Corrections for the SIXTH printing of The Book of Forms, Third Edition:
pp. 73-89, add to chapter glossary:
Computer poetry. See
interactive poetry.
Interactive poetry. Poems produced on
and for computers having alternative elements which in effect allow “readers”
to invent their own “virtual” poetry within the boundaries of the computer
program in use. Also called computer poetry
and virtual poetry.
Poeticule. An insignificant or
exceedingly minor poet, such as Scotland’s “most famous nobody,” William Topaz
McGonagall (1830-1902). For a related term, see poetaster.
virtual poetry.
See interactive poetry.
p. 126. After the entry on the “anagram” insert this entry
in place of the entry on “The English Anglo-Saxn Line:
Anglo-Saxon prosody is an accentual line (called a stich) of verse that utilizes alliteration and strong
stress. It is composed of two half-lines (hemistichs) separated by a rhythmic pause (a caesura) in the center of the stich. Each hemistich has two
overstressed syllables; thus, there are four accents to the full stich, but
there may be any number of unstressed (unaccented) syllables in the stich.
The initial sounds of the first three stressed
syllables are alliterated, meaning that these sounds must be exactly the same
consonant sounds regardless of their spelling (as for instance, “The chorus line kicked ● quickly and cleanly.” [The large dot indicates the caesura). Though exactly the same
consonant sounds must be alliterated, any vowel may “alliterate” with any other
vowel: actually, what is being “alliterated” in the latter case is the absence
of consonants.
Although it is not a requirement of the form, the alliteration may at times be continued into the fourth accented
syllable, as in the example given above. Also, sometimes the fourth accented syllable of a line becomes the alliteration
in the succeeding line.
FOR
A WORDY LADY
Grow
lax in your larynx, limp in the tongue,
Madam!
Move your mad lips much less, lose noise!
the
volume of your voicebox is vibrating eardrums
which
hitherto hung in their whorls, happily
contemplating
the conundrums of cornflowers and
bees
busy
with bushes, not bitchy with words.
Words
are a riddle wrung from the mind
at
best; at worst, they are crusts for the buzzards
of
gossip and guilt. Gusts such as yours
are
a riot and roil of ruthless looseness
signifying
nil, nipping backs
and
buttocks with boldness, banality and tooth.
Terseness
is wit, lady, tension is thought.
Vent
your venom on ventilators whose wind
is
as constant as yours and as steady as sin,
or
on clocks that course in constant cycles:
my time is a treasure. Trifle with hours
of
your own, woman! Word your own woe.
This
subject is further discussed in the section on The Sonic Level, under accentual
prosodies. See also edda measures. For examples, see the anonymously written “The
Wanderer” and “Wulf and Eadwacer,” given earlier, and the bob and
wheel.
p. 127. Line 8. should end in an e, not a c.
p. 135. Substitute this entry of “bob and wheel” for the
current entry:
The English “bob and wheel” is an accentual-syllabic quintet appended as a tail
or coda to a stanza of Anglo-Saxon prosody in one Medieval romance in
particular, Sir Gawain
and the Green Knight. The “bob” is a one-or-two-foot line
running on (enjambed) from the alliterative accentual stanza, and it is
continued by the “wheel,” a quatrain of short lines, generally of three feet,
rhyming baba. The whole quintet “bob and wheel”
rhymes ababa, but rhyme does not
necessarily appear anywhere in the part of the stanza that is made of
Anglo-Saxon prosody. The bob rhymes with lines two and four of the wheel; lines
one and three of the wheel rhyme with each other. Gawain is thus a clear example of the old alliterative
verse system being deliberately linked to the new accentual-syllabic prosody
invented by Chaucer and Gower. It is thus about as clear a transformational
poem as anyone might hope to see coming out of the Middle Ages and linking with
modernity.
Sir
Gawain and the Green Knight is too long to
quote here in its entirety, of course, but here is stanza 25 from the poem in a
modern version:
From the deeps of dream Gawain mumbled,
Suffering stounds [moments] of sorrow and worry
That Weird [fate] that day would wield him death
At the Chapel Green where the green man
Would deal him death with a great dunt [knock,
blow].
Anon our knight recalled his wits,
Fought his way from the fens [marshes] of
slumber,
Rose fleetly to attend his fate.
The sweet carline [young
woman] came laughing,
Kissed his face and fondled him;
Gawain gladly welcomed her kindness,
Admired her garb, her glorious hair,
Faultless features and radiant hue.
Gladness arose out of his heart.
He took her there in rapture rare,
In ecstasies of blissful song
and of delight.
— bob (the rest of
They
shared this happy state this stanza is the
In
loving talk and light! wheel)
What
might have been his fate
Had
Mary not kept her knight?
Modern version by Wesli Court
p. 137. Delete the last two words, “each of,” at the end of
the fourth-to-last line of the last paragraph on the page.
p. 149, Line 3. the word “three” should read “five.”
p. 164, in the diagram of the “Cyhydedd Hir” entry, change
the rhymes of the second stanza to conform to the description:
9. xxxxd
10. xxxxd
11. xxxxd
12. xxxB
13. xxxxe
14. xxxxe
15. xxxxe
16. xxxB
p. 183, after “epilog,” add, epileny, a drinking song.
p. 190, substitute this entry for ghazal:
The ghazal
is an Arabian multiple-couplet form that turns on a single rhyme (qafia) and a refrain (radif). In English the prosody is quantitative syllabics,
lines being usually decasyllabic or longer. Excepting the first couplet (matla) and the last couplet (makhta), all couplets are autonomous and may be arranged in
any order or excerpted from the poem to stand singly or in groups. The minimum
number of couplets in a ghazal is five, but there is no upper limit to the
number of couplets that the ghazal may contain.
The matla sets the syllable-count as well as the qafia and the radif, both of which appear in
each line of the matla; the syllable-count
of the illustrative poem below is fourteen per line, the qafia is done / won (=a), and the radif is finally (= B). In succeeding
couplets this rhyme / refrain scheme appears in only second lines; thus, the rhyme scheme for the poem is aB
| aB in the matla and then in following couplets, caB daB
eaB, and so forth indefinitely to xaB. The
ghazal ends often with a “signature couplet” or makhta containing the name, the pseudonym, the nickname, or
some other representation of the maker of the ghazal. This is the schematic
diagram for the matla in the poem
below:
x x x x x x x x x x x x a B
x x x x x x x x x x x x a B
and subsequent couplets:
x x x x x x x x x x x x x c
x x x x x x x x x x x x a B
x x x x x x x x x x x x x d
x x x x x x x x x x x x a B
x x x x x x x x x x x x x e
x x x x x x x x x x x x a B
etc.
GHAZAL FOR THE MUSES’ AMUSEMENT
By Wesli Court
When the poet starts he trusts he
will be done finally;
Not only that, but he hopes he will
have won finally.
Which came
first, the rooster on the dung heap or the hen’s egg?
Who will be the father, who will be
the son finally?
Spiritually, a poet may look back
over years
Or even centuries, perhaps to John
Donne, finally.
It is possible for a makir to succumb at last,
Alas! to asinine wordplay like the
pun finally.
Though perhaps one does not wish to
enter the Muses’ race,
It may be necessary for him to run,
finally.
Poor Wesli Courts his muse, Jascha,
and saddles Pegasus,
Mounts, and trots up the slopes of
Mt. Helicon, finally.
p. 244, substitute this entry for the roundel:
The
English roundel is a poem
similar to the rondine: eleven lines and three stanzas, a quatrain, a triplet,
and a quatrain. The refrain, which is made up of the first phrase of the first
line, in the case of the example by Swinburne below, also rhymes with the b lines:
lines rhymes
and refrains
1. Rb a — 1st line contains
rhyming refrain
2. b
3. a
4. Rb
—refrain
5. b
6. a
7. b
8. a
9. b
10. a
11. Rb
—refrain
p. 247, after “…with a cutting edge,” change the period to a
colon and insert,
WEDDING
CERTIFICATE
Under
an oak, in stormy weather,
I
joined this rogue and whore together;
And
none but Him who rules the thunder
May
put this rogue and whore asunder.
—
Jonathan Swift
[Also add the author and title to the index.]
p. 248, after “This Morning Tom Child, the Painter, Died,”
add:
Generally
the literary epitaph begins with the name of the “deceased” as above, but a set
form ¾
an iambic tetrameter quatrain rhyming aabb
¾
saves the name until the end of the last line.
p. 251, Delete “The order of the repetition of the end words
is…” through “(line 39).” Not only is this erroneous, it covers what follows on
the next page.
p. 264 ff: Substitute this entry for the current entry on
the sonnet:
People often ask whether a poem
that is fourteen lines long and rhymes but is not written in iambic pentameter
measures is a sonnet. It is
true that the term originally meant simply “little song,” but this question was
settled long ago by Dante and Spenser and Shakespeare and Wordsworth and Mrs.
Browning (not to mention Longfellow and Robinson and Frost and Millay): If the
poem is not written in decasyllabic lines
(if Italian or one of the other non-accentual languages), or iambic
pentameter lines (if in English), then it
is not a sonnet.
The word “sonnet” has come to
denote a fourteen-line poem written in iambic pentameter measures and rhymed in
various ways. Rhyme schemes of the sonnet have traditionally been allowed to
vary, as has the number of stanzas; and the volta or "turn" roams
around a bit, but a "sonnet" in our tradition must be fourteen lines of
rhymed accentual-syllabic iambic pentameter verse with a volta preceding the
final stanza. Anything else is either a quatorzain or a nonce form, meaning a form invented by the writer of the poem for a purpose of
the moment.
The
Petrarchan or Italian sonnet has an Italian octave which is made up of two Italian quatrains (abbaabba)
after which a volta or turn takes place, a shift in direction of thought which
is pursued in the succeeding sestet, which is either an Italian
sestet (cdecde) or a Sicilian sestet (cdcdcd).
The
envelope sonnet rhymes abbacddc
efgefg or efefef. The Sicilian sonnet combines a Sicilian octave and a Sicilian or Italian sestet; the rhymes change at the volta: abababab cdecde
or cdcdce.
The
Italian and Sicilian octaves and ottava rima (abababcc) are heroic
octaves. The sonetto rispetto combines one stanza of ottava rima or one iambic
pentameter rispetto (ababccdd)
with either an Italian or a Sicilian sestet (abababcc defdef or dedede
or ababccdd efgefg or efefef). The English or Shakespearean sonnet has three Sicilian quatrains (abab cdcd efef) followed by a volta and a heroic couplet (gg).
The
Spenserian sonnet has three interlocking
Sicilian quatrains (abab bcbc
cdcd) plus a volta and a heroic couplet (ee); the terza rima sonnet has interlocking Sicilian triplet (aba)
stanzas: aba bcb cdc ded, a
volta and a heroic couplet. All
these couplet, triplet, quatrain, sestet, and octave forms are heroic
stanza forms because they are written in
iambic pentameter measures (iambic pentameter is the “heroic line” in which
most English-language epics are written), as are quintet and septet forms
written in the same measures, such as the Sicilian quintet (ababa)
and the Sicilian septet (abababa).
Other
quatorzain forms are the blues sonnet
(see blues stanza), the envelope
sonnet which combines one heroic
octave rhyming abbacddc with either an Italian (efgefg) or Sicilian (efefef) sestet; the Courtwright sonnet which has an octave
made of one envelope sestet and a heroic couplet (abccbadd) plus another envelope sestet after the volta (efggfe), and the sonetto rispetto, discussed above.
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