A brief overview of The Ode Less Travelled
The Ode Less Travelled is a poetry handbook? workbook? by Stephen Fry, who I think wrote the best ever analysis of Wodehouse: “You don’t analyse such sunlit perfection. You just bask in its warmth and splendour.” Stephen Fry’s other books that I read (The Hippopotamus, The Liar) left me wondering what I’d read, but not sorry that I had. A bit like Tom Sharpe. The Ode… is, as the subtitle says: ‘a guide to writing poetry.’ Not ‘appreciating’ poetry or ‘analysing’ poetry, though it ends up teaching you to do that, necessarily, but writing it. It is practical and workmanlike, and Stephen Fry is a skilful guide. It’s technical, which is an odd word to use for something to do with ‘will o’ the wisp feeling’, but as Stephen Fry tells us, technique is Greek for art. The book opens with a quote by William Arthur Ward: “The mediocre teacher tells. The good teacher explains. The superior teacher demonstrates. The great teacher inspires.” But no matter how great or inspiring the teacher, they cannot inspire a dull or disinclined student. Speaking of which, I wish I had learnt more, and earlier. Still, as Stephen Fry says (bracingly) in the foreword: “But maybe you are too old a dog to learn new tricks? Maybe you have missed the bus? That’s hooey. Thomas Hardy (a finer poet than he was a novelist in my view) did not start publishing verse till he was nearly sixty…It is never too late. We are all opsimaths. Opsimath, noun: one who learns late in life.”
And the disclaimer for poetry, thoughtfully provided by Fry himself: “I cannot teach you how to be a great poet or even a good one. Dammit, I can’t teach myself that. But I can show you how to have fun with the modes and forms of poetry as they have developed over the years.”
Following are a few essential poetry terms from the long glossary (which is titled ‘incomplete; in the book) of the book (all explained in greater and more interesting detail in the body of the book, but this list, I hope, will serve as a cheat sheet, or to refresh your memory once you’ve read the book, or twice you’ve read it).
Accent
The word used for the natural push given to words within a sentence. In poetry, accent is called stress. q.v. (q.v. is ‘quod vide’, which is Latin for ‘which see’, which in turn means look for more about this elsewhere in the book. Please do read the book, there is much more in it.) Example: If winter comes, can spring be far behind? The syllables in bold are the ‘stressed’ syllables.
Foot
A foot is the basic unit of a metre. It is a ‘metrical division’: there are five feet in a pentametre, four in a tetrametre etc. The equivalent of a ‘bar’ in music (there are usually four ‘beats’ in a bar of music: ‘one two three four, one two three four’). In language and (English) poetry, the syllables make up the equivalent of beats, or ‘units’ of a foot (as I understand it). The syllables can be ‘stressed’ (accented) or ‘unstressed’ (weak). Feet can be binary (two syllables/units) or ternary (three syllables/units), each of which has several kinds.
Two-unit (binary) feet:
Iamb, a ‘rising-rhythm’ foot with two units, the first light, the second stressed (The curfew tolls the knell of parting day – ‘Elegy Written in a country Churchyard’ – Gray).
Trochee, also with two units, but ‘falling-rhythm’ (Thus was born Hiawatha, Thus was born the child of wonder – The Song of Hiawatha – Longfellow).
Spondee, equal stressed units (both stressed).
Pyrrhic, both unstressed.
Three-unit (ternary) feet:
In music, this would be a triple measure (measure is another word for bar).
Anapaest, the ternary equivalent of the iamb, with two unstressed syllables and one stressed syllable (example: Poe’s ‘Annabel Lee’ is in anapaestic ballad form (four-stress lines alternating with three-stress lines):
For the moon never beams without bringing me
dreams Of the beautiful Annabel Lee.).
Dactyl, the anapaest in reverse – one stressed unit, followed by two unstressed units (this would the ternary equivalent of the trochee).
Molossus, three stressed syllables.
Tribrach, three weak syllables.
Amphibrach, weak syllable, stressed syllable, weak syllable.
Amphimacer, stressed, weak, stressed (tum-ti-tum, as Fry puts it).
Metre
Accentual-syllabic Poetry ordered by metre and syllabic count. Iambic pentametre, trochaic tetrametre etc.
A trimetre has 3 feet, a tetrametre has 4, a pentametre 5, a hexametre 6. Metre is Greek for measure.
An iambic pentametre therefore, has 5 feet which are iambs.
(Fry: ‘Remember: it is the number of stresses, not the number of syllables, that determines whether it is penta- or tetra- or hexa- or any other kind of -meter.’ Though this doesn’t sound right to me, because if a poem is composed with amphimacer feet, for instance, then each foot would have two stresses, and a tetrametre would then have eight stresses. Also if there’s a spondee mixed into an iambic metre.)
Example of iambic pentametre (also see ‘Elegy…’ above in definition of iamb):
To be, or not to be, that is the question:
Whether ’tis nobler in the mind to suffer
The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune,
Or to take arms against a sea of troubles
And by opposing end them. To die—to sleep,
No more; and by a sleep to say we end
The heart-ache and the thousand natural shocks
That flesh is heir to: ’tis a consummation
Devoutly to be wish’d. To die, to sleep;
To sleep, perchance to dream—ay, there’s the rub:
For in that sleep of death what dreams may come,
When we have shuffled off this mortal coil,
Must give us pause—there’s the respect
That makes calamity of so long life…
(You know this is from Shakespeare’s Hamlet. This is also blank verse – no rhyme.)
Example of trochaic tetrametre (This particular example is ‘catalectic’– the weak end of each line dropped).
Through the forest have I gone.
But Athenian found I none,
On whose eyes I might approve
This flower’s force in stirring love.
Night and silence.–Who is here?
Weeds of Athens he doth wear:
This is he, my master said,
Despised the Athenian maid;
And here the maiden, sleeping sound,
On the dank and dirty ground.
Pretty soul! she durst not lie
Near this lack-love, this kill-courtesy.
Churl, upon thy eyes I throw
All the power this charm doth owe.
When thou wakest, let love forbid
Sleep his seat on thy eyelid:
So awake when I am gone;
For I must now to Oberon.
(Midsummer Night’s Dream – Shakespeare)
Other kinds of metre:
Accentual Poetry defined by stress count only (the weak syllables can be any number, they don’t count).
Syllabic Poetry ordered by syllabic count only.
Form
Various ‘forms’ of poetry, such as a sonnet (of which there are several kinds), ballad, ode, sestina, heroic verse, quartet, haiku (of which the authentic version is more complicated than the simplified ‘English’ version) and many more. The ‘stanza’ (Italian for ‘stand’ which later came to mean ‘room’) is the unit of form: tercet, quatrain, cinquain, sixain etc.
Forms which follow a set pattern of fixed length (or fixed number of lines) are closed forms, such as the sonnet, haiku, limerick. Forms which have no fixed overall length of poem are called open forms, such as heroic verse.
Open forms
The Terza Rima is an open form made of tercets (three-line stanzas), with an interlocking rhyming scheme (aba, bcb, cdc etc.) When a thought or thread ends, the rhyme is ‘used up’ with a fourth line added to the last tercet which rhymes with the second line of this last tercet. The following poem is a self-descriptive Terza Rima:
Stanzas of three in pentametre lines
which alternately rhyme, the first with third
Juxtaposed in crisscrossing patterns fine.
The middle line of each triplet a bird,
Parrot, repeats the scheme of stanza one,
But now the rhyme its own this handy word.
Again the third in three we find, what fun!
It takes forward the idea in triplicate
The rhyme it jumps to three neatly from one
To end, a fourth, its rhyme the second’s mate.
The Quatrain is another open form, a kind of general-purpose form, which lends itself to all occasions and emotions. The usual (crossed) rhyme scheme is ‘abab, cdcd, efef etc.’. Here is a self-descriptive quatrain:
A good and round figure is four, I think.
The quatrain, quite perfect, always just right
For matters light or grave, that float or sink;
Young hope’s bright day, or old memory’s night.
Another form of the quatrain is the Persian form known as the rubai, with the rhyming scheme ‘aaba, ccdc, eefe etc.’. Possibly the most famous example is the translation of the Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam by Edward Fitzgerald:
A Book of verses underneath the Bough,
A Jug of Wine, a Loaf of Bread, – and Thou|
Beside me singing in the Wilderness –
Oh, Wilderness were Paradise enow!
’Tis all a Chequer-board of Nights and Days
Where Destiny with Men for Pieces plays:
Hither and thither moves, and mates, and slays,
And one by one back in the Closet lays.
The Ball no Question makes of Ayes and Noes,
But Right or Left, as strikes the Player goes;
And he that toss’d Thee down into the Field,
He knows about it all – He knows – HE knows!
The Moving Finger writes; and, having writ,
Moves on: nor all thy Piety nor Wit
Shall lure it back to cancel half a Line,
Nor all thy Tears wash out a Word of it.
Other open forms include the Rhyme Royal, Ottava Rima, Spenserian Stanza.
The ballad (quatrains in alternating iambic tetrametre and trimetre, the form of The Rime of the Ancient Mariner by Samuel Taylor Coleridge) is ‘open’ in more ways than one: nursery rhymes, ribald tales, informal stories are all in ballad form. And ballads are also accentual verse; the number of stresses is what counts, not the number of syllables (as in accentual-syllabic verse). They can also be in sixains, and with varying rhyme-schemes.
Stephen Fry’s exercise for the ballad, was to complete the following ballad:
Now gather round and let me tell
The tale of Danny Wise:
And how his sweet wife Annabelle
Did suck out both his eyes.
And if I tell the story true
And if I tell it clear,
There’s not a mortal one of you
Won’t shriek in mortal fear.
This I completed thus:
So here you are, crowded around me, all agog.
How gross, how horrible, you exclaim.
How? However is the question uppermost
Followed by why? And what! a shame.
Know then that this Annabelle, sweet Annabelle
Was a human, though she looked angelic to the eyes.
One sweaty summer day Charley filled his whiskey glass
She could restrain herself no more and from it sucked the ice.
What! Did you think I meant his eyes?
You ghouls, you grotesque demons, foul fiends
To think such horrid thoughts, such hellish fancies.
Go away now, and do penance to make amends.
Heroic couplets, merely rhyming couplets, usually in iambic tetrametre were originally used to tell epic tales, was formal, majestic, like 17th century architecture (Augustan). Since it is so simple, there have been many variations and much experimentation over the centuries, but the original form has retained its potency and effectiveness.
The ode can be of various kinds (Sapphic, Pindaric, Horatian, lyric, anacreontic). Like the name suggests, usually eulogiums, wondering praise or laudatory epitaphs.
A Sapphic ode: ‘Ode on Solitude’ by Pope:
Happy the man, whose wish and care
A few paternal acres bound,
Content to breathe his native air
In his own ground
Whose herds with milk, whose fields with bread,
Whose flocks supply him with attire,
Whose trees in summer yield him shade,
In winter fire.
The Pindaric ode is interesting for the strophe, antistrophe and epode scheme of each of its three stanzas (triad). Sometimes also includes as ‘apostrophe’, which is a direct address to an object/thing as in Wordsworth’s Ode ‘Intimations of Immortality from Recollections of Early Childhood’:
And O ye Fountains, Meadows, Hills and Groves!
The lyric ode is similar but slightly different; first a subject (usually a physical object or phenomenon), which leads to (troubled or conflicted) thought about it, and then resolved with a decision or realisation – some kind of closure. In this, Pindaric and lyric odes are similar to the Petrarchan sonnet (a closed form, described in the next section).
The anacreontic (named for the Greek poet Anacreon) ode is rhyming lines in seven-syllabic trochaic tetrametre. But the main feature is that it should be about pleasure, wine, erotic love and the fleeting nature of existence. Some Middle-Eastern poetry (Hafiz and Omar Khayyam) are similar in this.
A beautiful example in The Ode…:
Hark’ee, wagtail: Mend your ways;
Life is brief, Anacreon says,
Brief its joys, its ventures toilsome;
Wine befriends them – water spoils’em.
Who’s for water? Wagtail, you?
Give me wine! I’ll drink for two.
(Norman Douglas)
Closed forms
This section begins with the Villanelle (which Fry says is the reason he wrote The Ode…). An example from the book:
Do not go gentle into that good night,
Old age should burn and rave at close of day;
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
Though wise men at their end know dark is right,
Because their words had forked no lightning they
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Good men, the last wave by, crying how bright
Their frail deeds might have danced in a green bay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
Wild men who caught and sang the sun in flight,
And learn, too late, they grieved it on its way,
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Grave men, near death, who see with blinding sight
Blind eyes could blaze like meteors and be gay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
And you, my father, there on the sad height,
Curse, bless me now with your fierce tears, I pray.
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
(Dylan Thomas)
How the Villanelle is composed: Six stanzas with the rhyming scheme ‘aba, aba, aba, aba, aba, abaa’. The first line of the first stanza (referred to as A1) will be the last line (refrain) of the second and fourth stanzas, and the last line of the first stanza (A2) will be the last line (refrain) of the third and fifth stanzas. A1 and A2 will end the sixth stanza, which has four lines (the preceding five stanzas are tercets – in which the first and third lines rhyme). The first, third and fourth lines of the sixth stanza rhyme. The second lines of all the stanzas rhyme. No rules for metre or measure.
A ’delightful comic’ example from The Ode…”
To sing the charms of Rosabelle,
To pour my soul out at her feet,
I try to write this villanelle.
Now I am caught within her spell,
It seems to me most wondrous sweet
To sing the charms of Rosabelle.
I seek in vain for words to tell
My love — Alas, my muse is weak!
I try to write this villanelle.
Would I had power to compel
The English language incomplete
To sing the charms of Rosabelle.
The ardent thoughts that in me dwell
On paper I would fair repeat
I try to write this villanelle.
My effort fruitless is. O H–l!
I’ll tell her all when next we meet.
To sing the charms of Rosabelle,
I tried to write this villanelle.
(Eugene O’Neill)
I really like this form, it’s so sweetly simple but deep and full of possibilities. So, a couple more examples:
https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/44976/the-house-on-the-hill
https://allpoetry.com/Mad-Girl’s-Love-Song
The Sestina is six sixains (6 line stanzas) followed by a 3-line ‘envoi’ with the end words of the six lines being recycled in a set pattern: the second stanza’s first line ends with the last word of the sixth line of the first stanza, the second line with the last word of the first line of the first stanza, the third with the last of the word of the fifth, the fourth with the last word of the second, the fifth with that of the fourth, and the sixth with that of the third. This pattern is repeated for the third stanza, but now using the end words of the second. And so on. Homophones (words with the same sound but different meanings) are allowed.
The envoi’s three lines use the end words of the first stanza as follows: second and fifth line end words in the first line, fourth and third in the second line, and sixth and first in the third line (the second of each pair will end the line). But in later times the envoi’s word order is not strictly followed.
Invented by Arnaud Daniel, the sestina is somewhat ‘mathematical’ in its construction, but the cyclical, spiralling patterns of end words have a hypnotic, surreal effect.
The Triolet is an eight-line poem, whose first two lines repeat in the end. The first line also repeats as the fourth line – AbaAbbAB (though I think that’s a printing error in The Ode Less Taken, because it appears from the example that the correct scheme is ABaAabAB).
The Rondeau Redouble is five quatrains, with the opening hemistich (the first half of the first line) becoming a mini ‘envoi’ at the end. The four lines of the first stanza become the end lines of the next four stanzas in sequence; the first line of the first stanza is the last line of the second stanza, the second line of the first stanza is the last line of the third stanza and so on. The rhyming scheme alternates between ‘abab’ and ‘baba’.
Other closed forms in the ‘round’ family (which is based on the ‘poetic’ round) include the rondeau, the rondel, the roundel and the rondelet. The kyrielle is also a repeating form, also like the round ‘uns, except in name.
The Petrarchan sonnet is fourteen lines in iambic pentametre, with the rhyming scheme abba abba cde cde (or cdd ccd or cdccdc). The first eight lines are called the octave and the next six are called the sestet. The beginning of the ninth line (or some place in it) has the ‘volta’ or crisis – the turning point of the poem. The first eight lines present a problem or proposition or argument, and the next six the counter or resolution to that. This is very much like the thesis antithesis and synthesis of philosophy or the ‘strophe, antistrophe and epode’ of Greek drama.
Example of Petrarchan sonnet:
What passing-bells for these who die as cattle?
— Only the monstrous anger of the guns.
Only the stuttering rifles’ rapid rattle
Can patter out their hasty orisons.
No mockeries now for them; no prayers nor bells;
Nor any voice of mourning save the choirs,—
The shrill, demented choirs of wailing shells;
And bugles calling for them from sad shires.
What candles may be held to speed them all?
Not in the hands of boys, but in their eyes
Shall shine the holy glimmers of goodbyes.
The pallor of girls’ brows shall be their pall;
Their flowers the tenderness of patient minds,
And each slow dusk a drawing-down of blinds.
- (Anthem for Doomed Youth By Wilfred Owen)
The Ballade is different from the ‘ballad’. Three eight-line stanzas, with an ‘envoi’ of 4 lines, with the rhyme scheme ababbabA ababbabA ababbabA, babA (the ‘A’ being the refrain that ends each stanza and the envoi. This is difficult because it is hard to find such a rich rhyme in English. G K Chesterton’s The Ballade of Suicide (https://www.chesterton.org/a-ballade-of-suicide/) is one of the best examples.
Poetic forms, like life, tend to proliferate, speciate. There are ‘shaped’ poems, with line lengths (number of syllables) arranged so as to form a diamond shape, circle etc., acrostics (where the first letters the lines spell out a word or phrase). There is endless variation and invention, as illustrated by the following which is of the form known as abecedarian, and whose theme also appears to be the variety springing from permutations of a few basic units: https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/poems/55645/a-poem-for-s
Comic verse includes the limerick, clerihew and the cento.
The limerick, the familiar dirty story in poem form (not necessarily always obscene) has a strict form: Five lines, rhyming aabba, with the first and second lines an iamb and two anapaests, the third line and fourth lines two anapaests, the fifth line three anapaests. Or perhaps they’re all anapaests with the third and fourth line with two anapaests and the others with three.
Rhyming schemes
They can be simple, such aa, bb, cc etc. or ab ab etc. or more complex, like abc, abc or abaa, etc. This is full rhyme or true rhyme. Example of a simple aa bb cc etc. rhyme scheme:
O could I flow like thee, and make thy stream
My great example, as it is my theme!
Though deep yet clear, though gentle yet not dull;
Strong without rage, without o’erflowing full.
- (Cooper’s hill by Sir John Denham)
Slant rhyme (also called by many other rhymes such as sprung rhyme, lazy rhyme, near rhyme half rhyme etc.) is when only either the vowel sounds (assonance) or the consonants (consonance) rhyme.
Example of assonance:
If there are no roads, how will you know where to ride?
If there are no rules, how will you know what to write?
Example of consonance (the words ‘queen’ and ‘noon’ in the second stanza):
Not any higher stands the Grave
For Heroes than for Men –
Not any nearer for the Child
Than numb Three Score and Ten –
This latest Leisure equal lulls
The Beggar and his Queen
Propitiate this Democrat
A Summer’s Afternoon –
- (Not Any Higher Stands the Grave by Emily Dickinson.)
Other words to remember
Free verse Poetry with no conventional form, rhyming scheme or metrical pattern. (The Ode…is not about this). Also known as vers libre.
Blank verse Poetry without rhyme.
Anaphora is repetition at the beginning of a line for effect, such as ‘tyger, tyger, burning bright.’
Enjambment is when a line flows onto the next.
End-stopping is when it doesn’t.
Caesura is a pause within a line, indicated by some punctuation mark like a full stop or semi colon.
General tip
Poetry is the music of words, so must be read aloud, at the right pace (shruthi and taalam). The right pace, I think, is a matter of personal taste, as are tone and timbre.
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