Odd and Invented Forms

Blues Stanza

Dear Amy at http://lotrscrapbook.com 

YOUR BLUES STANZA FORM IS WRONG! You credit my Book of Forms, but you can't apparently read very well. You say the form of the blues stanza is Aaa. WRONG! It's AAa, BBb, CCc, and so forth, meaning that the first two lines of each stanza are refrains; THEY ARE REPEATED. So all your poems written in blues stanza ARE NOT BLUES.

Lewis Turco

 

Good heavens, I am so very, very sorry! I'll take them down for now until they can be corrected — my fault entirely, I'm sure, as your instructions are always very concise.

Your book, by the way, is now one of my Very Favorites of All Time, I've ended up buying copies for two other people I know who liked to try their hand at writing assorted verse, we're all learning together.  I've taken up one of those blank journals and beginning at the letter A tried to see if I can write one of every form you list (not counting things like loooong comic operas and such).... I've made it to M and run out of pages, so I'm on journal #2 now.  Some are quite difficult! My salute to you for the not insignificant and laudworthy gathering of forms under one cover, thank you for publishing it.

Again, most sorry for the misunderstanding on the Blues form, we'll see if we can get it right.

Amy

 

Amy,

I'm pleased you like The Book of Forms so well. Regarding the blues form: Whenever you see a capital letter, that indicates a refrain line, and if you have only one capital A, for instance, that should alert you that something's wrong.

L. T.

Versecraft and Correspondence

 

In an interview he conducted for Poets & Writers Magazine On-Line Only (www.pw.org/mag/dq_turco.htm.) in December 2005 Daniel Nester asked me how it feels to know poets everywhere use The Book of Forms: A Handbook of Poetics as a standard text on poetics and prosody.

I replied, “It’s gratifying, of course, but writers seldom get a real sense of what something like that is like because we get very little direct feedback. Over the years, though, in the case of The Book of Forms, it’s become slowly obvious to me that a lot of people use it, and a fair number write to me about it, asking questions, as you did.”

For instance, earlier that year, in late January of 2005, the poet-scholar Annie Finch e-mailed me to relay a query she had received from Erin A. Thomas asking her if she knew whether I were the inventor of the terzanelle, and if the only existing example was “Terzanelle in Thunderweather” in The New Book of Forms (Univesity Press of New England, 1986) and The Book of Forms, Third Edition (University Press of New England, 2000). I replied that I hadn’t thought of the terzanelle as an invention, but it’s true that in 1964 or 1965 I had experimented with the form of the villanelle by applying terza rima to it, thus coming up with a hybrid form that acted rather like a pantoum and that I called the “terzanelle,” so in that sense, yes, I was its inventor. Prof. Finch put me in touch with Erin Thomas who struck up a correspondence with me regarding the background of the terzanelle.

During the course of our contact I told him that the first example of the form in print, titled "Terzanelle," appeared in The Michigan Quarterly Review, volume iv, number 3, in July of 1965. I included a description of the form in the first edition of The Book of Forms (E. P. Dutton, 1968, page 125), but there were no examples of poems in that volume, and I didn’t include my poem’s title in the “Bibliography of Examples” (on page 133).  Subsequently I wrote other examples including “Thunderweather” (title changed later to “Terzanelle in Thunderweather” as on p. 397 of The Collected Lyrics of Lewis Turco / Wesli Court 1953-2004, Star Cloud Press, 2004), and various people had been writing them as well, several eventually being posted on the web.

I suggested to Annie Finch that she Google the term, though I’d never done so myself. Subsequently, I took my own advice and discovered that there were 26,000 hits on the internet! I was astounded. Although the activity on the web has since cooled way down, it must have been the most popular verse form in the world right at that moment. I also Googled “blues sonnet,” the other form I had “invented,” the first examples of which appeared as “The Boneyard Blues” in my book of criticism Visions and Revisions of American Poetry (University of Arkansas Press, 1986, pages 130-132), but there were only 72 hits for that form on the web. I was bemused. One would have thought that the American blues forms would have been more popular than a medieval French form. How little one knows!

        On September 25, 2006 4:48:14 PM EDT Gerald Greland wrote from Bronxville NY to me in Oswego NY:

"Dear Mr. Turco,

         "I am writing to ask for help in finding more information about the Bref Double, the French form you describe in your Book of Forms. I use your book consistently as I write; it is the most useful book in my collection.

         "I have consulted numerous other volumes on form and prosody in the hope of finding more information about the history of this unique combination of rhymed and unrhymed lines. Unfortunately, though, I have not found any information that goes beyond your entry.

         "I turn to you now with the hope that you might be able to provide me with more comprehensive information, or point me in a direction where I can investigate further.

         "I would be extremely grateful for any help and information you might give.

         "With many thanks," etc.

 

On September 25, 2006 9:50:42 PM EDT I wrote to Gerald Greland:

Mr. Greland,

         I always thought that I found that form in Clement Wood’s Poets’ Handbook, but someone else asked me about the bref double a few years back, and when I checked up on it, I couldn't find it there. So I regret to say that I have no idea at this late date where I found it, unless it's from Helen Louise Cohen's Lyric Forms from France (Harcourt, 1922), which is the only other title in my original bibliography for The Book of Forms (1968) that might apply. Did you try Googling it? I just did, and got 3000 hits!

                                                      Yours, etc.

On Sep 26, 2006, at 9:18 AM, Jere Greland wrote:

"Dear Mr. Turco,

         "Thank you so much for your prompt reply. I will use the sources you cited in order to find more information on the bref double. I realize now that I was asking you to recall original sources and materials that you used almost 40 years ago when your first edition came out. Of course, when I use TBoF today it all seems so fresh and immediate. I have the 1986 edition, The New Book of Forms, so I didn't even know that there was a bibliography until you mentioned it, and then I found that the later edition (and perhaps the earlier?) included your sources.

         "I did try Googling the bref double, but came up only with examples written in some bastardized form that seems to have been copied mistakenly from your book and then propagated endlessly online (the number of repetitions of the rhyme and the rhyme scheme have been altered and then set, which takes away from the ambiguous, fantastic essence of the form, in my opinion). Trying to find anything scholarly or definitive about its origins has been daunting, but I will keep trying.

         "Regardless, though, of that search, I want to express my humblest and deepest gratitude to you for the incredible contribution you have made to the field and for the enormous influence that your work has had on my writing.

         "Yours," etc.

 

On September 26, 2006 7:49:42 PM EDT I replied,

Mr. Greland,

         Many thanks. I am always happy when someone tells me he or she has profited from my work.

                                                      Lewis Turco

 

On Sep 27, 2006, at 9:52 PM EDT Jere Greland wrote back:

"Dear Mr. Turco,

         "I followed up on the works that you cited, and indeed you were right about finding the citation for the bref double in Clement Wood's Poets’ Handbook. I found it on page 355 in the 1946 reprint edition. Perhaps the reason that you had difficulty finding it when you were last asked is that it is listed in Wood's work as a "breu-doble." Your description in TBoF is an exact rendition of what Wood describes. Unfortunately, in the edition of Wood that I have, there isn't a bibliography, so I'm back to searching for further historical information. Perhaps I will have more luck researching the "breu-doble."

         "Again, many thanks for your help.

                                                               "Yours," etc.

 

On September 28, 2006 9:25:19 AM EDT I wrote:

 

Mr. Greland,

         You must be a great researcher, and fast! Wow!

         I wonder how I missed it when I looked it up years ago. Perhaps I looked in Cohen rather than Wood.

         "Breu doble" doesn't sound familiar, though, but it does sound Spanish rather than French, unless it's medieval French, which it probably is. I notice in my original bibliography of 1968 and my most recent, of 2000, that the edition of Wood that I cite is the 1940 edition. I wonder if there's a difference in spelling between it and the 1946 edition you cite.

         Thank you for keeping me informed about all this. Much appreciated.

 

On September 30, 2006 12:33 PM EDT I followed up:

 

Mr. Greland,

         I’ve been thinking over some of the issues and memories you have revived for me. Regarding the spelling of the bref double that you found in Wood as “breu doble” -- I’m wondering if I didn’t think, when I found the form (sometime between 1959 and 1968) that the u in “breu” was probably the medieval equivalent of v and therefore the first word of the term was meant to be “brev,” which meant “brief.” However, the “breve” in English prosody means something else entirely, that is, a “short” or unaccented syllable, as distinguished from a “macron,” a “long” or accented syllable. I therefore probably thought that I ought to avoid confusion by changing the v in “brev” to an f, thus arriving at “bref”; then I just added a u to “doble” to modernize the word and wound up with “bref double.”

In my researches for The Book of Forms: A Handbook of Poetics I ran into all sorts of similar situations for which I tried to find simple solutions. As I wrote in the original Introduction (page 11), “…while researching these forms, the author has discovered ambiguities in many of the descriptions set forth by his sources. He has also found that in several cases distinctly different forms have been lumped under one terminology or another. In order to clarify the study of verse forms, in some cases the author has invented the names of forms, but in every case these inventions are derived from the original ambiguous terminology.” The bref double is an obvious example of one of these problems encountered.

Yours, etc.

On October 2, 2006 9:34:47 AM EDT Jere Greland wrote:

"Dear Mr. Turco,

         "Thank you for clarifying by outlining your process for arriving at your entry on the form. I do think that your reasoning behind presenting it as a "bref double" rather than a "breu-doble" makes complete sense and probably avoided much confusion.

         "I cannot imagine the enormous job that you had in researching and classifying all of these magnificent forms into such a practical, comprehensive, compact, and easy-to-use volume. The decisions that you had to make in terms of naming and presenting certain forms must have been many. But given the depth and breadth of your command of the field, I am confident that your choices were more than sound, as in the case of the 'bref double.'”

         "My best,

                           "Jere Greland."

         On Tuesday, November 17, 2009, R. S. Gwynn wrote me to say, “The poet who's coming in to read tomorrow [in Beaumont, Texas] asked if I could think of a 14-liner in pentameter or tetrameter that could make no claim whatsoever on being a sonnet. I couldn't come up with one, even from Lowell's vast welter of them.  Can you think of any?  She's working up a sonnet lecture for the conclusion of her Warren Wilson MFA.  I said that I always told my classes that a sonnet has five main qualities:

1.    chiefly lyrical

2.    iambic pentameter

3.    rhyme scheme (other than couplets)

4.    turn/volta

5.    14ll.

 

"Then I tell them that all of these 'rules; have been violated at one time or another in poems that are called ‘sonnets.’

 

1.    There are many short narratives and dramatic monologues/dialogues;

2.    Shakespeare and Sydney used shorter and longer meters in sonnets;

3.    Lowell's sonnets are unrhymed; Wilbur's "In Trackless Woods" is in Baer's sonnet anthology;

4.    Many sonnets lack a clear turn;

6.    Both shorter (curtal) and longer (16ll. and caudate sonnet) exist.

 

“Any thoughts?”

 

I replied, I've just posted on my new blog [see my previous entry here,

http://lewisturco.typepad.com/odd_and_invented_forms/ ]

"Revisions for a Sixth Printing of the Third Edition of The Book of Forms" that includes a complete definition of the differences between sonnets and other fourteen-line poems [which are called ‘quatorzains’]. 

    Other quatorzains would include the blues “sonnet” which, though it is fourteen lines long, rhymes, and may be written in iambic pentameter verse, uses refrain lines in each triplet stanza, and no sonnet uses refrains.  Neither the “curtal” nor the “caudate” sonnet is a sonnet because they aren’t fourteen lines long, and no matter what one calls a poem, by definition, if it isn’t fourteen lines of rhymed iambic pentameter (or decasyllabic or hendecasyllabic) verse, it is not a sonnet. 

COMMENTS

I was challenged to come up with something to be thankful for each day until Turkey Day, so I made today Turco Day:

 

"Today I am thankful for Lew Turco, who taught me that the djinni is stronger for having learned to live inside the lamp."

 

Paul

Corrections for a SIXTH printing of The Book of Forms, Third Edition

 

 

 

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.                           R^b         a  — 1^st line contains rhyming refrain

            2.                                    b

            3.                                    a

            4.                           R^b                          —refrain

 

            5.                                    b

            6.                                    a

            7.                                    b

 

            8.                                    a

            9.                                    b

           10.                                    a

           11.                           R^b                           —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. 

The Book of Odd and Invented Forms

A Samisdat Manuscript 

Edited by Lewis Turco

P.O. Box 161

Dresden ME 04342-0161

Phone 207.737.2326

Email: jturco@roadrunner.com

ATTENTION!

Please take note: The Book of Odd and Invented Forms has grown too large to sustain as a single blog post, so it has been taken down. I will work to turn it into a book manuscript which I will then submit to a print publisher. Thank all of you who have contributed to the manuscript for your submissions and good will. If and when something happens to it I'll let you know individually.

Lewis Turco