On strict poetic forms

vivianimbriotis | Feb. 15, 2024, 2:06 a.m.

Almost all modern poetry is free verse, and that's terribly sad.

Now don't get me wrong, I love reading free verse, even really degenerate filth like ee cummings. But when I write poetry, I prefer to write highly structured verse.

The two main determinants of structured verse are rhyme structure and rhythmic meter. Rhythmic meter is most familiar as the iambic pentameter of Shakespeare, or the dactylic hexameter of Homer's Iliad and Kendrick Lamar's Rigamortus.

Rhyme structure is what comes to mind when we think of e.g. sonnets or limericks. It tells us which lines need to rhyme with which other lines - for example, its common to have this rhyming structure

A

B

A

B

Where a quatrain has alternating rhymes, as in Shakespeare's sonnets (this is 130, my favorite):

My mistresses eyes are nothing like the sun A

Coral is far more red, than her lips red, B

If snow be white, why then her breasts are dun A

If hairs be wires, black wires grow on her head... B

It continues with two more A/B/A/B quatrains, and then ends with a couplet:

I have seen roses damask’d, red and white, C

But no such roses see I in her cheeks; D

And in some perfumes is there more delight C

Than in the breath that from my mistress reeks. D

I love to hear her speak, yet well I know E

That music hath a far more pleasing sound: F

I grant I never saw a goddess go, E

My mistress, when she walks, treads on the ground: F

And yet, by heaven, I think my love as rare G

As any she belied with false compare. G

Relatively simple rhyming structures.

Compare the intertwined, twisting rhymes of a villanelle. In a villanelle, the entire poem is dominated by just two lines, which rhyme with each other, and then dance back and forth, repeated over and over again, and always teasing a couplet until finally, at the very end of the poem, the come together in rhyme.

E.g., One Art by Elizabeth Bishop. The relevant lines here are "the art of losing isn't so hard to master / it is no disaster", and you can see how they dance back and forth.

The art of losing isn’t hard to master; A1

so many things seem filled with the intent

to be lost that their loss is no disaster. A2

Lose something every day. Accept the fluster a

of lost door keys, the hour badly spent.

The art of losing isn’t hard to master. A1

Then practice losing farther, losing faster: a

places, and names, and where it was you meant

to travel. None of these will bring disaster. A2

I lost my mother’s watch. And look! my last, or a

next-to-last, of three loved houses went.

The art of losing isn’t hard to master. A1

I lost two cities, lovely ones. And, vaster, a

some realms I owned, two rivers, a continent.

I miss them, but it wasn’t a disaster. A2

—Even losing you (the joking voice, a gesture

I love) I shan’t have lied. It’s evident

the art of losing’s not too hard to master A1

though it may look like (Write it!) like disaster. A2 (finally)

I wrote a villanelle here.

For even more complex rhyming schemes there's Irish syllabic poetry, many forms of which have exhausting lists of rules (I'm kidding, its fun in the same way as chess puzzles or solving a Sudoku). For example, the Ae Freislighe form. The rules of the game are:

1. The poem is in quatrains (stanzas of 4 lines each)
2. The rhyming scheme is A/B/A/B
3. The A lines must end with a 3 syllable word
4. The B lines must end with a 2 syllable word
5. Each line must be 7 syllables total
6. The first line, word, phrase, or sound must be repeated to end the poem

So, letting x denote a syllable and using parentheses to enclose whole words, a stanza looks like this:

x x x x (x x a)

x x x x x (x b)

x x x x (x x a)

x x x x x (x b)

I wrote an Ae Freislighe here.

I don't really think strict poetic forms make for better poetry, but I do think they make for a specific kind of poetry that is really compelling, and whenever I pick up a book of modern poetry, I'm always a bit sad when it is inevitably free verse that eschews rhyme.