ENG 108 –

The Nature of Narrative, 1

Weeks 6-7:
Lyric Poetry, Literature’s
Conversations with Itself, and
What’s Your Role as a Reader?
Poetry:
What is it, and how can I write
some?
• See White Wall Review:
www.ryerson.ca/wwr
Film and Television
• Favourites?
– Favourite programme?
– Favourite film?
– Favourite directors?
– Favourite actors?
Poetry
• Favourites?
– Favourite poet?
– Favourite poem?
– Favourite period? Romantic? Modernist?
Renaissance?
• Has poetry become the “opera of
literature”?
Poetry: Introduction
• Characteristics?
Poetry: Introduction
• Characteristics?
• anything we say is going to get
challenged in the 20th century and
beyond
• difference between lyric and narrative,
• for example, or what makes a poem
different from a novel
– Cf. Anne Carson, Autobiography of Red
– Jeanette Winterson’s poetic prose
– Free verse
• nevertheless, it’s useful to know the
traditions
Poetry: Introduction
• Compressed form of communicating
meaning
– Economy of expression
•
Ezra Pound
“In a Station of the Metro”

The apparition of these faces in the crowd;  

Petals on a wet, black bough.
Poetry: Introduction
• Multiple ways of signifying
– rhythm, sound, form, tone, etc.
• Poetic forms connect poem to literary
history
Poetry: Introduction
• Metrical forms create contract with
reader that language is deliberate
• Aesthetic distance:
– language as language
– Abstract or avant-garde poetry
Poetry: Introduction
Poetry = verse, metred, rhyming, … or
not
Poetry: Introduction
Poetry =
2. Lyric
• usually shorter than narrative poetry
• expresses an emotion, sentiment, idea
• expressed in a “subjective” way
• reveals POV or poetic persona’s “voice”
• most “poetry” is lyric

3. Narrative
• Narrative tells a story
• Cf. also dramatic verse – Shakespeare, for example
• Presents a story in verse
Robert Frost,
“Stopping By Woods on a Snowy Evening”
Whose woods these are I think I know.
His house is in the village, though;
He will not see me stopping here
To watch his woods fill up with snow.

My little horse must think it's queer

To stop without a farmhouse near
Between the woods and frozen lake
The darkest evening of the year.

He gives his harness bells a shake

To ask if there's some mistake.
The only other sound's the sweep
Of easy wind and downy flake.

The woods are lovely, dark, and deep,

But I have promises to keep,
And miles to go before I sleep,
And miles to go before I sleep.
Poetry: Introduction
Blank verse = no rhyme, but still
metred
• Metre = rhythm, stressed and unstressed syllables in
a line of poetry (still lots of rules)
– Iambic
– Trochaic
– Etc.
William Shakespeare,
Hamlet
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;
Poetry: Introduction
Free verse = no regular or set
rhyme scheme or metre/rhythm, or
line length

• Not to say that it has no rhyme or metre

• Follows (or can follow) patterns of
natural speech
• Not to say that it has no rhyme or
rhythm
• these can flow and transform,
William Carlos Williams,
“This is just to say”
I have eaten
the plums
that were in
the icebox

and which
you were probably
saving
for breakfast

Forgive me
they were delicious
so sweet
and so cold
Langston Hughes,
“Subway Rush Hour”
Mingled
breath and smell
so close
mingled
black and white
so near
no room to fear.
“Subway Rush Hour,”
“This is just to say”

• Hughes & Williams, like others, were

trying to write in the English of the
everyday, of the street.
• Language more “straight-forward”?
• Does this make it easier to
understand?
• What about the following poem?
William Carlos Williams,
“The Red Wheelbarrow”
so much depends
upon

a red wheel
barrow

glazed with rain

water

beside the white

chickens.
Poetry: verbal experiment
• What about modern poetry?
• Lyric? Narrative?
• Structure?
• Verse?
• Manifesto?
• Avant-garde verbal experiment?
• Abstract
Gertrude Stein
From “A Valentine to Sherwood Anderson”
What Do I See
 
A very little snail.
A medium sized turkey.
A small band of sheep.
A fair orange tree.
All nice wives are like that.
Listen to them from here.
Oh.
You did not have an answer.
Here.
Yes.
Poetry and visual arts
Renoir and Robert Rothko and Gertrude
Frost Stein
Tristan Tzara
on how to write a Dadaist poem
To make a Dadaist poem:
• Take a newspaper.
• Take a pair of scissors.
• Choose an article as long as you are planning to make your
poem.
• Cut out the article.
• Then cut out each of the words that make up this article
and put them in a bag.
• Shake it gently.
• Then take out the scraps one after the other in the order in
which they left the bag.
• Copy conscientiously.
• The poem will be like you.
• And here you are a writer, infinitely original and endowed
with a sensibility that is charming though beyond the
understanding of the vulgar.
My Dadaist Poem
(Source: “Ryerson grads pronounce
manifesto destiny.” Eyeopener vol. 41 issue
4)

“So many people fall under the umbrella of

hip hop. You have everybody from every
part of the city, every sexual orientation,
every class and every colour. It’s just love
here.”
-- Boonaa Mohammed, second-year RTA
My Dadaist Poem
after prescribed reprocessing
Under sexual
many every colour
Every love umbrella
Here class every orientation
So
and people
just everybody
City from part
the
it’s every hop
You the hip
of fall
of have

-- Jonathan Rollins, Dada poet

Let’s back up a bit
• If you want to break the rules, you
need to know them first
• And there are many rules or formal
conventions
• The Dadaists and other members of
the various avant-garde movements
were reacting in part to this sort of
over-regulation or the inherited
baggage of art
Poetry: Metre
• Iambic = 2 syllables, with the long or stressed
syllable following the short or unstressed syllable.
Short Long
Was this / the face / that launch’d /a thou/ sand ships/

• Trochaic = 2 syllables, with the short or unstressed

syllable following the long or stressed syllable. Long
short
Tro/chee trips/ from long/ to short/

• Spondaic = 2 long syllables

Slow/ spon/dee/ stalks/

• Anapestic = 3 syllables, with the first two short or

unstressed and the last long or stressed. Short short
long
With a leap/ and a bound/ the swift an/apaests throng/

• Dactylic = 3 syllables, with the first one long or

stressed and the other two short or unstressed. Long
short short
Poetry: Metre
• Iambic = ˘ /
• Trochaic = / ˘
• Spondaic = //
• Anapestic = ˘ ˘ /
• Dactylic = / ˘ ˘
• Paeonic = ˘ ˘ ˘
Poetry: Lines
Lines can be of different lengths, from
1-8 ‘feet’

• monometre – one foot line

• dimetre – two foot line
• trimetre – three foot line
• tetrametre – four foot line
• pentametre – five foot line
• hexametre – six foot line
• heptametre – seven foot line
• octametre – eight foot line
Figures of Balance and
Parallelism
Words, phrases, or clauses are placed in positions of
equivalence, either alike or opposite to suggest that these
ideas are of equal importance.

• Parallelism: on the level of logic or syntax.

“She can so inform the mind that is within us/ so
impress with quietness and beauty/ and so feed with
lofty thoughts …”
• Antithesis: asserts similarity and difference
“I find no peace and all my war is done/
I fear and hope; I burn and freeze like ice.” (Wyatt)
• Chiasmus (‘criss cross’) repeats terms in inverse
order: A is to B as B is to A
“My eyes are full of tears, my heart of love
my heart is breaking, and my eyes are dim”
Figures of Repetition
Words are repeated to lend emphasis.
• Iteratio: simple repetition.
“the woods decay, the woods decay and fall”
• Anaphora (‘carrying back’): repetition of word
or phrase in initial position.
“The time of the seasons and the constellations
the time of milking and the time of harvest”
• Epistrophe (‘turning away’): repetition of
word or phrase in final position
“fortitude as never before / frankness as never before
/ disillusions as never told in the old days”
Figures of Amplification and
Omission
Extend the meanings of plain statement, building a sense of
magnitude.

• Catalogue: an extended list of anything.

• Parenthesis (‘put beside’)-a word, phrase, or
clause inserted as an aside into sentence used for
complicating, or commenting.
“they could not and fell to the deck / (crushed them)
or water (and drowned them) or rolled / with the sea-
romp over the wreck”
• Correctio (‘setting straight’)
“These hedgerows, hardly hedgerows, little lines of
sportive wood run wild.”
• Periphrasis (circumlocution)—describing a thing
without naming it
“a game too humble to be named in verse”
(Wordsworth describing tic tac toe)
Figures of Address
• Apostrophe: “turning away”—when a poem breaks
away from its subject to address someone inside or
outside the poem.
“And you, my father, there on the sad height…”

• Rhetorical question:
“What happens to a dream deferred?”

• Exclamation:
“O muse! The causes and the crimes relate”
Figures of Thought (Tropes)
• Metaphor & Simile –assertion that two things are
identical
• Metonymy—one object to stand for another related
object
• Synechdoche –substitute part for whole
• Personification – embodiment
• Irony –Dissimulation
• Paradox – seemingly contradictory statement
• Hyperbole - exaggeration
• Meiosis – lessening, understatement
– Litote – understatement
Sonnet form: Petrarchan
Named for Italian poet Francesco Petrarch
 14 lines of iambic pentametre
• Iambic = unstressed syllable followed by
stressed syllable (eg. Ta dum)
• Pentametre = lines of five metrical feet.

 Rhyme scheme:
abba
abba
cde
cde

• variations allowed in the sestet.

Sonnet form: Petrarchan
Form: 2 parts
• the octave is eight lines long, and is used to
present a thesis, an argument or an idea.

• At line nine, a change occurs, known as the

volta (Italian for 'turn). This is generally
signalled by a word such as 'But', 'Yet' or 'Then',
or an exclamation.

• The final six lines, the sestet, give the reason,

conclusion or counter-argument for what was
presented in the octave.
Sonnet form:
English/Shakespearean
• 14 lines of iambic pentametre

• Rather than being divided into an octave and a sestet,

the English sonnet is divided into 3 quatrains, each
rhymed differently, with an independently rhymed
couplet at the end. Each quatrain takes a different
appearance of the idea or develops a different image to
express the theme.

• The rhyme scheme of the English sonnet is

abab
cdcd
efef
gg
Sonnet form:
English/Shakespearean
• The 3 quatrains may be used to present three parallel images,
tied together by the final couplet, or to set out three points in
a argument, with the couplet providing the conclusion.

• This format seems to allow more complex moral and religious

arguments, and certainly Shakespeare was able to exploit the
form to encompass broad ideas and profound feelings within
the normal conventions of the sonnet.
Pastoral
• Shepherds (idealized or romanticized,
not real)
• Nature, peaceful, uncorrupted or pre-
lapsarian life (Edenic)
• Nostalgia for a past “golden age”
• A constructed or imagined past – not a real
one
• Looking backwards to a harmonious,
peaceful experience of love and a
connection with nature
Pastoral
• Love is not “courtly” here, but natural
• Strong contrast in certain respects (love
is not laden down with the trappings of
the court but is “innocent” or natural)
• As always in this period, there is a trace
of spirituality in the convention – Christ
as the shepherd/lover, the church as the
beloved or the sheep
Pastoral
• Pastoral seems to be in conflict with
many of the ideals of courtly love
• Here, the beloved is not a tormentor,
nor is she beyond reach
• Cf. Miranda vs. Ferdinand in The
Tempest: She is operating from a
pastoral convention, while he is a
courtly lover. Their early conversation is
discordant – he tries to play the
tormented lover, she asks him if he
loves her and if he’d like to marry her.
English madrigal
John Farmer, “Fair Phyllis” (1599)
Fair Phyllis I saw sitting all alone
Feeding her flock near to the mountain side.
The shepherds knew not,
they knew not whither she was gone,
But after her lover Amyntas hied,
Up and down he wandered
whilst she was missing;
When he found her,
O then they fell a-kissing.
Marlowe
• Pastoral
• Straight-forward – “Come live with
me and be my love”
• Idyllic
• Pre-lapsarian connection to nature
• Nature is romanticized/idealized
• no working, not really shepherds
Ralegh
• Ralegh replies to Marlowe’s poem –
how?
• Does it propagate, deflate the pastoral
convention?
• Gender issue? Who is speaking here?
What does she say?
• Cf. Cervantes, Don Quijote: Grisostomo
and Marcela
• the student-shepherd and his friends
• a similar kind of reply to the pastoral – and one
in which we hear the female perspective in that
the beloved answers back
Lewis
• Written in 1930s (Great Depression)
• Not a “reply” so much as a parody
(repetition with critical/ironic difference)
• Mix of pastoral idyll and the squalid reality
of modern urban life
• An undermining of the kind of English
(pastoral) golden age that some (Leavis’
and others) had been positing
• “…We’ll hope to hear some madrigals” (?)
• Cf. Farmer and Dowland’s 16th-century
popular songs vs. a more contemporary
variant such as one might hear along the
“sour canals” at night. Sung by birds?
Courtly Love
– Provence 12th – 14th century
– Gender issues:
• Whereas women are frequently inferior or simply
absent from literature before this, in courtly love
we have an “elevation” of or Idealization of
women
• BUT…
• Objectification of female (object of adoration)
• False idea of “empowerment” (Lady is said to
have power over lover, but that’s a projection
rather than a real power) – cf. the so-called
power of the temptress over the man (Eve
issues)
• The woman remains in a passive role (she does
nothing, is not an agent; she merely exists)
• Power and sexuality – a policing strategy (see
Foucault)
Courtly Love
– Feudal base:
• Lord = Beloved = female
• Serf = lover = male
• A reversal of the gender power hierarchy
(but this is without real effect; it’s just a
conceit)
Courtly Love
– Literary conventions/tropes of courtly love:
• Love at first sight – privileging of sight/gaze
• Love as a disease
– Lovesick
– Obsessive
– Torment
– Fever (“I burn”)
– unrequited
• Beloved (Lady) is idealized beyond reality,
objectified
• Enslavement (torment) – s/m rhetoric
• Lover’s internal conflict
– War
– Martial language
– Cupid’s arrow starts the war
Courtly Love
Christianized conventions:
• Soul’s longing for union with divinity // Lover’s longing for
union with Beloved
• Beloved represented as divinity on Earth
• Beloved as Goddess or Queen of Heaven (Mary)
• As time passes, the spiritual content becomes more and more
secularized

• In Troubadour version, this love is adulterous, often

consummated
• In subsequent version, it is “cleaned up” – the woman
as Beloved becomes off-limits, unobtainable.
• Long influence through West’s love poetry

• Cf. Spenser’s “My Love Is Like to Fire and Ice” on the

same page
English madrigal
John Dowland, “Come Again, Sweet Love (1597)
Come again! sweet love doth now invite
Thy graces that refrain
To do me due delight,
To see, to hear, to touch, to kiss, to die,
With thee again in sweetest sympathy.
Come again! that I may cease to mourn
Through thy unkind disdain;
For now left and forlorn
I sit, I sigh, I weep, I faint, I die
In deadly pain and endless misery.

Gentle love,
Draw forth thy wounding dart;
Thou canst not pierce her heart;
For I that do approve
By sighs and tears more hot than are thy shafts
Thy shafts did tempt while she,
For scanty triumphs laughs.