Some Snape-Angst (in case you don't have enough in your life)!
Today I posted a short string of Snape-poems in the Sychophant Hex archive Occlumency: "After the Fall". HPB Spoilers! These poems are based on a suite I posted to Ashwinder last year. I recently decided it was time to re-visit that perspective and do some heavy dusting-off and revision.
If anyone who reads these is subsequently curious about the structure of each poem, I've provided some notes behind the cut.
I hope you enjoy!
I. “The Lightening-Struck Tower.” Some of the lines echo phrasings from the first poem in After the Battle . . . There, the similarities end. Each line of this poem has eleven syllables. Any line ending halfway through and resuming in another stanza counts as one eleven-syllable line. Why “eleven”? According to some mystics, the prime or master number eleven has powerfully negative attributes: incompleteness, disorganisation, disintegration, disorder or chaos, lawlessness, transgression, peril, and the Anti-Christ (there are lots of weird and wonderful online sites discussing this). But the same number is associated with light, balance, synthesis, and peace. You need both negative and positive; you can’t have light without shadow. This concept, for me, puts an interesting spin on the dynamics between Snape and Dumbledore in the HBP tower scene.
II. “Flight of the Prince” doesn’t follow a standard poetic structure. It sounds the way I imagine an incantation might sound, gradually building up force. It’s almost word-for-word the same as the second poem in After the Battle . . .
III. “Snape Victorious.” A Shakespearean sonnet, also very similar to the sonnet in After the Battle . . . The angst translated easily! I liked the contrast-though it’s hardly original-between a troubled, seething consciousness and the cool control of a lyric poetic framework.
IV. “The Horcrux.” A villanelle, written from the ground up for this set of poems. One of the best-known examples of a villanelle is Dylan Thomas’ “Do Not Go Gentle,” and I used that exact type of obsessive rhyming scheme and repetition of lines. But I deliberately departed from a rigid metric structure, varying the rhythm a bit and using some caesura and enjambment, because the poem depicts some natural speech and interactions rather than remaining inside the speaker’s head. I found this site very helpful for researching the villanelle’s structure.
V. “Hermione’s Helping Hand” uses the 5-7-5 syllable haiku to describe three emotional-sensory experiences after Snape’s imprisonment. Haiku images are often natural and concrete, suggesting an impression or mood or hinting at a truth. This excellent site explains haiku in detail. If I’ve managed to convey what Hermione does to “help” Snape, then I hope it makes sense to close with hints or impressions rather than something more definite.
If anyone who reads these is subsequently curious about the structure of each poem, I've provided some notes behind the cut.
I hope you enjoy!
I. “The Lightening-Struck Tower.” Some of the lines echo phrasings from the first poem in After the Battle . . . There, the similarities end. Each line of this poem has eleven syllables. Any line ending halfway through and resuming in another stanza counts as one eleven-syllable line. Why “eleven”? According to some mystics, the prime or master number eleven has powerfully negative attributes: incompleteness, disorganisation, disintegration, disorder or chaos, lawlessness, transgression, peril, and the Anti-Christ (there are lots of weird and wonderful online sites discussing this). But the same number is associated with light, balance, synthesis, and peace. You need both negative and positive; you can’t have light without shadow. This concept, for me, puts an interesting spin on the dynamics between Snape and Dumbledore in the HBP tower scene.
II. “Flight of the Prince” doesn’t follow a standard poetic structure. It sounds the way I imagine an incantation might sound, gradually building up force. It’s almost word-for-word the same as the second poem in After the Battle . . .
III. “Snape Victorious.” A Shakespearean sonnet, also very similar to the sonnet in After the Battle . . . The angst translated easily! I liked the contrast-though it’s hardly original-between a troubled, seething consciousness and the cool control of a lyric poetic framework.
IV. “The Horcrux.” A villanelle, written from the ground up for this set of poems. One of the best-known examples of a villanelle is Dylan Thomas’ “Do Not Go Gentle,” and I used that exact type of obsessive rhyming scheme and repetition of lines. But I deliberately departed from a rigid metric structure, varying the rhythm a bit and using some caesura and enjambment, because the poem depicts some natural speech and interactions rather than remaining inside the speaker’s head. I found this site very helpful for researching the villanelle’s structure.
V. “Hermione’s Helping Hand” uses the 5-7-5 syllable haiku to describe three emotional-sensory experiences after Snape’s imprisonment. Haiku images are often natural and concrete, suggesting an impression or mood or hinting at a truth. This excellent site explains haiku in detail. If I’ve managed to convey what Hermione does to “help” Snape, then I hope it makes sense to close with hints or impressions rather than something more definite.