So bleak and dead is happiness for me;
Despondency is light, for there the world
does press the spirit - give it form in tight,
compacted categories: tidy there,
and definite. For dark and loathsome joy;
in that, a boundless all aren't I - a nought,
and selfless. All and not.
Have I succeded in creating blank verse ? And, what do you think, anyway ?
Blank verse poem.
all till the last line. It needs 4 more syllables I believe, if you want truly bonafide iambic pentameter blank verse. But I wouldn't stress out about it unless the four syllables come naturally.
Your effort would be deemed pretty good, if you lived a few centuries ago. Today, however, I'd call this "archaic;" one of the things I've learned in this forum is how to spot archaic language. The problem with this poem is not the meter - that is flawless, as far as I can tell - it's the rearranging the order of normal speech patterns and syntax, and adding words for no reason, just to fit that meter. For example:
Despondency is light, for there the world
does press the spirit - give it form in tight,
compacted categories: tidy there,
and definite.
reads much more naturally as
Despondency is light; there the world
presses the spirit - gives it form in tight
compacted categories: tidy and definite.
Unfortunately, this ruins the meter completely.
Or take the first line, another good example of rearrangement:
So bleak and dead is happiness for me;
Happiness is bleak and dead for me; seems to work better, I think, because it reads more like we would say it today, and the meter is still intact.
These are all just opinions, take or leave them at your pleasure.
- Caleb
Your effort would be deemed pretty good, if you lived a few centuries ago. Today, however, I'd call this "archaic;" one of the things I've learned in this forum is how to spot archaic language. The problem with this poem is not the meter - that is flawless, as far as I can tell - it's the rearranging the order of normal speech patterns and syntax, and adding words for no reason, just to fit that meter. For example:
Despondency is light, for there the world
does press the spirit - give it form in tight,
compacted categories: tidy there,
and definite.
reads much more naturally as
Despondency is light; there the world
presses the spirit - gives it form in tight
compacted categories: tidy and definite.
Unfortunately, this ruins the meter completely.
Or take the first line, another good example of rearrangement:
So bleak and dead is happiness for me;
Happiness is bleak and dead for me; seems to work better, I think, because it reads more like we would say it today, and the meter is still intact.
These are all just opinions, take or leave them at your pleasure.
- Caleb
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TilDeathOverTakesMe
- Posts: 40
- Joined: Fri Sep 09, 2005 9:40 pm
Aye, thanks for that.
I have noticed the opposition to anchronisms here: tell me, do you think that archaic language can ever be justifiably used ? I'd like to write poetry about mythology and the like in metre eventually, so presumably archaicisms would add to the tone in such contexts...
[EDIT] Oh, aye, I know that the last line is lacking syllables, I thought that sort of "untied end" was permissable.
I have noticed the opposition to anchronisms here: tell me, do you think that archaic language can ever be justifiably used ? I'd like to write poetry about mythology and the like in metre eventually, so presumably archaicisms would add to the tone in such contexts...
[EDIT] Oh, aye, I know that the last line is lacking syllables, I thought that sort of "untied end" was permissable.
I guess I should add that "Happiness is bleak and dead for me" would be called a "headless iamb" - but it is pretty much accepted as a standard opening for anything sonnety.
- Caleb
PS: I don't know if untied ends are permissable or not, traditionally speaking.
Unfortunately you're going to get nothing but opinions here - I have not seen it done by anyone modern (published, on forums like this, or otherwise) well enough to believe it can be justified in poetry. There are good examples of this other literature, the most famous I can think of would be J. R. R. Tolkien, maybe you've read something of his, who wrote mythology in novel/epic form with great success, putting it mildly. Though it was not what I would call "archaic" (no thees and thous), it did read as though it was something very old and a lot of the syntax was reversed. It was used sparingly though, and subtlely. I'll see if I can come up with a quote to back up my point here, but if you could somehow capture that style in a poem, you'd have a lot of success.tell me, do you think that archaic language can ever be justifiably used ?
- Caleb
PS: I don't know if untied ends are permissable or not, traditionally speaking.
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TilDeathOverTakesMe
- Posts: 40
- Joined: Fri Sep 09, 2005 9:40 pm
Ahh, "headless iambs". That makes everything a lot easier.
Can you explain something to me...
"Of man's first disobedience and the fruit"
U S / U S / U S / U S / U U / S
Eh ?!
Can you explain something to me...
"Of man's first disobedience and the fruit"
U S / U S / U S / U S / U U / S
Eh ?!
Milton wasn't a big fan of rhyme or meter at the time he wrote Paradise Lost, if I understand his preface correctly.
viewtopic.php?t=11
viewtopic.php?t=11
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TilDeathOverTakesMe
- Posts: 40
- Joined: Fri Sep 09, 2005 9:40 pm
No, no. I'm sure that's not true. The majority of the lines are iambic pentameter.
e.g.
of THAT forBIDden TREE, whose MORtal TASTE
brought DEATH unTO the WORLD and ALL our WOE
with LOSS of EDen TILL one GREATer MAN
reSTORE us, AND reGAIN the BLISSful SEAT.
The Preface's first line reads :
"The measure is English heroic verse without rhyme, as that of Homer in Greek and of Virgil in Latin."
Heroic verse means strict iambic pentameter, doesn't it ?
But that first line is weird.
e.g.
of THAT forBIDden TREE, whose MORtal TASTE
brought DEATH unTO the WORLD and ALL our WOE
with LOSS of EDen TILL one GREATer MAN
reSTORE us, AND reGAIN the BLISSful SEAT.
The Preface's first line reads :
"The measure is English heroic verse without rhyme, as that of Homer in Greek and of Virgil in Latin."
Heroic verse means strict iambic pentameter, doesn't it ?
But that first line is weird.
Well, there are several answers, I suppose.
One is that the Preface I read was written after the fact, and since I'm at work I can't check the book I got that out of, but it simply means his views changed since Paradise Lost was written. That means that the words should fit into imabic pentameter verse. Now, the English-speaking people of Milton's time might have placed the stresses on the words differently. This is an interesting thing to think about, unfortunately it's very hard to prove.
of MAN's first DISoBEdience AND the FRUIT.
Another way to answer is to say that Milton simply wasn't a fan. A poem doesn't have to have meter an rhyme to be a poem, not that meter and rhyme are wrong. Neither does the presence of rhyme and meter make words poetry. So a little mistake on that first line, eh, doesn't matter to Milton.
Another possibility is that there is a pattern to Milton's heroic verse that we missed - I've seen sonnets incorporate iambic tetrameter, for example, just to mix it up a little.
Unfortunately I am not qualified to take a guess at which possibility, if any of them, is true.
- Caleb
One is that the Preface I read was written after the fact, and since I'm at work I can't check the book I got that out of, but it simply means his views changed since Paradise Lost was written. That means that the words should fit into imabic pentameter verse. Now, the English-speaking people of Milton's time might have placed the stresses on the words differently. This is an interesting thing to think about, unfortunately it's very hard to prove.
of MAN's first DISoBEdience AND the FRUIT.
Another way to answer is to say that Milton simply wasn't a fan. A poem doesn't have to have meter an rhyme to be a poem, not that meter and rhyme are wrong. Neither does the presence of rhyme and meter make words poetry. So a little mistake on that first line, eh, doesn't matter to Milton.
Another possibility is that there is a pattern to Milton's heroic verse that we missed - I've seen sonnets incorporate iambic tetrameter, for example, just to mix it up a little.
Unfortunately I am not qualified to take a guess at which possibility, if any of them, is true.
- Caleb
Unfortunately, this ruins the meter completely...
Unfortunately you're going to get nothing but opinions here...
On kind of a side note, I've picked up on an idiosynchrose of mine.Unfortunately I am not qualified to take a guess...
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twelveoone
- Productive Poster
- Posts: 85
- Joined: Tue Aug 16, 2005 11:44 pm
Why force the words? you have the beginning of something here:
for there the world
does press the spirit - give it form in tight,
compacted categories: tidy there,
and definite
except for "does press"
The rest starts out badly, and ends badly, overwrought and cliched.
"For dark and loathsome joy; " this line is nought but a toss-away, unless we have a hint about it; and really would be best serving an ironic purpose
iambic death is not something you should expire too
for there the world
does press the spirit - give it form in tight,
compacted categories: tidy there,
and definite
except for "does press"
The rest starts out badly, and ends badly, overwrought and cliched.
"For dark and loathsome joy; " this line is nought but a toss-away, unless we have a hint about it; and really would be best serving an ironic purpose
iambic death is not something you should expire too
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dillingworth
- Prolific Poster
- Posts: 455
- Joined: Wed Aug 17, 2005 2:53 pm
- Location: Oxford, UK
on the milton issue: just because the first line doesn't perfectly fit the scheme of iambic pentameter doesn't mean we can say he did or did not want to use that scheme. meter is most meaningful when the prose rhythm of the words plays against this scheme set out at the beginning: yeats cites this exact same line to illustrate the conflict between what he calls the "passionate prose" of the line with our metric expectations (ti-tum x5).