Formalist Criticism of Poetry

(Image courtesy of Daphne.Palomar.Edu)

Scansion is the process of measuring verse. It involves: 1) identifying the prevailing meter; 2) identifying the metrical foot in a line of poetry; and 3) describing the rhyming scheme.

“When I Heard the Learn’d Astronomer”

Walt Whitman

When I heard the learn’d astronomer,

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

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

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

How soon unaccountable I became tired and sick,

Till rising and gliding I wandered off by myself,

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

Looked up in perfect silence at the stars.

What is poetry?

Poetry is hard to define. According to Paul Reuben,

Poetry might be defined, initially, as a kind of language that says more and says it more intensely than does ordinary language. William Wordsworth defined poetry as "the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings, recollected in tranquillity." Poetry is the most condensed and concentrated form of literature, saying most in the fewest number of words.

Elements of Poetry

Diction

Diction is the poet’s choice of words. Denotation is the ordinary, dictionary meaning of a word; while Connotation is the figurative use of a word.

Figurative Language

Figurative Language “is the general term…to describe the many devices of language that allow…non-literal [speech] in order to achieve some special effect” (Abcarian & Klotz, 2000). Some figures of speech include the following:

Simile- a means of comparing things that are essentially alike; it uses terms such as like, as than, similar to, resembles or seems.

            My Luve’s like a red, red rose. –Burns.

           

            Life is too much like a pathless wood. —Frost.

Metaphor- another means of comparing things that are essentially alike. In metaphor the comparison is implied - that is, the figurative term is substituted for or identified with the literal term.

            Let the Irish vessel lie/Emptied of his poetry.

–W. H. Auden, on the death of poet William Butler Yeats

Personification consists in giving the attributes of a human being to an animal, an object, or a concept.

            Death, thou shalt die. –John Donne

Apostrophe, which consists in addressing someone absent or something non-human as if it were alive and present and could reply to what is being said.

Synecdoche- the use of the part for the whole

Metonymy- the use of something closely related for the thing actually meant.

Symbol- anything that stands for something else.

e.g., national flags, the Cross.

Allegory is a narrative or description that has a second meaning beneath the surface one; an extended metaphor and sometimes as a series of related symbols.

            The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want. –David.

Paradox- an apparent contradiction that is nevertheless true. It may either be a situation or a statement ("damn with faint praise").

Overstatement, or hyperbole- an exaggeration but “in the service of truth”.

Understatement- saying less than one means.

Irony- has meanings that extend beyond its use merely as a figure of speech. Verbal irony is saying the opposite of what one means. The term irony always implies some sort of discrepancy or incongruity: between what is said and what is meant, or between appearance and reality, or between expectation and fulfilment (dramatic irony and irony of situation).

Allusion- a reference to something in history or previous literature is, like a richly connotative word or a symbol, a means of suggesting far more that it says. Allusions are a means of reinforcing the emotion or the ideas of one's own work with the emotion or ideas of another work or occasion. Because they are capable of saying so much in so little, they are extremely useful to the poet.

            I have seen my head (grown slightly bald) brought in upon a platter.

                                    --T. S. Eliot, alluding to the beheading of St. John the Baptist

The music of poetry

Alliteration- the repetition of initial consonant sounds, as in tried and true, safe and sound, fish and fowl, rhyme and reason.

Assonance- the repetition of vowel sounds, as in mad as a hatter, time out of mind, free and easy, and slapdash.

Consonance- the repetition of final consonant sounds, as in first and last, odds and ends, short and sweet, and a stroke of luck.

Rhyme- the combination of assonance and consonance; the repetition of the accented vowel sound and all succeeding sounds.

Rhythm- the regular occurrence of stressed and unstressed syllables.

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 Dactylic trisyllable.
Iambics march from short to long -
With a leap and a bound the swift Anapests throng.

- Samuel Taylor Coleridge

Meter is a unit of poetry with one stressed line and one or two unstressed line. (See Foot below.)

Iambic (n. Iamb, iambus)- one unstressed followed by one stressed syllable

                        Iambics march from short to long.

Trochaic (n. Trochee)- one stressed followed by one unstressed syllable.
 

                        Trochee trips from long to short….

Anapestic (n. Anapest)- two unstressed syllables followed by one stressed.

With a leap and a bound the swift Anapests throng.

Dactylic (n. Dactyl)- one stressed syllable followed by two unstressed.

…strong foot yet ill able/Ever to come up with Dactylic trisyllable.

Spondaic (n. Spondee)- two stressed syllables.

                        From long to long in solemn sort/Slow Spondee stalks;

Units of poetry

Line- the basic unit of poetry; composed of a single verse.

A line that ends with a stressed syllable is called a masculine ending.

A line that ends with an extra syllable is called a feminine ending (e.g., “Trochee trips from long to short….”)

A pause within a line is called a caesura.

A line with a pause at the end is called an end-stopped line.

A line that continues to the next line without pause is a run-on line or enjambment.

A Foot is the number of meters in a line of poetry. They are named after how many meters in a line:

            Monometer- a line with one foot of poetry.

            Dimeter- two feet of poetry.

            Trimeter- three feet of poetry

            Tetrameter- four feet of poetry

            Pentameter- five feet of poetry

            Hexameter- six feet of poetry

            Heptameter- seven feet of poetry

            Octameter- eight feet of poetry

           

The Stanza is a group of lines whose metrical pattern is repeated all throughout. It is usually named after the number of lines it contains; but there are also special kinds of stanzas:

Ballad, or literary ballad, is a long singing poem that tells a story (usually of love or adventure), written in quatrains - four lines alternatively of four and three feet - the third line may have internal rhyme.

Blank Verse is made up of unrhymed iambic pentameter lines.

Free Verse has no identifiable meter, although the lines may have a rhyme-scheme.

Haiku is an unrhymed poem of seventeen syllables derived from Japanese verse; it is made up of three lines, lines 1 and 3 have five syllables, line 2 has seven.

Heroic Couplet is two lines of rhyming iambic pentameters.

Limerick is a five-line poem in which lines 1, 2, and 5 are anapestic trimeters and lines 3 and 4 are anapestic dimeters, rhymed as aabba. Possible source of origin is Limerick, Ireland.

Ode, English in origin, is a poem of indefinite length, divided in 10-line stanzas, rhymed, with different schemes for each stanza - ababcdecde, written in iambic meter.

Quatrain is a four-line stanza with various meters and rhyme schemes.

Sestina consists of thirty-nine lines divided into six six-line stanzas and a three-line concluding stanza called an envoy.

Sonnet is a fourteen line poem.

The Italian or Petrarchan has two stanzas: the first of eight lines is called octave and has the rhyme-scheme abba abba; the second of six lines is called the sestet and has the rhyme cdecde or cdcdcd.

The Spenserian sonnet, developed by Edmund Spenser, has three quatrains and a heroic couplet, in iambic pentameter with rhymes ababbcbccdcdee.

The English sonnet, developed by Shakespeare, has three quatrains and a heroic couplet, in iambic pentameter with rhymes ababcdcdefefgg.

Tercet is a three-line stanza; when all three lines rhyme they are called a triplet.

Terza Rima consists of interlocking three-line rhyme scheme (aba, bcb).