Rant on fantasy narrative poetry

[limyaael]

On to fantasy narrative poetry. This is heavily prejudiced towards the nineteenth century as far as examples go. That’s my area to be in love with.

Comments

[beccastareyes]

Damn it, Limyaael, now you want to make me try my hand at this.

I was fairly good at iambic pentameter in high school (I had a couple of soonet writing assignments). It's just rhyming that I have problems with. But I like the tip of using repetitive phrases.

[limyaael]

*tempts*

I think it would be cool if more people did try...or, at least, tried when they had some craft behind it to try with.

[farmercuerden]

What do you think about alternate meters? Some of them seem rather interesting (particularly anapestic and amphibrachic), but would they be out of place, do you think?

Mind you, I secretly set some of my poems to the tunes from Victorian operettas. It's far easier for me to remember "Bolero, Bolero, the ro-obber's pet / We'll dance to the pipe and the gay castanet" which is, musically, at least, a nice example of amphibrachs than to try and work them out mentally.

[limyaael]

I like alternate meters, but I know much less about meter than I do rhyme scheme, so I would be hesitant to suggest ways in which one could use them.

[chiyo_no_saru]

It's funny - I can only write free verse or blank verse, preferably iambic. And people also need to remember that there are other meters - hendecasyllabic is incredibly, inCREDibly catchy, and the catchier and more natural the meter, the easier it will be to remember

[limyaael]

Hendecasyllabics are catchy, but, from what I've read, hard to achieve in English. Maybe we're using different definitions.

Free verse is a case of the author's time frame taking over again, I think. That's the poetry a lot of people are used to reading, so that's what they write. They don't take into account that, hello, MEMORIZATION IS HARD WORK, DUMBASS. I've also met some authors who complained that since they couldn't rhyme, their fantasy poetry had to be free verse. Not if it's an oral culture. Suck it up.

I loved Tolkien's poetry, but I was predisposed to have a soft spot for that kind of thing. (I loved poetry long before I read his books). And it's just the kind of poetry I find so little of in the twentieth century outside those books- well-written, rhyming, filled with fantasy imagery, and not convinced that we're all going to die.

[beccastareyes]

And it's just the kind of poetry I find so little of in the twentieth century outside those books- well-written, rhyming, filled with fantasy imagery, and not convinced that we're all going to die.

Maybe that's why I don't care for most 20th century poetry. Heck, I thought I didn't like poetry at all, until I read hsakespeare and a bunch of other poets in my British Literature class.

[limyaael]

Let me know if you want links to some poems that I think fit these criteria. Practically all nineteenth century, but then, as you pointed out, this century seems much poorer in them.

[sabotabby]

They flatter their patrons and insult their enemies; go read Byron if you don’t believe me.

I'm dorky enough to have giggled a lot at that.

[limyaael]

I had Don Juan on my master exam's reading list. It's quite something to start out expecting an epic- even if a satire- and then run into:

And Coleridge, too, has lately taken wing,
But like a hawk encumber'd with his hood,-
Explaining metaphysics to the nation-
I wish he would explain his Explanation.

This caused me to giggle for a good ten minutes, since I felt the exact same way when we read Coleridge in my Romanticism class.

[sabotabby]

It reminds me of an exchange between an elderly lady I met and Marshall McLuhan. She'd accidentally parked in his space when he was teaching at the University of Toronto. He left her a note scolding her for parking in his reserved spot. She responded with a note of her own:

"Dear Mr. McLuhan,

Thank you. That was the first piece of your writing that has ever made any sense to me."

[tiferet]

OMG laughing so HARD rotflmfaostc!

[frenchpony]

I suppose all I have to say about this is a fairly generic "Hear! Hear!" (Where? Where? There! There!), as I have relatively little patience for poetry that hasn't been set to music. That said, I do like hymnody -- you don't get much better imagery, prose or poetry, than Isaac Watts, and on the off chance that I ever produce a boy child, he stands an excellent chance of being named Isaac in Watts's honor. I've come to think that one reason that I like Emily Dickinson's work is that it's so hymn-based. Much of it is in ballad meter, and her imagery is oddly reminiscent of a hymnodist's style.

But alas, I am one of the naughty Tolkien readers who skips the lengthy epic poetry and gets on to the exciting bits.

[limyaael]

*chases you for being a naughty Tolkien reader*

[duckmole86]

Now I'm going to have to read poetry... and try writing it again. I was so turned off by all of the freeverse (without rhythm *handface* how can they DO that) that I stopped reading poetry for a while there. Thank goodness decent poetry is still findable.

BTW, how is hendecasyllabic written? Examples would be great... in English, or possibly German... I don't know any other languages, sad though that is. I intend to remedy that once I'm out of the small town and on to college.

[the_s_guy]

da-DUM-dum, da-DUM-dum, da-DUM-dum-dum-DUM

I fired up my browser and clicked to the page,
And read all the words from a LiveJournal sage,
Then saw there a query from duckmole-eight-six
On hen-dec-a-syl-la-bic poetry tricks

To Google I flew for the dictionary page
While syllables swirled and cavorted backstage
Eleven I chose for each rough-carven line
As first-time attempts at the form - this is mine!

[ciaan]

Good enough of an explanation for me to recognize it right off...

"'Twas the night before Christmas and all through the house
not a creature was stirring not even a mouse
the children were nestled all snug in their beds
while visions of sugarplums danced in their heads
and mama in her kerchief and I in my cap
had just settled down for a long winter's nap..."

[limyaael]

Here is a Swinburne poem called "Hendecasyllabics" and written in that meter. I don't know how common the one he used is, really.