then attempt an explication.
You may be surprised how much meaning you
can find. Beware, however: not all exquisite
corpses turn out equally well. If you don’t like
the first result, try again until you have a poem
you are happy with.
Word by Word. If you felt the above variation
gave you too much control over the outcome,
try it again, but this time each participant contributes one word at each turn. Compare the
results: which process generates more satisfying
poetry?
concepts that cannot be perceived directly by the
five senses. Like all other aspects of poetry, diction
can surprise our expectations. We sometimes think
of poetry as rarefied and distant from our lives, but
often it can be the most immediate and accessible
of all forms of literature.
Poetic form adapted to the visual media.
Publicity poster for The Ballad of Jack and
Rose (2005; see “Ballad,” p. 354).
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Poetic Forms
Of all genres, poetry has the most numerous and
the most carefully defined forms. The two tables
that follow here define and tell you when you can
find examples in this book of the many forms
taken by rhyme, repetition, and meter in poetry.
We have divided the tables according to whether or
not the poems use end-rhyme, and further organized them according to the language of origin of
each form. Poetry is a global phenomenon, and the
richness of English poetry derives in large part
from the willingness of its poets to incorporate
forms they have discovered by reading poetry from
nearly every corner of the world.
Rhyme was synonymous with the composition of
verse for nearly a millennium, from the twelfth century to the beginning of the twentieth, and it remains
for many the essential component of poetry. This is
true even for the myriad twentieth century and contemporary poets who choose open forms; nearly
always, they are consciously forgoing the conventions
of rhyme and the associations they have with it.
1. Forms Derived from the Italian: Terza rima and the Sonnet
A. Terza rima or
“third rhyme”
• A rhymed form invented by the Florentine poet Dante Alighieri.
• Terza rima is composed of an indeterminate number of tercets, or three-line
stanzas. The first and third lines of each tercet always rhyme with each other, and
the middle line rhymes with the first and third lines of the following tercet: aba
bcb cdc. Each tercet is a complete unit on its own, but the middle rhyme
anticipates and subtly links the thread of the poem from one tercet to the next.
• Introduced to the English language in the 15th century by Geoffrey Chaucer, terza
rima was popular among Romantic poets such as Shelley and Byron.
• The form effectively combined personal and social themes in the space of a single
long poem.
• Examples: Opening lines of T. S. Eliot’s “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” and
Dante’s Divine Comedy.
B. Sonnet
• The 14-line form was first employed by the medieval poets of Italy and southern
France and later perfected by the Florentine poet Francesco Petrarch.
• All sonnets break into two parts: the first presents two versions of the theme; the
second either resolves the theme or suggests a new approach.
• Sonnets provide a highly compressed and carefully structured form for the focused
presentation of a single poetic theme.
a. Petrarchan
sonnet
• Composed of four stanzas in two parts—an opening octave in two quatrains
with an abba rhyme scheme and a concluding sestet in two tercets, or three-line
stanzas, with a varied scheme.
b. Elizabethan or
Shakespearean
sonnet
• Composed of three quatrains, each with a different pair of interlocking (abab)
rhymes and a distinct syntactical unit presenting a distinct argument, this form
is followed by a rhyming couplet summing up the poem’s theme.
READER’S GUIDE
Rhymed Forms of Poetry
(continued)
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CHAPTER 12 WRITING ABOUT POETRY
Rhymed Forms of Poetry (continued)
1. Forms Derived from the Italian: Terza rima and the Sonnet (continued)
c. Miltonic sonnet
• John Milton expanded the sonnet’s thematic scope from a focus on love to include
politics, religion, and other concerns.
• This form combines an octave with a sestet, one rhyme scheme for each part, but
the break between the two parts is less marked than in the Petrarchan version.
• Seldom used during the 18th century, the sonnet was revived during the 19th
century by the Romantic poets, and remains a favored form to this day.
d. Sonnet
sequence
• Individual sonnets are linked together, each poem expressing a specific
variation on a general theme, most often a trajectory of love.
2. Forms Derived from the Provençal and French
• Intricately rhyming medieval forms, especially apt for musical performance, love songs, and the exploration of
sound patterns.
• Frequently, the repetition of the form will reflect the theme of the poem.
A. Villanelle
• Nineteen lines in total, the villanelle has five tercets and a concluding quatrain.
• Only two rhymes may be used, in an aba pattern, with the quatrain ending abaa
• The first and third lines of the first tercet form a refrain, or repeating line; they are
used alternately as the final line of the subsequent tercets, and together as the
concluding couplet of the quatrain.
B. Sestina
• Thirty-nine lines in total, the sestina is composed of six sextets and a three-line
envoi, or send-off.
• The same six words end each stanza, reproduced in a different order in each stanza
but always so that the word that concludes one stanza appears in the first line of the
next; all six words appear once again in the envoi.
• The end-words of a sestina may or may not rhyme with one another as well.
• The primary effect is a spiraling repetition rather than the rhyming pattern of the
villanelle.
C. Ballade
• Perfected in the 16th century by French poet and part-time criminal François
Villon, the ballade is composed of three stanzas, usually eight lines each, and a
four-line envoi, with a three-rhyme scheme, and a refrain repeated at the end of
each stanza.
• The medieval ballade was used for many subjects. The modern ballade is primarily
a vehicle for light and playful verse.
a. Ballad (not from
the French,
and not to be
confused with
the ballade)
D. Rondeau
354
• Traditional narrative songs, ballads are usually recited aloud and tell a story of
popular origin or legend, composed primarily of dialogue.
• The traditional ballad stanza is a quatrain alternating iambic tetrameter with
iambic trimeter, and rhyming in an abcb pattern.
• Still used today in popular music, and often appears as a title in other genres,
especially film, to denote an epic story of popular origin (see p. 352).
• The rondeau consists of between ten and fifteen lines of eight or ten syllables each
in three stanzas of uneven length, with two rhymes throughout and the first lines
repeated as a refrain in the later stanzas.
• Developed in 13th-century France as a setting for song lyrics, the rondeau is used
especially, although not exclusively, for light themes.
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WHAT IS POETRY?
• Devised by the Victorian poet Algernon Charles Swinburne, the roundel is closely
related to the rondeau.
• The refrain repeats the opening words of the first line.
F. Rondeau redoublé
(“doubled rondeau”)
• This form consists of five quatrains and a concluding quintain, or five-line stanza
• Using two rhymes throughout, the first quatrain introduces the four refrain lines
that appear, one after the other, as the last lines of the next four quatrains; the
concluding line of the poem repeats a phrase from the first refrain.
G. Triolet
• This is the shortest of the refrain-based forms.
• The triolet contains an eight-line stanza using two rhymes and two refrains,
repeating the first line as the fourth and seventh line, and the second line as the
eighth.
3. Forms Derived from the Greek and Latin
READER’S GUIDE
E. Roundel
• Originally unrhymed, the forms followed metrical rhythms only.
• The names of the feet of Greek and Latin verse provided the names of English meters (p. 347); however, they
are based on the quantity, or length of the vowels in each syllable (long or short), rather than on whether a
syllable is stressed or unstressed.
• As poets adapted these forms to the rhythms of English, often by translating poems from the classics, they
preserved the themes specific to each, and sometimes the structure of the stanzas, but they generally created
their own prosodic conventions to express those themes.
A. Ode
• The ode originated in the spoken choruses of ancient Greek tragedy; it was also
used as a long poetic form for passionate and mythological subjects.
• The odes of the Roman poet Horace, briefer and ordered into quatrains, were
more focused on philosophical and ethical concerns.
• Both forms were imitated in English, the Pindaric ode in irregular stanzas, the
Horatian ode in regular stanzas with often intricate rhyme scheme.
B. Elegy
• The Greek and Latin elegy was defined in terms of its meter—alternating lines of
dactylic hexameter and dactylic pentameter lines—and dealt with various subjects,
usually presented in the first-person by a speaker in the persona of the poet: love,
lamentations, meditations on fate and fortune.
• Most frequently used to mourn a death, concluding in consolation, and
composed in the elegiac stanza—an abab quatrain in iambic pentameter—the
modern elegy is also sometimes used for other themes, and sometimes composed
in elegiac couplets, in imitation of the classical meter.
C. Couplet
• The paired lines of the rhyming couplet were widely used during the Middle Ages
to translate the vast legendary and historical material of the classical world into
French, English, and other modern languages.
• Couplets were a dominant form during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries,
composed in lines of rhyming iambic pentameter.
a. Doggerel or
singsong
• A verse form in rhyming couplets with unvaried rhyme and rhythm.
• Doggerel is avoided in serious verse but is effective in nursery rhymes, song lyrics,
and satire.
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WRITING EXERCISE: WORKING WITH RHYMED FORMS
Choose one of the rhymed forms above and compose
a poem following the conventions of the form as
closely as possible. As preparation for the exercise,
you may wish to look at some of the additional
examples listed on a Web page, such as Representative
Poetry Online.
•
READER’S GUIDE
•
356
Prepare yourself the way working poets do:
choose your topic and consider which form will
be best suited to your topic.
Choose your rhyme words (feel free to consult
rhyming dictionaries on the Internet or in the
library if you get stuck).
•
•
Choose your refrains and other elements as
required.
Begin building your poem around the rhyme
words and refrains and the different combinations formed by them. Take your time to experiment, and watch for the ways the constraints of
the poem influence what you want to say while
what you want to say presses against those constraints. Some enjoy the process; others feel
unduly hampered by it. If you experience the latter sentiment, have a look at the Writing Exercise
that follows the Reader’s Guide for Unrhymed
Forms below instead.
Unrhymed Forms
There are as many varieties of unrhymed forms as there are rhymed forms, but their conventions are less
formalized. When reading unrhymed poetry, we can ask the following questions:
• What is their degree of metrical regularity?
• What other kinds of patterns—aural, visual, grammatical, or thematic—are present?
• What breaks in the patterns can you find?
1. Blank verse,
also known as
unrhymed iambic
pentameter, and
heroic verse
• This has long been the standard form for
dramatic and epic verse in English.
• Blank verse mirrors the patterns of natural
speech in varying degree.
2. Haiku, Tanka, and
Other Brief Forms
from Japan
• Lines in traditional Japanese poetry are
determined solely by the number of syllables.
• Patterns are based on sound, imagery,
grammar, associations between words, and
parallelisms within and between lines.
• Japan does have longer forms, but it is the
brief forms, especially the haiku, that have
had the most influence on Western poetry.
• With their sharp focus on the perception
or mood of a moment, these short forms
are purely lyric in intention, with no sense
of narrative or time passing.
• Shakespeare, Hamlet
• John Milton, Paradise Lost
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• Originating around 600 CE, the tanka
consists of a single sentence presented in
five lines of five, seven, five, seven, and
seven syllables, for a total of thirty-one
syllables.
• Ono no Komachi, “The
flowers withered”
B. Haiku
• The haiku consists of a single sentence
presented in three lines of five, seven,
and five syllables, for a total of seventeen
syllables.
• The haiku is meant to be a concrete
description without commentary or
symbolism, and its third line should present
a different phenomenon than the first two.
• Bashō, “Sleep on
horseback”; Richard
Wright, “In the falling
snow”
3. Free verse,
or open form
• A dominant poetic form of the 20th century.
• In the absence of conventional constraints
such as metrical rules, stanzaic structure,
and rhyme schemes, writers of open form
poetry face an enormous range of formal
choices.
• Elizabeth Bishop,
“The Fish”
4. Prose poem
• A prose poem does not have the visual
appearance or prosody of poetry but it can
have some of the other poetic aspects, such
as dense imagery, prominent repetitions or
sound patterns, and lyric description.
• Invented, or at least named, by the French
poet Charles Baudelaire, the prose poem
had its heyday during the period of
modernism, from the late 19th century
through the first decades of the 20th century.
READER’S GUIDE
A. Tanka
WRITING EXERCISE: WORKING WITH UNRHYMED FORMS
1.
2.
Choose one of the unrhymed forms above and
compose a poem following the conventions of
the form (or lack thereof) as closely as possible.
Write a brief description of the form you followed and the constraints you did or did not
impose on yourself.
3.
If you also completed the previous Writing
Exercise on rhymed forms (p. 356), write a
paragraph comparing the two exercises. If you
did not, write a paragraph discussing the experience of writing a poem in unrhymed form.
What came easily? What was most difficult?
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Imagining the world: poetry
Just as meter, rhyme, and repetition are tools for the
composition of poetry, so are they tools for critical
thinking and writing about poetry. And just as
aspiring poets must familiarize themselves with the
tools of their craft in order to put them to creative
use (or to decide to put them aside), so must we, as
readers of poetry, be familiar enough with the tools
of the genre to be able to discern the kinds of
meaning and arguments made through them. The
following three poems suggest the range of subjects
Poetry is language at its most distilled and powerful.
—RITA DOVE
available to the poet beyond the love poem, and the
different formal means three poets have chosen to
use to address their subject of the relationship
between individuals in society, which range from
poverty in a great metropolis to a nighttime journey, to an encounter in an airport bathroom.
Readings
London
William Blake 1757–1827
One of the major poets of English Romanticism, William Blake is equally well-known as a
print-maker and painter. Living all his life in London, Blake devoted himself to developing
a printing technique able to express his complex personal mythology in a seamless blend of
image and text. Among his works are Songs of Innocence and Experience (1794), The
Marriage of Heaven and Hell (1793), Jerusalem (1804), and Milton (1804). He also produced series of
watercolor illustrations to Dante’s Divine Comedy and Milton’s Paradise Lost.
London
I wander thro’ each charter’d street,
Near where the charter’d Thames does flow,
And mark in every face I meet
Marks of weakness, marks of woe.
In every cry of every Man,
In every Infant’s cry of fear,
In every voice, in every ban,
The mind-forg’d manacles I hear.
How the Chimney-sweeper’s cry
Every black’ning Church appalls;
And the hapless Soldier’s sigh
Runs in blood down Palace walls.
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READINGS
But most thro’ midnight streets I hear
How the youthful Harlot’s curse
Blasts the new born Infant’s tear,
And blights with plagues the Marriage hearse.
15
[1794]
“London,” as illustrated in William Blake’s book Songs of Innocence and Experience (1794).
QUESTIONS FOR REFLECTION AND DISCUSSION
1.
2.
As part of processing your reading of the poem,
look up the word “charter” in a dictionary.
Blake’s usage of the word is unusual here. What
meaning or meanings do you think it has in
this context? What is the effect of the repetition
of the word in lines 1 and 2?
Discuss the meter and rhythm of line 4 in relation to the meter and rhythm of the first quatrain as a whole. Compare it with lines 8, 12,
and 16.
3.
4.
5.
What is the sense of “mind-forg’d manacles”
and how does the alliteration affect the meaning of the line?
What is the relation between the speaker of the
poem and his subject? What tone does he take
toward it?
Study the illuminated version of the poem presented above. Compare it with the poem in its
plain-text version.
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Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening
Robert Frost 1874–1963
Robert Frost, winner of four Pulitzer Prizes and considered by many the greatest American poet
of the first half of the twentieth century, was born in San Francisco, California. Although educated at Dartmouth and Harvard, he would develop the poetic persona of a down-to-earth
New England farmer. After establishing himself as a poet in England, he bought a farm in New
Hampshire and taught as a professor at Amherst College from 1916 to 1938. “Stopping by Woods on a Snowy
Evening” is one of Robert Frost’s best-known poems. Composed, like “London,” in four quatrains of iambic tetrameter, its use of the meter is quite distinct. As you read Frost’s poem and compare it with “London,” consider not only
the effect of the radically different setting but the shift in the tone of the speaker.
Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening
Whose woods these are I think I know.
His house is in the village though;
He will not see me stopping here
To watch his woods fill up with snow.
My little horse must think it queer
To stop without a farmhouse near
Between the woods and frozen lake
The darkest evening of the year.
He gives his harness bells a shake
To ask if there is some mistake.
The only other sound’s the sweep
Of easy wind and downy flake.
The woods are lovely, dark and deep.
But I have promises to keep,
And miles to go before I sleep,
And miles to go before I sleep.
[1923]
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5
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READINGS
The home in Franconia, New Hampshire, purchased by Robert and Elinor Frost in 1915.
They lived here until 1920, and summered in the house until 1938.
QUESTIONS FOR REFLECTION AND DISCUSSION
1.
2.
Part of the soothing effect of Frost’s poem is its
unusual rhyme scheme. What is this rhyme
scheme, and how does it contribute to the
poem’s tone?
Unlike the meter in “London,” the final lines of
each quatrain do not break with the rhythm of
the previous lines. What is the effect of keeping
the meter regular throughout rather than
breaking its pattern, as Blake does in “London”?
3.
4.
Both poems impart the mood of a wandering,
solitary speaker. What is similar about the two
speakers, and what is different?
Discuss the poetic means whereby one poem
depicts the harsh life of the city, and another
poem portrays the quiet of the country.
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Singapore
Mary Oliver b. 1935
Born in Cleveland, Ohio, Mary Oliver attended Case Western University and Vassar
College. She has taught poetry at a number of different schools, and has received several fellowships and awards, including a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship
and a Guggenheim Fellowship. Her first volume of poetry, No Voyage and Other
Poems, appeared in 1963. Her collection American Primitive, which includes the poem “August”,
received the Pulitzer Prize in 1984. “Singapore” was published in Oliver’s 1990 collection, House of
Light. Like “Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening,” “Singapore” tells the story of a traveler and her
interaction with the world around her. Oliver chooses an open form—with no apparent meter, no
rhymes, and few repetitions—to describe the speaker’s unexpected encounter. As you read, compare the
tone with the previous two poems, and try to specify the different effect on your reading caused by the
lack of prosodic elements.
Singapore
In Singapore, in the airport,
a darkness was ripped from my eyes.
In the women’s restroom, one compartment
stood open.
A woman knelt there, washing something
in the white bowl.
5
Disgust argued in my stomach
and I felt, in my pocket, for my ticket.
A poem should always have birds in it.
Kingfishers, say, with their bold eyes and
gaudy wings.
Rivers are pleasant, and of course trees.
A waterfall, or if that’s not possible,
a fountain rising and falling.
A person wants to stand in a happy place,
in a poem.
When the woman turned I could not answer
her face.
Her beauty and her embarrassment
struggled together, and neither could win.
She smiled and I smiled. What kind of
nonsense is this?
Everybody needs a job.
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Yes, a person wants to stand in a happy place,
in a poem.
But first we must watch her as she stares
down at her labor, which is dull enough.
She is washing the tops of the airport ashtrays,
as big as hubcaps, with a blue rag.
Her small hands turn the metal, scrubbing
and rinsing.
She does not work slowly, nor quickly,
but like a river.
Her dark hair is like the wing of a bird.
I don’t doubt for a moment that she
loves her life.
And I want to rise up from the crust and
the slop and fly down to the river.
This probably won’t happen.
But maybe it will.
If the world were only pain and logic,
who would want it?
20
25
30
Of course, it isn’t.
Neither do I mean anything miraculous,
but only
the light that can shine out of a life.
I mean
the way she unfolded and refolded the
blue cloth,
The way her smile was only for my
sake; I mean
the way this poem is filled with trees,
and birds.
[1990]
35
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Orchids and tropical garden at Changi Airport, Singapore, an important global
transportation hub frequently cited for its service excellence. First opened in 1981, the
airport includes a number of flower gardens, along with a butterfly garden, a fish pond, and
a waterfall. Does the actual presence of nature (some of it added since Oliver first wrote her
poem “Singapore”) within the airport strengthen or weaken the effect of the contrast made
by the poem?
QUESTIONS FOR REFLECTION AND DISCUSSION
1.
2.
364
How do we know that we are reading a poem?
Does the lack of prosodic devices make the
poem seem more realistic than those of Blake
and Frost? Less realistic? How and why?
What about the subject of the poem makes
the speaker feel it to be inappropriate to put
in a poem? Do the poems by Blake and Frost
3.
4.
fit her criteria? Are they in “a happy place”?
Do they have birds in them?
In what way is the speaker justified in concluding
that her poem “is filled with trees, and birds”?
If you were going to write a poem emulating
one of these three poems, or responding to it,
which one would you choose, and why?
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WRITING EXERCISE: A SOCIAL RESPONSE
Social poems are often meant to provoke a
response in the reader; certainly this is the case of
“London.” Write a poem or a paragraph responding to the speaker of one of the three poems above.
You might choose to imagine the point of view of
the chimney sweep, the traveler’s horse, or the
cleaning woman; or you might choose to address
the speaker as a friend or audience member who
has just finished listening to the poem. Try as
much as possible to respond using the same terms
and imagery that appear in the poem.
Three poems about social relations
Melissa Pabon’s writing assignment on the three
poems you have just read was in two parts. First,
she was asked to write summaries of “London,”
“Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening,” and
“Singapore.” After completing the summaries, she
was asked to use them as the basis for a comparison paper on the three poems.
Student Model
Pabon 1
Melissa Pabon
English Composition 2
Professor Martin
22 September 2009
Summaries of “London,” “Stopping by Woods
on a Snowy Evening,” and “Singapore”
“London” (1794) by William Blake is about the corruption and disease that run
rampant in the city for which the poem is named. The speaker expresses his disdain
for the monarchy that has an oppressive control over the city but sheds a blind eye
toward its citizens. Of these citizens, the speaker describes the plight of the chimney
sweep, young children who cry both literally and figuratively about their jobs, and the
soldier who risks life and limb for a country that will not grant him any recognition.
The speaker also describes the prostitute who roams the streets, passing disease from
bed to bed, contributing to the ever growing population of orphans in the city. By
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describing the problems of London, Blake shows the reader the obligation that the
monarchy has to its people and the ever widening gap between the rich and the poor.
“Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening” (1923) by Robert Frost is a poem that is
two-fold in meaning. At first glance the poem is about a man who, while riding his
horse on “the darkest evening of the year,” gets driven off the usual path and ends up
in a secluded area of the woods. His horse notices the change en route and motions
for his rider to get back on course. The speaker comes to the vital realization that even
though the woods are lovely and inviting, he has much to do before his time is up.
The repetition in the last two stanzas of the poem helps to reiterate for the speaker his
promise to stay on the beaten track and not be distracted from the road of life.
In the poem “Singapore” (1990), Mary Oliver writes about the encounter with a
cleaning lady in the restroom of a Singapore airport. The speaker walks into the restroom while the bathroom attendant is kneeling on the floor, busily wiping a toilet
bowl. When the two women encounter each other, the attendant smiles to hide her
embarrassment while the speaker is overcome with disgust. The speaker finds poetry
in the encounter with the woman by comparing her dark hair to the “wing of a
bird.” Poetry is seeing beauty in everyday things and being able to extract a multitude of feelings and ideas from one little incident.
QUESTIONS FOR REFLECTION AND DISCUSSION
1.
2.
A summary should report the events of a poem
without offering an interpretation of their
meaning. How well has Melissa succeeded in
each case in summarizing without interpreting?
A summary should analyze the formal elements
of the poem as well as its events. How well has
3.
Melissa incorporated an analysis of formal elements in each summary?
In your opinion, which of the three summaries
is more effective, and why? Which is less effective, and why?
WRITING EXERCISE: REVISING A SUMMARY
1.
2.
366
Choose one of Melissa Pabon’s three summaries and revise it. Include material from your
reflection and discussion in your summary.
Compare your summary with Melissa’s. Are
you pleased with the result? Have you
responded to everything that you critiqued in
her summary? Looking back, is there anything
in her summary that you prefer to your own?
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Here is the comparison paper Melissa wrote after
completing her summaries of the three poems. As
you read it, consider how well she has incorporated
her work on the summaries into the paper. Annotate
and comment on the paper as you would during a
peer review. Consider the strengths and weaknesses of
this draft, and how Melissa should revise it to clarify
her argument and make her writing more effective.
Pabon 1
Melissa Pabon
English Composition 2
Professor Martin
5 October 2009
The Importance of Everyday Occurrences in
“London,” “Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening,” and “Singapore”
“London” (1794) by William Blake, “Singapore” (1990) by Mary Oliver, and
“Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening” (1923) by Robert Frost are three poems
that are similar yet different in many ways. All three poems are comparable in that
their subject matter is about everyday occurrences that contain hidden meanings and
themes. In contrast, the structure and rhythm of each poem is totally different, ranging from free verse to traditional verse.
In Blake’s poem “London,” the speaker describes for the reader his daily encounters with the disease and rampant corruption that line London’s “chartered” streets.
As he depicts the plight of the city’s inhabitants, from the figurative and literal cries
of the chimney-sweep to the “harlot’s curse,” one cannot help but hear in each line
the disdain for authority, the distance between the rich and the poor, and the excessiveness of corruption which are some of the themes that Blake addresses as problems that need to be reformed. Blake does this deliberately to shock people into
action in order to make things better for the city. Mary Oliver’s theme in her poem
“Singapore” is apparent but is still kept slightly under wraps as not to be too blatant
or in your face. She writes of an awkward encounter in a Singapore bathroom which
is anything but sweet-smelling roses. She makes a social comment to the reader that
beauty is in the eye of the beholder. Oliver breaks with the notion that all poems, or
poetry itself, should be about a particular theme. In fact, she takes the discomfort
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Pabon 2
and humiliation of the situation and goes beyond these emotions to discover an
allure, charm, and elegance that are undetected by the naked eye.
Of the three poems, Robert Frost’s “Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening” is the
most ambiguous when it comes to theme and meaning. When reading it, he or she
finds that the poem must be read more than once to come up with a clear idea of what
is going on. At first glance, we get an account of a man who, while taking a leisurely
ride down a familiar path, gets lost and comes across an unexplored woods. It is only
when one digs down below the surface he or she hits on the theme of death and dying.
The speaker alludes to the theme of the poem in the eighth line and in the repetition
of the last two lines of the poem where he talks of “miles to go before I sleep.”
The poems of Blake, Oliver, and Frost are distinct in form and style. “London”
and “Stopping by Woods” are very much alike in that they are written in traditional
verse. Both poems have a rhyme scheme, which is a habitual feature of poetry. In
“London,” Blake features four quatrains in an abab, cdcd, efef, gdgd scheme. Frost’s
poem also features four quatrains, but in an unusual aaba, bbcb, ccdc, dddd rhyme
scheme. Another feature that is present in Frost’s poem is the refrain. This is apparent in the last two verses of the poem. The refrain is used for dramatic effect as a
reminder to the narrator of his urgency to keep on course and not fall off the beaten
path. “Singapore” does not make use of traditional rhyming or meter. Oliver instead
uses free verse in which there is no rhyme scheme or set form. Her poem is not conventional in any sense, even though there is style and function. “Singapore” was written as a break from conformity, which Oliver does with great passion and zeal. The
commonplace use of rhyme in poetry would not make any difference and possibly
detract from the essence of the poem. Oliver sends a message to all writers and poets
saying that a good poem does not need to be convoluted or tainted, it just has to
evoke a great deal of sentiment and emotion.
“London,” “Singapore,” and “Stopping by Woods” are three poems that are equally
diverse as well as related in many ways. Each poem is similar in that they contain
hidden meanings that are concealed in ordinary everyday occurrences. “London” is
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Pabon 3
on the surface about a city wallowing in filth and corruption. The underlying theme
is the narrator’s yearning for reform as well as a call for action by the monarchy and
possibly by the citizens of London. Mary Oliver takes the theme of beauty and allure
from an awkward encounter in a Singapore bathroom. She breaks stereotypes by
twisting preconceived notions of what traditional poetry should be about. “Stopping
by Woods” is the most convoluted of the three poems when it comes to meaning.
Readers often have to tackle the poem more than once to find out that its theme is
death and dying. Each of the poems is different in form and style. Frost and Blake
both use end rhyme. The major difference between the two is the rhyme scheme they
use, and Frost’s use of a refrain. “Singapore” uses free verse. Oliver’s decision to use
no rhyme scheme is deliberate. She greatly wants to break down barriers set up by
conventional poetry. Not all poetry has to abide by a set of rules written in stone.
Poetry must be able to evoke an abundance of emotions that can range from the
very high to the very low. Only then can it truly point us in the direction that the
writer wants us to follow.
Pabon 4
Works Cited
Blake, William. “London.” Pike and Acosta 175.
Frost, Robert. “Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening.” Pike and Acosta 176.
Oliver, Mary. “Singapore.” Pike and Acosta 177.
Pike, David L., and Ana M. Acosta, ed. Literature: A World of Writing. New York:
Pearson Longman, 2011. Print.
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QUESTIONS FOR REFLECTION AND DISCUSSION
1.
2.
3.
What is Melissa’s argument? What is her thesis?
Are they clearly expressed? How well does each
paragraph support and develop her argument?
How has Melissa built on the work in her
summaries?
What are the strengths of Melissa’s draft? What
are its weaknesses?
4.
Go through Melissa’s draft carefully, marking
and commenting in terms of grammar and
mechanics as well as style and argument. Using
the guidelines for revision, formulate a detailed
plan for revisions.
WRITING EXERCISE: REVISING A COMPARISON PAPER
1.
Write a revision of Melissa Pabon’s comparison
paper based on your review as outlined in the
Questions for Reflection and Discussion (#4).
Detail her argument, add what you think needs
to be added, expand what works in her draft,
eliminate repetition, and rewrite or eliminate
what does not work.
2.
Review your own revision and evaluate its
strengths and weaknesses. In what ways have
you improved on Melissa’s draft? In what ways
could you revise your own draft to improve it
further?
IMAGINING THE WORLD: TOPICS FOR ESSAYS
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
Analyze the use of meter and/or rhyme in a
poem included in this book.
Find an open form poem and analyze its formal components.
Compare a rhyming and a nonrhyming poem.
Compare two or three poems that use the same
poetic form.
Compare two or three poems by the same poet,
using either selections in this book or from
another source.
6.
7.
Write an essay analyzing the use of rhyme in a
contemporary musical genre such as hip-hop,
show tunes, or rock.
Write an essay on the use of prosody in contemporary poetry.
Poetry casebook: Langston Hughes
Langston Hughes was born in Joplin, Missouri, in
1902. After his parents separated during his early
years, he and his mother often lived a life of itinerant
poverty, mostly in Kansas. Hughes attended high
school in Cleveland, where as a senior he wrote “The
Negro Speaks of Rivers.” Reluctantly supported by his
370
father, he attended Columbia University for a year
before withdrawing. After a series of menial jobs,
Hughes became a merchant seaman in 1923 and visited the ports of West Africa. For a time he lived in
Paris, Genoa, and Rome, before returning to the
United States. The publication of The Weary Blues
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POETRY CASEBOOK: LANGSTON HUGHES
Langston Hughes
(1926) earned him immediate fame, which he solidified a few months later with his pioneering essay
“The Negro Artist and the Racial Mountain.” In 1926
he also entered Lincoln University in Pennsylvania,
from which he graduated in 1929. By then Hughes
was already one of the central figures of the Harlem
Renaissance, the flowering of African American arts
and literature in the Harlem neighborhood of upper
Manhattan in New York City during the 1920s. A
strikingly versatile author, Hughes worked in fiction,
drama, translation, criticism, opera libretti, memoir,
cinema, and songwriting, as well as poetry. He also
became a tireless promoter of African American culture, crisscrossing the United States on speaking tours
as well as compiling twenty-eight anthologies of
African American folklore and poetry. His newspaper
columns, which often reported conversations with an
imaginary Harlem friend named Jesse B. Semple,
nicknamed “Simple,” attracted an especially large following. During the 1930s Hughes became involved in
radical politics and traveled to the Soviet Union, but
after World War II he gradually shifted to mainstream
progressive politics. In his last years he became a
spokesman for the moderate wing of the civil rights
movement. He died in Harlem in 1967.
Poems
The Negro Speaks of Rivers
(1921) 1926
I’ve known rivers:
I’ve known rivers ancient as the world and
older than the flow of human blood
in human veins.
My soul has grown deep like the rivers.
I bathed in the Euphrates when dawns
were young.
I built my hut near the Congo and it
lulled me to sleep.
I looked upon the Nile and raised the
pyramids above it.
I heard the singing of the Mississippi when
Abe Lincoln went down to New Orleans,
and I’ve seen its muddy bosom turn all golden in the sunset.
5
I’ve known rivers:
Ancient, dusky rivers.
My soul has grown deep like the rivers.
10
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CHAPTER 12 WRITING ABOUT POETRY
The Weary Blues
1926
Droning a drowsy syncopated tune,
Rocking back and forth to a mellow croon,
I heard a Negro play.
Down on Lenox Avenue the other night
By the pale dull pallor of an old gas light
He did a lazy sway. . . .
He did a lazy sway. . . .
To the tune o’ those Weary Blues.
With his ebony hands on each ivory key
He made that poor piano moan with melody.
O Blues!
Swaying to and fro on his rickety stool
He played that sad raggy tune like a musical
fool.
Sweet Blues!
Coming from a black man’s soul.
O Blues!
In a deep song voice with a melancholy tone
I heard that Negro sing, that old piano moan—
“Ain’t got nobody in all this world,
Ain’t got nobody but ma self.
I’s gwine to quit ma frownin’
And put ma troubles on the shelf.”
Thump, thump, thump, went his foot
on the floor.
He played a few chords then he sang
some more—
“I got the Weary Blues
And I can’t be satisfied.
Got the Weary Blues
And can’t be satisfied—
I ain’t happy no mo’
And I wish that I had died.”
The Weary Blues. This poem quotes the first blues song Hughes had ever heard, “The Weary Blues,” which begins, “I got the
weary blues / And I can’t be satisfied/ . . . I ain’t happy no mo’ / And I wish that I had died.”
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5
10
15
20
25
30
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POETRY CASEBOOK: LANGSTON HUGHES
And far into the night he crooned that tune.
The stars went out and so did the moon.
The singer stopped playing and went to bed
While the Weary Blues echoed through his head.
He slept like a rock or a man that’s dead.
35
Theme for English B
1951
The instructor said,
Go home and write
a page tonight.
And let that page come out of you—
Then, it will be true.
I wonder if it’s that simple?
I am twenty-two, colored, born in
Winston-Salem.
I went to school there, then Durham, then here
to this college on the hill above Harlem.
I am the only colored student in my class.
The steps from the hill lead down into Harlem,
through a park, then I cross St. Nicholas,
Eighth Avenue, Seventh, and I come to the Y,
the Harlem Branch Y, where I take the elevator
up to my room, sit down, and write this page
It’s not easy to know what is true for you or me
at twenty-two, my age. But I guess I’m what
I feel and see and hear, Harlem, I hear you:
hear you, hear me—we two—you, me, talk
on this page.
(I hear New York, too.) Me—who?
Well, I like to eat, sleep, drink, and be in love.
I like to work, read, learn, and understand life.
5
10
15
20
(continued)
Theme for English B. 9 college on the hill above Harlem: Columbia University, where Hughes was briefly a student. (Note, however, that this
poem is not autobiographical. The young speaker is a character invented by the middle-aged author.) 24 Bessie: Bessie Smith (1898?–1937)
was a popular blues singer often called the “Empress of the Blues.”
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CHAPTER 12 WRITING ABOUT POETRY
I like a pipe for a Christmas present,
or records—Bessie, bop, or Bach.
I guess being colored doesn’t make me not
like
the same things other folks like who are
other races.
So will my page be colored that I write?
Being me, it will not be white.
But it will be
a part of you, instructor.
You are white—
yet a part of me, as I am a part of you.
That’s American.
Sometimes perhaps you don’t want to be a
part of me.
Nor do I often want to be a part of you.
But we are, that’s true!
As I learn from you,
I guess you learn from me—
although you’re older—and white—
and somewhat more free.
This is my page for English B.
25
30
35
40
Langston Hughes on Langston Hughes
The Negro Artist and the Racial Mountain
1926
Most of my own poems are racial in theme and
treatment, derived from the life I know. In many of
them I try to grasp and hold some of the meanings
and rhythms of jazz. I am as sincere as I know how
to be in these poems and yet after every reading I
answer questions like these from my own people:
Do you think Negroes should always write about
Negroes? I wish you wouldn’t read some of your
poems to white folks. How do you find anything
374
interesting in a place like a cabaret? Why do you
write about black people? You aren’t black. What
makes you do so many jazz poems?
But jazz to me is one of the inherent
expressions of Negro life in America; the eternal
tom-tom beating in the Negro soul—the tom-tom
of revolt against weariness in a white world, a world
of subway trains, and work, work, work; the tomtom of joy and laughter, and pain swallowed in a
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Lenox Avenue, Harlem, in 1925.
smile. Yet the Philadelphia clubwoman is ashamed
to say that her race created it and she does not like
me to write about it. The old subconscious “white is
best” runs through her mind. Years of study under
white teachers, a lifetime of white books, pictures,
and papers, and white manners, morals, and Puritan
standards made her dislike the spirituals. And now
she turns up her nose at jazz and all its
manifestations—likewise almost everything else
distinctly racial. She doesn’t care for the Winold
Reiss portraits of Negroes because they are “too
Negro.” She does not want a true picture of herself
from anybody. She wants the artist to flatter her, to
make the white world believe that all Negroes are as
smug and as near white in soul as she wants to be.
But, to my mind, it is the duty of the younger Negro
artist, if he accepts any duties at all from outsiders,
to change through the force of his art that old
whispering “I want to be white,” hidden in the
aspirations of his people, to “Why should I want to
be white? I am a Negro—and beautiful.”
So I am ashamed for the black poet who says,
“I want to be a poet, not a Negro poet,” as though
his own racial world were not as interesting as any
other world. I am ashamed, too, for the colored
artist who runs from the painting of Negro faces to
the painting of sunsets after the manner of the
academicians because he fears the strange unwhiteness of his own features. An artist must be free
to choose what he does, certainly, but he must also
never be afraid to do what he might choose.
From “The Negro Artist and the Racial
Mountain”
Compare
Hughes’s comments on the African American artist
with Darryl Pinckney’s critical observations on
Langston Hughes’s public identity as a black poet.
The Harlem Renaissance
1940
White people began to come to Harlem in droves. For
several years they packed the expensive Cotton Club
on Lenox Avenue. But I was never there, because the
Cotton Club was a Jim Crow club for gangsters and
monied whites. They were not cordial to Negro
patronage, unless you were a celebrity like Bojangles.*
So Harlem Negroes did not like the Cotton Club and
never appreciated its Jim Crow policy in the very heart
*Bojangles: Bill “Bojangles” Robinson (1876–1949), dancer.
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CHAPTER 12 WRITING ABOUT POETRY
of their dark community. Nor did ordinary Negroes
like the growing influx of whites toward Harlem after
sundown, flooding the little cabarets and bars where
formerly only colored people laughed and sang, and
where now the strangers were given the best ringside
tables to sit and stare at the Negro customers—like
amusing animals in a zoo.
The Negroes said: “We can’t go downtown and sit
and stare at you in your clubs. You won’t even let us
in your clubs.” But they didn’t say it out loud—for
Negroes are practically never rude to white people.
So thousands of whites came to Harlem night after
night, thinking the Negroes loved to have them
there, and firmly believing that all Harlemites left
their houses at sundown to sing and dance in
cabarets, because most of the whites saw nothing
but the cabarets, not the houses.
Some of the owners of Harlem clubs, delighted
at the flood of white patronage, made the grievous
error of barring their own race, after the manner of
the famous Cotton Club. But most of these quickly
lost business and folded up, because they failed to
realize that a large part of the Harlem attraction for
downtown New Yorkers lay in simply watching the
colored customers amuse themselves. And the
smaller clubs, of course, had no big floor shows
or a name band like the Cotton Club, where Duke
Ellington usually held forth, so, without black
patronage, they were not amusing at all.
Some of the small clubs, however, had people
like Gladys Bentley, who was something worth
discovering in those days, before she got famous,
acquired an accompanist, specially written material,
and conscious vulgarity. But for two or three
amazing years, Miss Bentley sat, and played a big
piano all night long, literally all night, without
stopping—singing songs like “The St. James
Infirmary,” from ten in the evening until dawn, with
scarcely a break between the notes, sliding from one
376
song to another, with a powerful and continuous
underbeat of jungle rhythm. Miss Bentley was an
amazing exhibition of musical energy—a large, dark,
masculine lady, whose feet pounded the floor while
her fingers pounded the keyboard—a perfect piece
of African sculpture, animated by her own rhythm.
But when the place where she played became
too well known, she began to sing with an
accompanist, became a star, moved to a larger place,
then downtown, and is now in Hollywood. The old
magic of the woman and the piano and the night
and the rhythm being one is gone. But everything
goes, one way or another. The ’20s are gone and lots
of fine things in Harlem night life have disappeared
like snow in the sun—since it became utterly
commercial, planned for the downtown tourist
trade, and therefore dull.
The lindy-hoppers at the Savoy even began to
practice acrobatic routines, and to do absurd things
for the entertainment of the whites, that probably
never would have entered their heads to attempt
merely for their own effortless amusement. Some of
the lindy-hoppers had cards printed with their
names on them and became dance professors
teaching the tourists. Then Harlem nights became
show nights for the Nordics.
Some critics say that that is what happened to
certain Negro writers, too—that they ceased to
write to amuse themselves and began to write to
amuse and entertain white people, and in so doing
distorted and overcolored their material, and left
out a great many things they thought would offend
their American brothers of a lighter complexion.
Maybe—since Negroes have writer-racketeers, as
has any other race. But I have known almost all of
them, and most of the good ones have tried to be
honest, write honestly, and express their world as
they saw it.
From The Big Sea
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Critics on Langston Hughes
Hughes as an Experimentalist
Arnold Rampersad (b. 1941)
1991
From his first publication of verse in the Crisis,
Hughes had reflected his admiration for Sandburg
and Whitman by experimenting with free verse as
opposed to committing himself conservatively to
rhyme. Even when he employed rhyme in his verse,
as he often did, Hughes composed with relative
casualness—unlike other major black poets of the
day, such as Countee Cullen and Claude McKay,
with their highly wrought stanzas. He seemed to
prefer, as Whitman and Sandburg had preferred, to
write lines that captured the cadences of common
American speech, with his ear always especially
attuned to the variety of black American language.
This last aspect was only a token of his emotional
and aesthetic involvement in black American
culture, which he increasingly saw as his prime
source of inspiration, even as he regarded black
Americans (“Loud laughers in the hands of Fate— /
My People”) as his only indispensable audience.
Early poems captured some of the sights and
sounds of ecstatic black church worship (“Glory!
Hallelujah!”), but Hughes’s greatest technical
accomplishment as a poet was in his fusing of the
rhythms of blues and jazz with traditional poetry.
This technique, which he employed his entire life,
surfaced in his art around 1923 with the landmark
poem “The Weary Blues,” in which the persona
recalls hearing a blues singer and piano player
(“Sweet Blues! / Coming from a black man’s soul”)
performing in what most likely is a speakeasy in
Harlem. The persona recalls the plaintive verse
intoned by the singer (“Ain’t got nobody in all this
world, / Ain’t got nobody but ma self.”) but finally
surrenders to the mystery and magic of the blues
singer’s art. In the process, Hughes had taken an
indigenous African American art form, perhaps the
most vivid and commanding of all, and preserved
its authenticity even as he formally enshrined it in
the midst of a poem in traditional European form.
“The Weary Blues,” a work virtually
unprecedented in American poetry in its blending
of black and white rhythms and forms, won Hughes
the first prize for poetry in May 1925 in the epochal
literary contest sponsored by Opportunity
magazine, which marked the first high point of the
Harlem Renaissance. The work also confirmed his
leadership, along with Countee Cullen, of all the
younger poets of the burgeoning movement. For
Hughes, it was only the first step in his poetical
tribute to blues and jazz. By the time of his second
volume of verse, Fine Clothes to the Jew (1927), he
was writing blues poems without either apology or
framing devices taken from the traditional world of
poetry. He was also delving into the basic subject
matters of the blues—love and raw sexuality, deep
sorrow and sudden violence, poverty and
heartbreak. These subjects, treated with sympathy
for the poor and dispossessed, and without false
piety, made him easily the most controversial black
poet of his time.
From “Langston Hughes”
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A Reading of “Dream Deferred”
Onwuchekwa Jemie (b. 1940)
1976
The deferred dream is examined through a variety of
human agencies, of interlocking and recurring voices
and motifs fragmented and scattered throughout the
six sections of the poem. Much as in bebop, the
pattern is one of constant reversals and contrasts.
Frequently the poems are placed in thematic clusters,
with poems within the cluster arranged in
contrasting pairs. Montage [of a Dream Deferred]
does not move in a straight line; its component
poems move off in invisible directions, reappear and
touch, creating a complex tapestry or mosaic.
The dream theme itself is carried in the
musical motifs. It is especially characterized by the
rumble (“The boogie-woogie rumble / Of a dream
deferred”)—that rapid thumping and tumbling of
notes which so powerfully drives to the bottom of
the emotions, stirring feelings too deep to be
touched by the normal successions of notes and
common rhythms. The rumble is an atomic
explosion of musical energy, an articulate
confusion, a moment of epiphany, a flash of
blinding light in which all things are suddenly made
clear. The theme is sounded at strategic times,
culminating in the final section. . . .
The poet has taken us on a guided tour of
microcosmic Harlem, day and night, past and
present. And as a new day dawns and the poem
moves into a summing up in the final section, he
again poses the question and examines the
possibilities:
What happens to a dream deferred?
Does it dry up
like a raisin in the sun?
Or fester like a sore—
And then run?
378
Does it stink like rotten meat?
Or crust and sugar over—
like a syrupy sweet?
Maybe it just sags
like a heavy load.
Or does it explode?
The images are sensory, domestic, earthy, like
blues images. The stress is on deterioration—
drying, rotting, festering, souring—on loss of
essential natural quality. The raisin has fallen from
a fresh, juicy grape to a dehydrated but still edible
raisin to a sun-baked and inedible dead bone of
itself. The Afro-American is not unlike the raisin,
for he is in a sense a dessicated trunk of his original
African self, used and abandoned in the American
wilderness with the stipulation that he rot and
disappear. Like the raisin lying neglected in the
scorching sun, the black man is treated as a thing of
no consequence. But the raisin refuses the fate
assigned to it, metamorphoses instead into a
malignant living sore that will not heal or
disappear. Like the raisin, a sore is but a little thing,
inconsequential on the surface but in fact
symptomatic of a serious disorder. Its stink is like
the stink of the rotten meat sold to black folks in so
many ghetto groceries; meat no longer suitable for
human use, deathly. And while a syrupy sweet is not
central to the diet as meat might be, still it is a
rounding-off final pleasure (dessert) at the end of a
meal, or a delicious surprise that a child looks
forward to at Halloween or Christmas. But that
final pleasure turns out to be a pain. Aged, spoiled
candy leaves a sickly taste in the mouth; sweetness
gone bad turns a treat into a trick.
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In short, a dream deferred can be a terrifying
thing. Its greatest threat is its unpredictability, and
for this reason the question format is especially
fitting. Questions demand the reader’s
participation, corner and sweep him headlong to
the final, inescapable conclusion.
From Langston Hughes:
An Introduction to the Poetry
The elements of the deferred dream are, like
the raisin, sore, meat, and candy, little things of no
great consequence in themselves. But their
unrelieved accretion packs together considerable
pressure. Their combined weight becomes too
great to carry about indefinitely: not only does the
weight increase from continued accumulation, but
the longer it is carried the heavier it feels. The load
sags from its own weight, and the carrier sags with
it; and if he should drop it, it just might explode
from all its strange, tortured, and compressed
energies.
For Further Reading
William Carlos Williams—8 poems
William Butler Yeats—8 poems (plus Yeats on
Writing)
William Blake—6 poems
Thomas Hardy—6 poems
You can study several other poets in depth in this
book. Writers who are represented at length include:
Robert Frost—12 poems (plus Frost on Writing)
William Shakespeare—8 poems
WRITING EFFECTIVELY: TOPICS FOR WRITING ABOUT LANGSTON HUGHES
1.
Compare and contrast the use of first-person
voices in two poems by Langston Hughes
(such as “I, Too” and “Theme for English B” or
“Mother to Son” and “The Negro Speaks of
Rivers”). In what ways does the speaker’s “I”
2.
differ in each poem and in what ways is it
similar?
Discussing a single poem by Hughes, examine
how musical forms (such as jazz, blues, or popular song) help shape the effect of the work.
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