The definitions of 60 cinematic terms compose this list.
1. Antagonist. The primary character in a plot (Please refer to
"Plot."), on whom the audience's interest centers, is the
protagonist (or alternatively, the hero or heroine) and if the plot
is such that he/she is in opposition with another character, that
character is the antagonist. The relation between them is one of
conflict. (Please refer to "Conflict.")
2. Anticlimax. Anticlimax denotes a screenwriter's deliberate turn
from the serious and elevated to the trivial and lowly in order to
achieve a comic or satiric effect.
3. Antihero. An antihero is the primary character in a modern
movie whose attributes are discrepant from those we associate
with the traditional protagonist of a serious work. Instead of
manifesting largeness, dignity, power or heroism, an antihero is
petty, disgraceful, passive, ineffectual or dishonest.
4. Auteur. An auteur is a director (Please refer to "Director.") who
exercises creative control of a movie and has a strong personal
style.
5. Character. Characters are the persons in a cinematic work who
have particular moral, intellectual and emotional qualities that
we infer from what they say and the distinctive ways they speak
(the dialogue) and from what they do (the action). The grounds
of the characters' moralities, temperaments and reactions are
their motivations. A character may remain stable with respect to
outlook and disposition or may undergo a radical change, either
through a gradual process of development or as the result of a
crisis.
6. Climax. Please refer to "Freytag's Pyramid."
7. Close-up. A close-up directs the attention of the audience to a
detail (face, buttocks, feet, et cetera) that is, at that moment,
important to the course of the plot.
8. Comedy. A comedy often ends happily, for its function is to
entertain, provoking laughter and satirizing manners. Comedy
focuses on humans in social situations and depends on codes of
conduct, manners and morality, which it uses to express or imply
a standard against which deviations are measured. Comedy may
be high (intellectual) or low (physical).
9. Composition-In-Depth. Please refer to "Montage."
10. Conflict. Most plots contain conflict. Conflicts may occur
between a protagonist and an antagonist, between a protagonist
and his/her fate, between a protagonist's circumstances and
his/her goal(s), or between the oppositional desires and values of
a protagonist.
11. Contrast. Contrast is a directorial technique that forces the
audience to compare seemingly disparate shots or scenes that
relate to one another, one strengthening the other.
12. Crisis. Please refer to "Freytag's Pyramid."
13. Cut. A cut is a transition from one scene to another via an
abrupt change of image or sound, as between shots in a film.
14. Denouement. Please refer to Freytag's Pyramid."
15. Dialect. A dialect is a regional variety of the standard literary
language or speech pattern of the culture in which it exists that
differs in pronunciation, grammar or vocabulary. Screenwriters
often use dialects in an attempt to present a character more
realistically or to express significant differences in class or
background.
16. Dialogue. All the words two or more characters exchange with
each other in a scene is dialogue, but recently the term dialogue
has begun to mean all the language of a movie.
17. Director. The person who oversees the artistic production of a
movie is a director.
18. Dramatic irony. Such occurs when an audience is aware of
something that a character or characters in a movie do not yet
know. Screenwriters use it to heighten tension or suspense or to
increase an audience's sympathy and/or comprehension.
19. Dramatic time. The period of time that elapses in the plot of a
movie--in opposition to physical time, which is the period during
which a movie is screened--is dramatic time.
20. Episode. An episode is one of a series of related events in the
course of a sequence.
21. Flashback. The order of a united plot is a continuous sequence
of beginning, middle and end. The beginning initiates the main
action in a way that makes us look forward to something more;
the middle resumes what precedes and requires something to
follow; the end follows from what precedes but requires nothing
more.
The structural beginning may not be the initial stage of the
action that a screenwriter brings to a climax in a screenplay.
Many short films begin at the point of the climax--in medias res,
"in the middle of things"--and longer works often capture our
attention in the opening scene with a representative incident
that relates to and closely precedes the event which precipitates
the conflict. In movies such often occurs with flashbacks:
interpolated scenes--frequently memories, reveries or
confessions--that represent events occurring before the time at
which the works open.
22. Flat character. If a screenwriter builds a character around a
single idea or quality and presents him/her without much detail,
then the character is flat. Usually one can describe such a
character in a single phrase or sentence.
23. Foil. A character in a work who serves to stress and highlight
the distinctive temperament of the protagonist is a foil.
24. Foreshadow. To foreshadow is to present an indication or a
suggestion of an event that will occur later in the work.
25. Freytag's Pyramid. The German critic Gustav Freytag in
Technique of the Drama
(1863) introduces an analysis of plot
known as Freytag's Pyramid. He describes the typical plot of a
five-act play as a pyramidal shape--consisting of rising action,
climactic action, and falling action. Although his description
applies to a limited number plays, critics of film frequently use
his terminology. The rising action begins during or immediately
after the opening and continues with the development of a
conflict. The rising action (conflict) reaches the highest point of
tension (climax). Next, a reversal or turning point (crisis)
occurs, which inaugurates the falling action. Finally, the action
or intrigue ends in success or failure for the protagonist. Two
frequently used terms for the outcome of a plot are resolution
and denouement.
In many plots the denouement involves a reversal in the
protagonist's fortunes--failure or destruction in tragic works and
success in comic works. The reversal often depends on a
discovery, the discovery of something important that was
unknown to him/her.
26. Hero or heroine. Please refer to "Antagonist."
27. Image. An image is a visual likeness of a real object or person,
and in the act of specifying resemblance, image distinguishes
and establishes the entire category of visual experience that is
not a real object or person. In that specifically negative sense, in
which a photograph of a dog is not the dog itself, a photograph is
an image. But image also has some positive connotations: the
creative action of the imagination realized by an instrument. An
artist filters and modifies reality, combining that experience with
other experiences to create a conceptual image, an image subject
to the manipulations of his/her instrument(s). What emerges is a
plastic image that is a reality in its own right. A painting is not,
fundamentally, an image of a dog. It is a likeness of a mental
concept that may resemble a dog or, as in abstract
expressionism, bear no visible relation to any real object. If
realism is the term of a graphic image that precisely simulates
some real object, then a photograph--and hence a movie, being a
sequence of photographs--is a form of reality itself.
28. In media res. Please refer to "Flashback."
29. Mise en scene. This term refers to the arrangement of
performers and properties on a stage before the camera.
30. Montage. Cinema is a two-dimensional art that creates the
illusion of a third dimension through montage, a rapid succession
of shots from different angles at different ranges, and through
composition-in-depth, movements of the camera or of the
performers.
31. Motif. A motif is a conspicuous element--such as a symbol,
image or theme--that appears throughout a work, contributing to
the unity of the work.
32. Narrator. The cinematic narrator is a composite of a large and
complex variety of communicative elements. I present some of
them in the following diagram, which is incomplete. My purpose
is simply to deconstruct the multiplex channels.
Auditory Channel
/ \
Kind Origin
/ / \ / \
noise voice music onscreen offscreen
/ \
earshot commentary
Visual Channel
/ \
Nature of image Treatment of image
/ / \ / \
prop location performer cinematography editing
/ \ / / \ \ / \
appearance performance / / \ \ type rhythm
/ / \ \ / \
/ / \ \ straight fade
/ / \ \
lighting color camera mise en scene
/ / \
distance angle movement
The cinematic narrator is the interaction of the spectator with all
the aforementioned elements.
33. Pan. To pan is to move a camera in such a way as to follow an
object or to create a panoramic effect.
34. Parallelism. This technique resembles contrast (Please refer to
"Contrast.") but is considerably wider in scope, as when two
seemingly disparate thematic incidents develop simultaneously.
35. Plot. The plot in a movie constitutes its events and actions,
rendered and ordered to achieve specific artistic and emotional
effects. That description is deceptively simple because
characters perform the actions--verbal discourse as well as
physical actions--that are the means by which they exhibit their
qualities. Therefore, plot and character are interdependent
critical concepts.
There are a great variety of plot forms: tragedy, comedy,
romance, satire and other genres. Each exhibits diverse
plot-patterns and may be narrative or dramatic.
36. Producer. A producer finances a movie.
37. Prop. A prop is a theatrical property.
38. Protagonist. Please refer to "Antagonist."
39. Resolution. Please refer to "Freytag's Pyramid."
40. Reversal. Please refer to "Freytag's Pyramid."
41. Rising action. Please refer to "Freytag's Pyramid."
42. Romance. Generally, romance refers to a comedy in which
sentimental love conquers all.
43. Round character. A director presents a round character with
subtle particularity because the character is complex in
temperament and motivation. Such a character is difficult to
describe adequately, and similar to a real person, he/she is
capable of surprising us.
44. Satire. Despite the aesthetic and often comic pleasure of satire,
satirists incline toward self-promotion as judges of morals and
manners, of thought and behavior. Numerous satirists ridicule or
berate the shortcomings of their own times, hoping that their
values will outlast the occasion or crises of the moment.
45. Scene. Narrowly, a scene is any part of a movie in a single
setting with an unchanging number of characters. Broadly,
scene refers to a brief portion of a movie that has its own
identity and development.
46. Script. A director will divide a script (a copy of a screenplay)
into sequences, each sequence into scenes, and each scene into
shots from various angles. In other words, he/she will construct
a scene from shots, a sequence from scenes, and a reel from
sequences.
47. Set. A set is the entire enclosure in which a movie is filmed. It
is also referred to as the soundstage.
48. Setting. The overall setting of a movie is the general locale,
historical time, and social circumstances in which its action
occurs. The setting of a single scene within such a work is the
particular physical location in which the scene takes place.
49. Shot. The basic unit of cinema, a shot is a single cinematic
take. Please refer to "Take."
50. Simultaneity. This technique allows a director to construct the
falling action of a movie from the simultaneous, rapid
development of two parallel actions, in which the outcome of
one depends on the outcome of the other.
51. Soliloquy. A soliloquy is a dramatic form of discourse in which
a character reveals his/her thoughts when alone or unaware of
the presence of other characters.
52. Stock character. Stock characters are types that occur
repeatedly in a particular cinematic genre and are recognizable
as part of the conventions of the form.
53. Subplot. A subplot is a story within a story (a movie) that is
complete and interesting in its own way(s). Please refer to
"Parallelism."
54. Suspense. A lack of certainty, on the part of the audience,
about what will happen, especially to characters with whom the
audience has established a bond of sympathy, is suspense. If
what occurs violates any expectations the audience formed, then
it is surprise.
55. Symbolism. In the broadest sense of the term, symbolism means
anything that signifies something. With respect to that sense, all
words are symbols. With respect to cinema, however, a symbol
is an object or event that signifies another object or event, which
in turn signifies something beyond itself. Some symbols are
public; some symbols are private.
56. Take. When a director films a scene without interrupting the
run of the camera, it is a take. A take may be either short or
long.
57. Theme. A theme is a general concept or doctrine, implicit or
explicit, which a screenwriter incorporates into his/her work and
makes persuasive to an audience.
58. Tragedy. A tragedy normally features a reversal of fortune from
good to bad and ends in catastrophe and death for the
protagonist and others. It is the genre of most movies that focus
on the meaning and significance of life.
59. Voice-Over. The voice of an offscreen narrator or of an
onscreen character the audience does not see speaking in a
movie is a voice-over.
60. Zoom. To zoom is to simulate movement rapidly away from or
toward a subject, using a zoom lens.
This incomprehensive analysis of Julia Alvarez's "Homecoming" (1996) illustrates how to incorporate passages into a critique--in other words, how to merge quotations with explanations.
In "Homecoming" Julia Alvarez adopts a tone that is simultaneously serious and ironic, angry and loving.* She orients her tone in two directions: with respect to the reader and with respect to the personages she belittles or magnifies, scolds or caresses. The subtly potent voice of the narrator is Alvarez's, and the tensions that the poem exudes are a result of her being both a female and an immigrant.
"Homecoming" is the only poem in the collection that directly addresses her experiences in the Dominican Republic. The opening is laden with alliteration and consonance:
When my cousin Carmen married, the guards
at her father's finca took the guests' bracelets
and wedding rings and put them in an armored truck
for safekeeping while wealthy, dark-skinned men,
their plump, white women and spoiled children
bathed in a river whose bottom had been cleaned
for the occasion. (1-7)
The hard c-sounds, the fricative f-sounds, and the bilabial b-sounds contrast with the soft w-sounds. The repetition of those sounds, as well as the sibilant s, throughout the poem creates peppery tension. Furthermore, the Spanish diction, the near juxtaposition of hot and cold images, the mix of dialogue and description, the blend of disparate cultures: the tension Alvarez creates through the use of those techniques explodes at the poem's close:
Except the maids and the workmen,
sitting on stoops behind the sugar house,
ate with their fingers from their open palms
windows, shutters, walls, pillars, doors,
made from the cane they had cut from the fields.
(60-64)
The family did not involve the workers in the festivity, although the workers had helped to make the reception successful. The repetition of the hard c-sound in the ultimate line suggests that the family--especially "cousin Carmen"--had treated the workers harshly.
Alvarez balances opposite attitudes and evaluations to create irony. In lines 45-50 she states:
It would be years
before I took the courses that would change my mind
in schools paid for by sugar from the fields around us,
years before I could begin to comprehend
how one does not see the maids when they pass by
with trays of deviled eggs arranged on daisy wheels.
The enchantment of the celebration in her homeland caused her to ignore the workers' predicament. It was not until she went to school that she realized they had helped to build her family's home and, later, had helped to pay for her education. "Homecoming" is a fitting ode to those workers.
Alvarez attempts to bridge her past and present worlds and discovers her poetic self in "Homecoming." The poem sets the tone for the entire work, a collection every poet should read.
_______________________________________________________
*Julia Alvarez
, Homecoming: New and Collected Poems (New York: Plume, 1996) 3-4.
In this post I explain the qualities of six common poetic forms (villanelle, sonnet, ballad, blank verse, heroic couplet, stanza), provide an example of each form, and comment on each example.
Introduction
We have been discussing the inherent characteristics of poetry that set it apart from other literary genres: its condensation of language, its rhythmic nature, and its dense imagery. Now, we need to discuss the ways you can put those elements together into a cohesive form. Although you might not choose to use a conventional form, experimenting with and learning about form will increase your sensitivity to language. Later, if you experiment with nontraditional forms, you will have knowledge about the primary elements of poetry from which you can draw. A successful musician who wants to create a new form will draw from what he/she knows about music theory and will move forward into unexplored territory. If the musician does not know anything about music, then, after much experimentation, he/she eventually will return to where he/she started. My point is that you need to explore different forms for different ideas, allowing your poems to develop organically. You will want to decide which forms will fit best your ideas. Again, it is your prerogative to write in a traditional form, but you may discover that you enjoy the challenge of constraint, that you find freedom in form.
Villanelle
- It is a poem of nineteen lines.
- It has five stanzas--four with three lines, the final with four lines.
- The first line of the first stanza becomes the last line of the second and fourth stanzas.
- The third line of the first stanza becomes the last line of the third and fifth stanzas.
- Those two refrain lines follow each other to become the penultimate and ultimate lines of the poem.
- The rhyme scheme is aba, with the repetition of the rhymes in accordance with the refrains.
Perhaps the single feature of the villanelle is the absence of narrative possibility. Figural development is possible in a villanelle, but the form refuses to tell a story. Its circularity prevents linear development. Thus, the form suggests, at the deepest level, powerful recurrences of memory and emotion. The villanelle cannot establish truly a conversational tone with the repetition of one sound thirteen times, of another sound six times, and of two lines four times. It has songlike qualities. Whereas the subject of most lyric poems is loss, the formal properties of the villanelle address the idea of loss directly. The repetition of lines and the circularity of stanzas become, as the audience listens, a repudiation of forward motion, temporality, and dissolution. Each stanza of a villanelle, with its refrains, becomes a series of retrievals.
One Art
The art of losing isn't hard to master;
so many things seem filled with the intent
to be lost that their loss is no disaster.
Lose something every day. Accept the fluster
of lost door keys, the hour badly spent.
The art of losing isn't hard to master.
Then practice losing farther, losing faster:
places, and names, and where it was you meant
to travel. None of these will bring disaster.
I lost my mother's watch. And look! my last, or
next-to-last, of three loved houses went.
The art of losing isn't hard to master.
I lost two cities, lovely ones. And, vaster,
some realms I owned, two rivers, a continent.
I miss them, but it wasn't a disaster.
--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
though it may look like (Write it!) like disaster.1
Elizabeth Bishop plays with the strictness of the villanelle in subtle ways. The tone of the speaker--brave, resilient--is counter to the darkness of the form, the refrains of which suggest the finality of the losses (from small to great: a bunch of keys, a watch, a city, a relationship). Bishop's choice of the villanelle to formalize the catalog of losses emphasizes the form's power for twentieth- and twenty-first-century poets. It does not allow easy narrative resolution. Its circularity slowly builds an acoustic chamber for the words, the lines, the meanings: "The art of losing isn't hard to master." As the villanelle gains strength and speed, the coda--"The art of losing"--moves in and out of irony, grief, self-accusation, regret. With each repetition the lines take on new meanings. Each time the audience hears "The art of losing," it has a different force. The words of loss become loud, more ominous, and yet, at the same time, more human.
Sonnet
- It is a poem of fourteen lines, usually in iambic pentameter.
- There are two kinds of sonnet, Petrarchan and Shakespearean, with very different histories behind their forms.
- The Petrarchan sonnet is Italian in origin. It has an octave (eight-line stanza) which precedes a sestet (six-line stanza). The rhyme scheme of the octave is ababcdcd, and the sestet's is cdecde.
- The rhyme scheme of the Shakespearean sonnet is ababcdcdefefgg. It has no octave/sestet structure.
The development of the sonnet began when Francesco Petrarca, who was born in 1304 and lived in Tuscany, published his Canzoniere
, a sequence of 366 poems, 317 of which were sonnets to a lover, Laura. The Italian originators developed one of the features of the sonnet that continues to survive: the division into an octave and a sestet. The octave is a statement of eight lines, and the sestet is a resolution to the intellectual or emotional question in the octave. The structure makes the sonnet a self-sufficient form, open to shades of tone and mood. Its degree of close and repetitive rhyme reflects the rich resources of Italian rhyme.
In England, in the hands of Thomas Wyatt and Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey, the sonnet's form changed. Wyatt introduced the couplet, and Howard introduced more rhymes. Their changes benefit practitioners in a language with less abundant rhymes than Italian. Furthermore, by shifting the English sonnet away from the intellectual and argumentative Petrarchan form, Wyatt and Howard provided new resonance to the ending. The couplet is often the loudest, most powerful part of a sonnet.
The sonnet--either form--is short and easily comprehensible. Its historic structure continues to allow lively debate and subtle argument. Its sequential structure allows narrative progression, and it is capable of being musical and memorable.
XLII
What lips my lips have kissed, and where, and why,
I have forgotten, and what arms have lain
Under my head till morning; but the rain
Is full of ghosts tonight, that tap and sigh
Upon the glass and listen for reply,
And in my heart there stirs a quiet pain
For unremembered lads that not again
Will turn to me at midnight with a cry.
Thus in the winter stands the lonely tree,
Nor knows what birds have vanished one by one,
Yet knows its boughs more silent than before:
I cannot say what loves have come and gone,
I only know that summer sang in me
A little while, that in me sings no more.2
Edna St. Vincent Millay's sonnet relies heavily on sibilance (hissing sound), alliteration, and assonance. It is musical to the extent that it almost destabilizes the tradition of the sonnet as a measured argument. The distinctive music and high diction quicken the pace of the octave. The sestet, where the abandoned lover becomes a winter tree, is slower and more reflective.
Ballad
- It is a short narrative that is usually, but not always, in four-line stanzas.
- The usual ballad meter is a first and third line with four stresses (iambic tetrameter) and a second and fourth line with three stresses (iambic trimeter).
- The rhyme scheme is abab or abcb.
- The subject matter is distinctive: communal stories of lost love, of supernatural occurrences, or of recent events.
- The ballad maker uses regional speech and dialogue to convey the story.
It is obvious that the ballad came to poetry from song. It is a form found in every culture, every country, every language. Its structure and rhetoric have their roots in oral tradition. Its form is simple, direct--almost always a short narrative--and subtly left open for the next user to add details, names and events, if necessary. The ballad's subject matter is tabloid: death, murder, suicide, disgrace, mystery. Although critics disagree about the meter of the ballad (accentual or accentual-syllabic), the meter is recognizable as a series of small, intense sounds. The music builds from verse to verse, often making a hypnotic narrative. Ballads contain plain words, short lines, vivid images, and musical rhymes. Again, the form insists on ordinary, day-to-day language.
We Real Cool
The Pool Players.
Seven at the Golden Shovel.
We real cool. We
Left school. We
Lurk Late. We
Strike straight. We
Sing sin. We
Thin gin. We
Jazz June. We
Die soon.3
With its suppressed narrative, concealed drama, and communal theme, "We Real Cool" conveys the power of the ballad in a contemporary context, disguising a sharp and public tone with musical cadences. Its short lines become daggers of irony. The music of courage and the bleakness of reality play off each other in the brief, jumpy stanzas. Its moral: the endangerment of personal risk, for society is about to punish the individual. Gwendolyn Brooks reminds us that the role of the ballad in our time can be both moral and satirical.
Blank Verse
- It is in iambic pentameter.
- It is the poetic form closest to human speech.
- It has no end rhyme.
- The lack of rhyme makes enjambment more possible and often more effective.
Blank verse came into English poetry from Italian literature. The inventor of blank verse in England was Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey, who helped Thomas Wyatt bring the sonnet to England. Howard translated the Aeneid
into blank verse, producing strict ten-syllable lines of natural speech. Indeed, blank verse is a natural vehicle for rhythmic speech, sustaining complex argument and emotion without rhyme. Blank verse offers greater suspension of sentences, an acceptance of duration, and an imitation or a description of thought.
from "Directive"
Back out of all this now too much for us,
Back in a time made simple by the loss
Of detail, burned, dissolved, and broken off
Like graveyard marble sculpture in the weather,
There is a house that is no more a house
Upon a farm that is no more a farm
And in a town that is no more a town.
The road there, if you'll let a guide direct you
Who only has at heart your getting lost,
May seem as if it should have been a quarry--
Great monolithic knees the former town
Long since gave up pretense of keeping covered.
And there's a story in a book about it:
Besides the wear of iron wagon wheels
The ledges show lines ruled southeast northwest,
The chisel work of an enormous Glacier
That braced his feet against the Arctic Pole.
You must not mind a certain coolness from him
Still said to haunt this side of Panther Mountain.
Nor need you mind the serial ordeal
Of being watched from forty cellar holes
As if by eye pairs out of forty firkins.
As for the woods' excitement over you
That sends light rustle rushes to their leaves,
Charge that to upstart inexperience. (1 -- 25)4
The modern poet who possibly gained most from the rich tradition of blank verse was Robert Frost. After returning to America from England in 1918, he attempted to find an idiom that allowed the expression of a stylistic, dark voice and a dramatic narration. A vernacular dramatic tone drives Frost's blank verse, which is slow and distinctive.
Heroic Couplet
- It is a pair of lines that rhyme.
- The meter is iambic pentameter or tetrameter.
- The rhyme scheme progresses as aabbcc et cetera.
- A caesura usually occurs after the fifth or sixth syllable.
Although it is a useful, witty and musical unit, nobody could have predicted the extraordinary development of the couplet in the sixteenth century, when poets began to think, explain and argue in the form. Thus, the couplet became the heroic couplet, the latter suggesting a high subject matter. By the eighteenth century, the heroic couplet was the most popular poetic form. The end-stop rhymes, the regular stresses, and the recurrent pauses made it perfect for moralizing, warning, satirizing and joking.
from "My Last Duchess"
Ferrara
That's my last Duchess painted on the wall,
Looking as if she were alive; I call
That piece a wonder, now: Fra Pandolf's hands
Worked busily a day, and there she stands.
Will't please you sit and look at her? I said
'Fra Pandolf' by design, for never read
Strangers like you that pictured countenance,
The depth and passion of its earnest glance,
But to myself they turned (since none puts by
The curtain I have drawn for you, but I)
And seemed as they would ask me, if they durst,
How such a glance came there; so, not the first
Are you to turn and ask thus. Sir, 'twas not
Her husband's presence only, called that spot
Of joy into the Duchess' cheek: perhaps
Fra Pandolf chanced to say 'Her mantle laps
Over my Lady's wrist too much,' or 'Paint
Must never hope to reproduce the faint
Half-flush that dies along her throat;' such stuff
Was courtesy, she thought, and cause enough
For calling up that spot of joy. She had
A heart ... how shall I say? ... too soon made glad,
Too easily impressed; she liked whate'er
She looked on, and her looks went everywhere.
(1 -- 24)5
"My Last Duchess" is a dramatic monologue. It canvasses the peculiar address of a nobleman who thinks aloud about possession, art, power and marriage but is unable to distinguish one from the other. Robert Browning added irony to the eighteenth-century form, making it faster and darker.
Stanza
- It is any unit of recurrent meter and rhyme, or variants of them, in a pattern of repetition and separation in a single poem.
- An isometric stanza has lines of similar length.
- A heterometric stanza has lines of different lengths.
- Quasi-stanzaic verse has loose groups of lines or paragraphs.
- Sound and sense accumulate from stanza to stanza via rhyme and the repetition of lines.
The stanza has been an almost invisible and yet dynamic form. At first, it was hardly a form, merely an element of it. As time has been progressing, however, the stanza's capacity to maintain a tension between narrative and lyric and to close a story and open a drama have made it suitable to both the musicians and the narrators within the poetic discipline. In Renaissance and metaphysical poetry, the stanza is an instrument of wit, a place where sharp turns and epigrams occur. In Romantic poetry the stanza is an instrument of drama for following narratives and for arranging emotions. In Modernist poetry the stanza is where change occurs, where poetry reconnects to song.
449
I died for Beauty--but was scarce
Adjusted in the Tomb
When One who died for Truth, was lain
In an adjoining Room--
He questioned softly "Why I failed"?
"For Beauty", I replied--
"And I--for Truth--Themself are One--
We Brethren, are", He said--
And so, as Kinsmen, met a Night--
We talked between the Rooms--
Until the Moss had reached our lips--
And covered up--our names--6
Emily Dickinson's language and images are original and powerful. The quatrains carry the force of her vision, achieving maximum drama between the stanzas. The colorful argument she makes--a poignant response to Keats' claim for the relation between beauty and truth--occurs in three taut stanzas. The erotic drama unfolds as a narrative. Who are these two people, this man and woman, who have lost their opportunities and become siblings and not lovers in death? The fast pace and dramatic closures of her stanzas counterpoint the story.
Conclusion
The best way to learn forms is to read a variety of poems by different poets. Read them aloud. Copy them carefully. Study them thoroughly. Try to absorb as much as you can of what has been done by others before you. Practice imitation; then, engage in origination.
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1Elizabeth Bishop, The Complete Poems: 1927-1979 (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1983) 178.
2Edna St. Vincent Millay, Collected Sonnets (New York: Harper and Brothers, 1941) 42.
3Gwendolyn Brooks, Selected Poems (New York: HarperCollins, 1963) 73.
4Mark Richardson
, ed., Frost: Collected Poems, Prose, and Plays, Vol. I (New York: Literary Classics of the United States, 1995) 341.
5Bennett A. Cerf and Donald S. Klopfer, eds.,
The Poems and Plays of Robert Browning
(New York: Random, 1934) 94-95.
6Thomas H. Johnson, ed., The Complete Poems of Emily Dickinson (Boston: Little, Brown and Co., 1960) 216.
