Hatrack River Forum: Some Poetic Questions

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Posted by Jonathan Howard (Member # 6934) on :

1) Do you prefer Petrarchan, Spencerian or Shakespearean sonnets? (Both reading and writing, if applicable.) Why?

2) Do Spencerian stanzas have some structure like a sonnet's octave (case) and sestet (resolution)? I've started writing some (with a slight rhyme-scheme edit), but I want to know whether there's something fixed to it? I split it into 5 and 4 as case and resolution.

3) What is the longest poem (amount of syllables) written in consistent metre and ryhme? The Faerie Qveene? La Divinia Comedia?

4) What is Yeats's poem "When You are Old" based on? I know it's a sonnet by a foreigner to the English tongue with a name starting with an "r". I assume he's a Frenchman, because I recall the sonnet being written in iambic Alexandrine.

More to be added later.

Thanks,
Jonny

[ January 30, 2006, 03:32 PM: Message edited by: Jonathan Howard ]

Posted by Tante Shvester (Member # 8202) on :

Jonny! You are SO cute. I missed you, too. Where've you been at?

Petrarchan sonnets rock!

And I don't know what the longest rhyme-y poem is, but I know which SEEM the longest -- anything by Al Tennyson. Good golly, he goes on so long that he forgets what he was talking about way at the beginning of the poem, and ends up contradicting himself. In iambic pentameter, of course, because if anything is worth doing, it's worth doing in iambic pentameter, no?

Posted by Dante (Member # 1106) on :

1) I like Petrarchan and Shakespearean sonnets.

2) Yes.

3) The Mahabharata is around 100,000 verses, if I recall correctly. The Shahnama is pretty long, too.

4) Pierre de Ronsard.

Posted by KarlEd (Member # 571) on :

quote:
2) Do Spencerian sonnets have some structure like a sonnet's octave (case) and sestet (resolution)? I've started writing some (with a slight rhyme-scheme edit), but I want to know whether there's something fixed to it? I split it into 5 and 4 as case and resolution.

All sonnets [edit: in English] have 14 lines, in iambic pentameter. If you're modifying them to a 5 (case) 4 (resolution) sceme (meaning only 9 lines), you have edited them to the point of not being sonnets anymore.

My favorite form is Shakespearean. I've written several of them, though the bulk of those were written when I was young and still religious. The structure is 3 quatrains and a couplet. Often the first two quatrains set up the case and the last couplet is the resolution (with the couplet being a sort of closure or stinger), but that isn't strictly followed in all cases. The rhyme scheme is abab cdcd efef gg

A Spencerian Sonnet is also 3 quatrains and a couplet, but the rhyming scheme is different. (abab bcbc cdcd ee)

Posted by Jonathan Howard (Member # 6934) on :

Tante:

I've been busy; I know, that's no excuse, but school preceeds Hatrack, at least temporarily. I feel hole-y, but sometimes drastic measures have to be taken in order to maintain my grades at an average of 90%, assuming I fail at least in one subject.

As for AL Tennyson, some of his work is short, AKA "Wake Wake Wake". [Smile]

I like iambic pentameter, but also amphibrachic alexandrines. [Smile]

Dante:

Thanks for Ronsard data and the long Sanskrit books' info. Actually, that Ronsard sonnet was an excellent one, and I don't even know French...

KarlEd:

Sorry, my mistake. I know all about Spencerian sonnets, though thanks anyway. You're kind. [Smile]

I was thinking of Spencerian stanzas, AKA the ababbcbcc verses of the Faerie Qveene which I gleefully, disrespectively, changed to abaabcbcc to make each line rhyme thrice and hope to get it all nicely done.

[ January 30, 2006, 05:15 PM: Message edited by: Jonathan Howard ]