How can I indentify what structure a poem uses?
Carl
written by Amy Clampitt. It is called "the Dakota".
Grief for a generation -all
the lonely people
gone, the riffraff
out there now mainly pigeons -
steps from its limousine
and lights a taper
inside the brownstone catacomb
of the Dakota. Pick up
the wedding rice, take out
the face left over from
the funeral nobody came to,
bring flowers, leave them woven
with the lugubrious ironwork
of the Dakota. Grief
is original, but it
repeats itself: there is nothing
more original it can do.
Having no experience with English poems, I am having trouble how to
identify what structure this poem uses. I can see that this is not
"quatrain". First I thought that this is "the elergy", but I feel that
"the elergy" reffers to the style of the poem, not the structure.
Because I speak English as a second language, I don't even know how to
count meters for this poem.
Could anybody help me? I am also looking for some websites that
explains the basis of English poems.
Thank you very much, and have a good day.
Sam Albaniensson
news:4ZMkb.16937$At.7785@edtnps84
Poetry in English doesn't differ much from f.ex. poetry in
Swedish or in Russian, or in Albanian by that matter. Even poetry
in English relies on the conventional units of rhyme and meter,
and a halting rhyme in a poem written in English is like a
halting rhyme in a poem written in almost any Indo-European
language, where the iamb is a iamb and a trochee a trochee,
regardless of language, but only taking the sound structures in
consideration.
Of course it might be easier to work with some units in English
and there might be forms that traditionally have been more used
by English poets, but the fundaments are the same. An elegiac
distich in English doesn't fundamentally differ from an elegiac
distich in Bulgarian, even if an elegiac distich in German might
sound more familiar to some English ears, because of the Germanic
similarities.
Thanks to Internet, even other form boundaries, like f.ex. the
eastern syllable counting forms, have become applicable when
writing poetry in English. The haiku in Japanese offers surely
special possibilities due to the usage of the symbolic alphabet,
but the main idea of counting syllables instead of feet is the
same. And by the way a haiku in English can open some
possibilities that the haiku in Japanese can't.
A good knowledge of the English language is of course necessary
in order to write, evaluate and enjoy poetry in English, but
knowledge about the basis of poetry is surely even more important
in this case. Thus it can be said that the trouble you are
mentioning most probably doesn't depend on your lack of
experience with English poems, but on your possible lack of
knowledge about the fundaments of poetry.
If you are going to analyze this text metrically, then you should
have some experience in recognizing some sound patterns
(regardless of language) that might constitute the units of
meter. It should work even if the poem is a Dadaistic one,
without any meaning in any language.
Learn how to identify the feet, and you will surely identify them
in this text... If there are any at all... ;)
\^/
Š_Š
/Š\
\_
\\\
\_/
Sam Albaniensson
news:3f9422c4....@news-central.giganews.com
> meter, and uses random line breaks to make you think it is
> poetry. Fake poets use this method to turn a paragraph of
> prose into a poem.
The line breaks are not random in free verse. There are some
subtle principles there too, but they are not those of
"emphasizing" "words" or those of the "feelings", as many
ignorant net losers usually say instead of admitting that they
don't know a shit about poetry and "breaking" "lines". The free
verse is the literary equivalence of the "abstract forms" in
visual arts. The problem with the (net) "poetry" of today, as an
occurrence in contemporary culture, is that it has become a part
of the so called popular culture, where every ignorant idiot can
claim to be able to write (or "paint") in free verse or
("abstract forms"), without even being able to write (or "paint")
a simple jingle (or a "little flower"); while artists in other
art forms, like music and painting, can't get off proving that
they are familiar with the essentials (and much more) before they
go "abstract".
>
> Dana Gioia and Dennis Hammes both have interesting sites on
> prosody.
>
> http://www.danagioia.net/essays/index.htm
>
> http://here.nu/prosomain.htm
Denise is an unsuccessful -- and much less than mediocre --
vixen.
\^/
©_©
/©\
\_
\\\
\_/
Sam Albaniensson
message news:K5Wkb.30352$mU6....@newsb.telia.net
"get off avoiding to prove"; so to speak, in order to be more
precise.
> that they are familiar with the essentials (and much
> more) before they go "abstract".
>
>
>>
>> Dana Gioia and Dennis Hammes both have interesting sites on
>> prosody.
>>
>> http://www.danagioia.net/essays/index.htm
>>
>> http://here.nu/prosomain.htm
>
> Denise is an unsuccessful -- and much less than mediocre --
> vixen.
"alcoholic vixen"; so to speak, in order to be more precise.
Stuart Leichter
Structure is a very subtle attribute. My hunch is that Clampitt wants a
17-line poem because of Janis Ian's "At Seventeen" and Lennon &
McCartney's "I Saw Her Standing There". Check out their "Eleanor Rigby"
for the specific allusions in the poem. John and Yoko were living at the
Dakota when he was shot outside. The Dakota was also where Rosemary had
her yellow-eyed baby. If you're in grad school you can talk about
antistructure through deconstructure.
Rob Evans
<NOSPAMalb...@NOSPAMyahoo.se> writes
Sammy, I just knew you was gonna run before ya learned to walk and write
before ya learned to talk. Some of the above is factual. Little of the
above is relevant.
>
>Learn how to identify the feet, and you will surely identify them
>in this text... If there are any at all... ;)
>
Learn how to identify free, not blank verse. Even prose has feet. Use
yours slowly.
Rob
--
Rob Evans
Sam Albaniensson
"for"! not "by"!
S
> ©_©
> /©\
> \_
> \\\
> \_/
Sam Albaniensson
En "svenne"?! Nå lär dig lite om meter och sådant på svenska,
samt att det inte heter "elergi" utan "elegi" först, och sedan
kan du komma och störa mig här också.
Bah!
Carl
Thank you all for your replies.
I will be looking into Eleanor Rigby as a reference. I have met other
people saying that this poem is
a free verse, and since I have no other informations about the structure
of the peom, I will go with a free verse ,myself.
Thank you again.
Sam Albaniensson
> Hi, how are you?
Ok, sorry. I thought that you were one of those "poets" resident
in my home town Malmö. Good luck!
S
Sam Albaniensson
(under local anesthesia) on my sinuses. They punctured and
removed several cysts. Or were they perhaps parts of my brain?
Well, who cares... My nose is bleeding from time to time, and I
have some headache, but here I am, up and... hm... writing again!
S
"Carl" <no_...@yahoo.com> wrote in message
news:xg6lb.21674$i92.13248@clgrps13
Carl
I found your reasonning for why the poet used 17 lines very
interesting. The only thing is that I am working on this poem as a
school project which my instructor assigned. So if I will use your
interpretation of the poem which I found very fascinating, I would have
to have a some sort of a supporting evidence to why " I saw her standing
there" was the reason why the poet used 17 lines for the poem. I
researched on the web, and I found that the song " I saw her standing
there " is the first song in the album " Please Please me", which was
the Beatle's first hit album. I also found that the girl who shows up in
the song is 17 years old. But could you give me more supporting evidence
to why the poet used 17 lines other than the ones I mentioned above?
Thank you very much, and have a good day.
Stuart Leichter
> Thank you for your reply.
> I found your reasonning for why the poet used 17 lines very
> interesting. The only thing is that I am working on this poem as a
> school project which my instructor assigned. So if I will use your
> interpretation of the poem which I found very fascinating, I would have
> to have a some sort of a supporting evidence to why " I saw her standing
> there" was the reason why the poet used 17 lines for the poem. I
> researched on the web, and I found that the song " I saw her standing
> there " is the first song in the album " Please Please me", which was
> the Beatle's first hit album. I also found that the girl who shows up in
> the song is 17 years old. But could you give me more supporting evidence
> to why the poet used 17 lines other than the ones I mentioned above?
> Thank you very much, and have a good day.
No decent school would require you to be right all the time as long as
you're thorough, which you seem to want to be. But you're blurring the
line that separates pushy from greedy, so I'm withdrawing my hunch. Just
go with the facts: the Japanese haiku is made English through 17
syllables.