MAJOR TYPES OF POETRY - PERSONAL OR ROMANTIC FORMS: ODE ELEGY, SONNET AND LYRIC

INTRODUCTION

This article will equip you with a detailed study of the major forms or types of poetry, with a special emphasis on their distinguishing features. It is necessary to know the type of poem that you are dealing with at any point in time.

OBJECTIVES

At the end of this article, you should be able to:

1. Recognize and explain the different forms of poetry.

2. Describe in detail each type of poetry.

3. Distinguish between the different forms of poetry based on their individual characteristics.

4. Determine and rationalize in a professional manner the type of poem you may have to appreciate.

MAIN CONTENT

Ode

An ode is a rhymed or rarely unrhymed lyric poem, often in the form of an address, expressive of exalted or enthusiastic emotion (usually of an exalted style and enthusiastic tone), especially one of varied or irregular meter. An ode is usually between 50 and 200 lines long and was originally intended to be sung or at least recited. Gosse defines an ode as "any strain of enthusiastic and exalted lyrical verse, directed to a fixed purpose, and dealing progressively with one dignified theme" (quoted in Holman 363).

In its earliest Greek form established by the poet Pindar, it was choral or sung by a group of people who constituted the personas moving in a dance rhythm in the dramatic poetry that was the main matrix for the ode/form. Holman further explains that the term "ode" connotes certain qualities both of manner and form. In manner, the ode is an elaborate lyric, expressed in language that is dignified, sincere, imaginative, and intellectual in tone. In form, the ode is more complicated than most lyric types, with the essential distinction of division into strophes: the strophe, antistrophe, and epode. The dance movements of the chorus are as follows:

- Strophe (movement to the left)

- Antistrophe (movement to the right)

- Epode (Chorus stands still).

The great period of the ode in English poetry began with Abraham Cowley, who, in the seventeenth century, popularized the Pindaric ode in English. There are three main types of ode in English poetry: the Pindaric (regular), the Horatian, and the Irregular. The Pindaric ode is a complex poem of some length on a subject of public interest or an abstract quality, written in a rhyming or irregular pattern. On the other hand, the Horatian type, modeled on the odes of the Roman poet Horace, is less complex, calm, meditative, and restrained, containing only one strophe (homostrophic). Famous examples include Milton's 'Ode on the Morning of Christ's Nativity,' 'To the Lord General Cromwell, May 1652'; Gray's 'The Progress of Poesy'; the romantic odes, including Wordsworth's 'Ode: Intimations of Immortality,' Keats's 'Ode to the Nightingale,' 'Ode to Autumn,' and 'Ode on a Grecian Urn,' and Shelley's 'Ode to the West Wind.'

Excerpts:

(1) 'To the Lord General Cromwell, May 1652' On the proposals of certain ministers at the Committee for Propagation of the Gospel:
"Cromwell, our chief of men, who through a cloud
Not of war only, but detractions rude,
Guided by faith and matchless fortitude."

(2) 'Ode to Autumn':
"Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness,
Close bosom-friend of the maturing sun;
Conspiring with him how to load and bless
With fruit the vines that round the thatch-eaves run;
To bend with apples the mossed cottage-trees,
And fill all fruit with ripeness to the core."

(3) 'Ode to the West Wind'
"O wild West Wind, thou breath of Autumn's being,
Thou, from whose unseen presence the leaves dead
Are driven, like ghosts from an enchanter fleeing,
Yellow, and black, and pale, and hectic red,
Pestilence-stricken multitudes: O thou,
Who chariotest to their dark wintry bed."

Elegy

An elegy is a sustained and formal poem setting forth the poet's meditations upon death or another solemn theme (Holman 183). The meditation is often occasioned by the death of a particular person, a painful loss, or a general calamity that touches not just the poet as an individual, but a wider spectrum of persons in his/her commarticley or humanity generally. Thus, the poem may also be a generalized observation or the expression of a solemn mood. Other poetic types that are akin to the elegy and whose labels are often misused in reference to the elegy are the dirge, a short, less formal type, usually in the form of a text to be sung, with sub-types such as threnody, mainly an equivalent to the dirge, and monody, an elegy presented as an utterance by one person.

The following are popular examples of the elegy in English literature: John Milton's 'Lycidas'; Alfred Tennyson's 'In Memoriam'; W. H. Auden's 'In Memory of WB Yeats' and William Gray's 'Elegy, Written in a Country Churchyard.' You should find a suitable anthology of English poetry and read these poems to be able to identify and discuss an elegy, no matter the variant you come across.

An ancient category of the elegy is the pastoral elegy in which the poet or mourner and the deceased or the one mourned, who is also a poet, are characterized as shepherds. The name 'pastoral' is derived from the Greek word 'pastor,' which means shepherd. M. H. Abrams, using one of the notable examples of the pastoral elegy, has identified seven fundamental conventions that have marked this poetic form from its earliest Greek form through the Renaissance as follows:

1. The invocation of the muses and frequent references to other figures from classical mythology.

2. All of nature is implicated or joins in mourning the shepherd's death.

3. The mourner charges with negligence the nymphs or other guardians of the dead.

4. There is a procession of mourners.

5. The poet raises questions about the justice of divine providence and goes on to comment on the decadence of his/her contemporary society in seeming digressions, which are often integral to the development of the mourner's line of thought as in 'Lycidas.'

6. In Post-Renaissance elegies, flowers are brought in to deck the hearse in an elaborate passage.

7. There is a closing consolation, especially in Christian elegies, where the tone of the poem changes from that of grief and despair to joy and assurance, and an epiphanic realization that death is a necessary prelude to a higher life.

Bearing in mind the above general thematic and stylistic characteristics of the elegy as a poetic form, we will now take a look at a local example to illustrate the universal application of these features in the following Igbo traditional verse:

"My brother, death has crushed my heart.
My brother has left me at crossroads.
My brother has left me hanging over the fire like a parcel of meat to dry.
But a parcel of meat over the fire will still have somebody to touch it.
Death has reaped me up like cocoyam and peeled off my tubers.
My left hand has turned to my back.
Death has turned me into bitterness itself.
My mirror is broken.
My own is past."
(Egudu & Nwoga, 1973)

Sonnet

The sonnet is a poem generally expressive of a single, complete thought, idea, or sentiment. It is made up of 14 lines, usually five-foot iambic pentameters, with lines arranged according to one of certain definite rhyme schemes. Holman defines this poetic form as "a lyric form of fourteen lines, highly arbitrary in form, and following one or another of several rhyme schemes" (p. 300). Note the italicized section of this definition; we shall refer back to it as we study the various structural and prosodic manifestations of the sonnet.

There are three main types of the sonnet: the Petrarchan or Italian, the Miltonic, and the Shakespearean or Elizabethan. It's important to note that although the sonnet was originally an Italian poetic form (hence the name of the prototypic form - Petrarchan/Italian), it had a significant following in the English poetic tradition beginning from the sixteenth century. The earliest English or Elizabethan sonneteers include Isaac Wyatt, Phillip Sidney ('Astrophel and Stella' sequence), and Edmund Spenser ('Amoretti' sequence), setting the tone by deploying their poems as vehicles for impassioned amorous, religious, and friendly adulation.

Petrarchan/Italian:

This type consists of two parts or systems, as they are called: a major part, known as the octave, made up of the first eight lines; a minor part, called the sestet, made up of the last six lines. There is usually a pause or turn in idea or thought at the end of the octave. This turn or break in sense is known technically as the 'volta.' This structure conventionally goes hand-in-hand with the thematic content of the poem in that a statement of a problem, a situation, or an incident in the octave is followed by a resolution in the sestet. The rhyme scheme of the octave is abba, abba, and this is fixed or invariable. On the other hand, the rhyme scheme of the sestet varies, but it may consist of any arrangement of two or three rhymes, as long as the last two lines do not form a couplet, that is, they do not rhyme. Thus, the usual arrangement in the sestet is cdcdcd or cdecde. An example of this type in English poetry is William Wordsworth's 'The World is Too Much With Us':

"The world is too much with us; late and soon,
Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers;—
Little we see in Nature that is ours;
We have given our hearts away, a sordid boon!
This Sea that bares her bosom to the moon;
The winds that will be howling at all hours,
And are up-gathered now like sleeping flowers;
For this, for everything, we are out of tune;
It moves us not. Great God! I'd rather be
A Pagan suckled in a creed outworn;
So might I, standing on this pleasant lea,
Have glimpses that would make me less forlorn;
Have sight of Proteus rising from the sea;
Or hear old Triton blow his wreathèd horn."

Miltonic:

This type is similar to the Italian form discussed above, but the only difference is that the Miltonic does not observe the pause or turn at the end of the octave. Rather, the poet lets the octave run on into the sestet. Suitable examples of this type are John Milton's 'On His Blindness,' 'On the Late Massacre at Piedmont,' and Sonnet XXIII 'Methought I Saw My Late Espoused Saint':

"Methought I saw my late espoused saint
Brought to me, like Alcestis, from the grave,
Whom Jove's great son to her glad husband gave,
Rescued from death by force, though pale and faint.
Mine, as whom washed from spot of child-bed taint
Purification in the old Law did save,
And such as yet once more I trust to have
Full sight of her in Heaven without restraint,
Came vested all in white, pure as her mind;
Her face was veiled, yet to my fancied sight
Love, sweetness, goodness, in her person shined
So clear as in no face with more delight.
But Oh! as to embrace me she inclined,
I waked, she fled, and day brought back my night."

Shakespearean/Elizabethan/English:

This type differs markedly from both the Petrarchan and Miltonic forms. It consists of three quatrains and a final rhyming couplet, and its rhyme scheme is abab cdcd efef gg. At times, the division of material found in the Petrarchan sonnet is also present here, or there is repetition with variation of the statement in the three quatrains, with the final couplet presenting a neat and laconic encapsulation of the central thought in the poem. The volta sometimes occurs between the twelfth and thirteenth lines.

The following Shakespearean poems are examples of this type: 'Shall I Compare Thee To a Summer's Day?'; 'Let Me Not to the Marriage of True Minds'; and 'Since Brass nor Stone, Nor Earth, Nor Boundless Sea.'

We said we would refer back to the highlighted part of Holman's definition in the opening paragraph of section 3.5. We have seen how the sonnet follows "one or another of several rhyme schemes" in our examination of the areas of congruence and divergence in the structures and rhyme patterns of the three main types of sonnet. Although the arbitrariness of form has largely been shown in the differences among the three types explained above, we should still add that this characteristic alludes to the idiosyncratic manipulations of the basic markers of the sonnet, such as the number of lines (14), as well as the number of feet per line (5 iambic feet). These deviations were mainly experimental, as demonstrated in Gerard Manley Hopkins' "Felix Randall," as well as in several well-known pieces by American poets such as William Carlos Williams, E.E. Cummings, and John Crowe Ransom.

Lyric:

In its original form, the lyric was a poem sung to the accompaniment of a lyre – a classical stringed musical instrument. In the Greek classical period, it was sung by a single singer and was thus differentiated from the 'choric,' which was performed by a group of singers. The term is now applied to describe any poem that is light in tone, could be adapted into a song, and reflects the personal mood or feeling of the singer or poet, rather than narrate a story. This quality or characteristic constitutes the main difference between it as a poetic type and the ballad and the epic, which concentrate on extra-personal subjects or themes. The lyric does not follow any rigid metrical law (unlike the sonnet) by which it is identified, and it is for this reason that it is often regarded as a mode of writing rather than as a form.

The subjects of the lyric poet are as varied as his/her moods; thus, s/he is at one time writing about love and at other times expressing his/her feelings towards nature or merely giving vent to his/her personal observations on life generally. However, the idea of articley of mood, thought, feeling, and style is essential to the lyric.

Since the true quality of the lyric is the personal element, that is, as a vehicle for the poet's mood, a means of expressing his/her individual sensibility, the ode, the sonnet, as well as the elegy, are lyrics. As such, all the examples of these latter forms cited in the preceding.

CONCLUSION:

We have discussed the major personal or romantic forms of poetry – the ode, elegy, sonnet, and lyric – and identified the specific characteristics of each. Popular examples of each have also been given. The Ode is usually a lyrical address; the Elegy is mainly solemn; the Sonnet is usually distinguished by its common characteristic: fourteen lines; and the Lyric is poetry in song form.

SUMMARY:

The four types of poetry we have treated above come with their own unique characteristics and types. The Ode has three types – Pindaric, Horatian, and the Irregular. Famous examples include John Keats' 'Ode to a Nightingale.' The Elegy is usually solemn in mood, and the thematic issues revolve around personal loss and death. Alfred Tennyson's 'In Memoriam' is a ready example. The Sonnet is also in three types – Petrarchan or Italian; the Miltonic; and the Shakespearean or Elizabethan. The last type, the Lyric, got its name from the musical instrument that the poem was sung with – the lyre.