Line & Meter 2

Definition: A Spenserian stanza is a stanza composed of eight lines written in iambic pentameter, followed by a ninth and final alexandrine line.

History: The first application of the Spenserian stanza was from a poet named Edmund Spenser (hence the name Spenserian stanza) in his epic poem Faerie Queene in 1590.

Tips and Tricks: Iambic pentameter is a very commonly used meter in poetry, so it should be reasonable to assume that this type of stanza can be applied similarly. However, the last alexandrine line (which is a line in iambic hexameter), because of the notable difference between the length of the line, can be used to make stronger statements at the end of a stanza, whether it be a punchline or a twist in the narrative (for a longer poem) or just a general turning point in a shorter work. It should be noted that this style has been commonly used by epic poems and longer poems with dramatic monologues.

Famous Poets/Poems: As previously mentioned, Faerie Queene, written by Edmund Spenser, is the first known application of this style of stanza:

"Lo I the man, whose Muse whilome did maske,

  As time her taught, in lowly Shepheards weeds,

   Am now enforst a far unfitter taske,

   For trumpets sterne to chaunge mine Oaten reeds,

   And sing of Knights and Ladies gentle deeds;

   Whose prayses having slept in silence long,

   Me, all too meane, the sacred Muse areeds

   To blazon broad emongst her learned throng:

Fierce warres and faithfull loues shall moralize my song." (Spenser)

Notice as well that the first and last lines are aligned the same, while lines 2-8 have a slight indent. This is not necessary of the Spenserian stanza, but this format is quite commonly used in poems with this style.

Lord Byron's Childe Harold's Pilgrimage is another poem that used the Spenserian stanza:

  "Lo! where the Giant on the mountain stands,

   His blood-red tresses deep'ning in the sun,

    With death-shot glowing in his fiery hands,

    And eye that scorcheth all it glares upon,—

    Restless it rolls, now fix'd, and now anon

    Flashing afar,—and at his iron feet

   Destruction cowers to mark what deeds are done;

    For on this morn three potent Nations meet,

To shed before his Shrine the blood he deems most sweet." (Canto I)

In this application of the Spenserian stanza, only the last line is non-indented, but the meter still stands.

DEFINITION: Sprung rhythm is based on the premise that no matter the pattern/number of stressed syllables in a line, there is an indeterminate number of unstressed syllables.

HISTORY: This form of rhythm was developed by Gerard Manley Hopkins in the 19th-century, however, Hopkins did not claim to be the inventor of sprung rhythm as he saw it to be the basic rhythm of common English speech.

EXAMPLES:

“Margaret are you grieving / Over Goldengrove unleaving” (Hopkins’ “Spring and Fall”)

“This darkroom burn, horseback brown,

His rollrock highroad roaring down,

In coop and in comb the fleece of his foam

Flutes and low to the lake falls home.” (Hopkins’ “Inversnaid”)

“Now no matter, child, the name:

Sorrow’s springs are the same.

Nor mouth had, no nor mind, expressed

What heart heard of, ghost guessed” (Hopkins’ “Spring and Fall”)

TIPS AND TRICKS:

There isn’t much to say about tips and tricks for this form of rhythm, as it is less likely to trap you or make your force your poem into its constraints.

https://www.britannica.com/art/sprung-rhythm

https://poemanalysis.com/poetic-meter/sprung-rhythm/

DEFINITION: The term “Sapphics” refers to poems written in the style of Sappho, a classical Greek poet. These poems are often composed of four-line stanzas, sometimes use quantitive meter but more commonly use accentual meter (mostly using dactyls and trochees). 

https://poemanalysis.com/poetic-form/sapphics/

HISTORY: The term sapphic is derived from the Greek poet Sappho, who lived on the isle of Lesbos. The sexual identity of Sappho has been long debated and continues as such to this day. Some interpret her poems as meaning she had relationship with women. Her new style of poetry was called a "sapphic stanza".

 lgbtqia.fandom.com/wiki/Sapphic

EXAMPLES: "The main building blocks of the sapphic are trochees and dactyls. The trochee is a metrical foot with one stressed syllable followed by an unstressed one, while the dactyl contains a stressed syllable followed by two unstressed ones. The first three lines of the sapphic contain two trochees, a dactyl, and then two more trochees. The shorter fourth, and final, line of the stanza is called an "Adonic" and is composed of one dactyl followed by a trochee. However, there is some flexibility with the form as when two stressed syllables replace both the second and last foot of each line. For example, the following stanzas from Sappho’s "The Anactoria Poem," here translated by Richard Lattimore:"

  "Some there are who say that the fairest thing
          seen
  on the black earth is an array of horsemen;
  some, men marching; some would say ships;
          but I say
  she whom one loves best

  is the loveliest. Light were the work to make
          this
  plain to all, since she, who surpassed in beauty
  all mortality, Helen, once forsaking
  her lordly husband,

  fled away to Troy—land across the water.
  Not the thought of child nor beloved parents
  was remembered, after the Queen of Cyprus
  won her at first sight."

https://poets.org/glossary/sapphic

Definition: Composed of tercets (a set of three lines), the second line of a previous tercet dictates the rhyme for the following tercet's first and third line, making for a rhyme scheme of (aba, bcb, cdc, ded) and so on.

History: Beginning in Italy with Dante Aligheri in the late 1200s with his Divine Comedy. In the subsequent century, Geoffrey Chaucer

 employs this in his "Complaints to his Lady." More recently, it has been used by William Carlos Williams in his The Yachts and Robert Frost in his Acquainted with the Night.

Usage and Examples: In English, it is typically used in iambic pentameter, though is not limited to that meter.

Frost's Acquainted with the Night seen here:

I have been one acquainted with the night.
I have walked out in rain—and back in rain.
I have outwalked the furthest city light.

I have looked down the saddest city lane.
I have passed by the watchman on his beat
And dropped my eyes, unwilling to explain.

I have stood still and stopped the sound of feet
When far away an interrupted cry
Came over houses from another street,

But not to call me back or say good-bye;
And further still at an unearthly height,
One luminary clock against the sky

Proclaimed the time was neither wrong nor right.
I have been one acquainted with the night.

(Written by Gabriel Cowley)