Awaking The Muse
Apr. 23rd, 2006 07:40 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
mtvessel29 Mar 06
The Ode Less Travelled - Stephen Fry - Hutchinson, 2005
* * * * *
Poetry, like ballet and sculpture, is an art form with which I have never really got on. I do see the beauty in, say, a Shakespeare sonnet, but the only poems I really enjoy are comic ballads (such as those of WS Gilbert) and doggerel with clever wordplay. Wordsworth, Shelley, Keats and Tennyson leave me cold and John Donne I find incomprehensible. This is odd because I am interested in words and language, so poetry should be a form with which I have a natural affinity. But it ain't so - as will be evident to regular readers of this blog, I prefer clarity to elegant expression, and certainly have never felt an overwhelming urge to express myself in verse. Stephen Fry has, however, convinced me that I may have been missing out.
Personally, I blame my school. As far as I recall we never had any ghastly “poetry appreciation” classes but neither were we taught anything about poetic metre or form. Fry spends some time correcting these common educational lacunae (sorry, his way with words is catching), and by the end of the first half of the book you have learnt the technical meanings of iambic pentameter, trochaic substitution, enjambment, caesurae, dactyls and amphibrachs. After a short section on rhyming, he explains the intricacies of the common and not so common poetic forms. If you’ve ever wanted to know what a triolet is, or what the differences are between Petrarchan and Shakespearian sonnets, or how to construct a sestina, this is the book for you.
All of this may sound rather dry, but Fry’s witty conversational style, humorous footnotes and trenchant opinions on modern poetry make it an easy read. There are copious illustrations of the techniques and forms he is describing (including the filthiest limericks I have ever read) and analyses of some successful and not-so-successful poems.
And it is necessary. For the chief purpose of this book is to get us, the readers, to write poetry for ourselves. As Fry rightly points out, a poem must be constrained by its metre, rhyming structure and form to be interesting. The attempt to express oneself within these restrictions is what energises the poem - it is the human spirit trying to break free, just as we all yearn to escape from the internal and external constraints that govern our lives. Totally free-form poetry of the 60s “anything goes” school is simply lifeless and dull - “arse-dribble” to use Fry’s pungent phrase. We must have form so that we can subvert it.
Knowing about the technicalities of poetry really helps. I did a few of the exercises that are scattered throughout the book and was astonished at the effect that quite simple techniques like enjambment had on turning my initial doggerel into something that at least looked like poetry. Don’t get me wrong, it was still rubbish. But at least I could see that with a bit of work I could produce something that I at least would find satisfying.
One thing you won’t get from this book is any sense of what Fry himself is like as a poet. There are some clever self-referential examples of sestinas, roundelays and the like but these are clearly intended for didactic rather than inspirational purposes. Fry writes poetry for himself (and, I would guess, his partner) alone. As he puts it “My poems come from another me, a me who went down a road I did not take. He never entered the loud public world but became, I suspect, a teacher and eventually, in his own small way, a poet”. Well, it’s good to see Fry the teacher make an appearance. I certainly learned a lot and feel a better person for it.
The Ode Less Travelled - Stephen Fry - Hutchinson, 2005
* * * * *
Poetry, like ballet and sculpture, is an art form with which I have never really got on. I do see the beauty in, say, a Shakespeare sonnet, but the only poems I really enjoy are comic ballads (such as those of WS Gilbert) and doggerel with clever wordplay. Wordsworth, Shelley, Keats and Tennyson leave me cold and John Donne I find incomprehensible. This is odd because I am interested in words and language, so poetry should be a form with which I have a natural affinity. But it ain't so - as will be evident to regular readers of this blog, I prefer clarity to elegant expression, and certainly have never felt an overwhelming urge to express myself in verse. Stephen Fry has, however, convinced me that I may have been missing out.
Personally, I blame my school. As far as I recall we never had any ghastly “poetry appreciation” classes but neither were we taught anything about poetic metre or form. Fry spends some time correcting these common educational lacunae (sorry, his way with words is catching), and by the end of the first half of the book you have learnt the technical meanings of iambic pentameter, trochaic substitution, enjambment, caesurae, dactyls and amphibrachs. After a short section on rhyming, he explains the intricacies of the common and not so common poetic forms. If you’ve ever wanted to know what a triolet is, or what the differences are between Petrarchan and Shakespearian sonnets, or how to construct a sestina, this is the book for you.
All of this may sound rather dry, but Fry’s witty conversational style, humorous footnotes and trenchant opinions on modern poetry make it an easy read. There are copious illustrations of the techniques and forms he is describing (including the filthiest limericks I have ever read) and analyses of some successful and not-so-successful poems.
And it is necessary. For the chief purpose of this book is to get us, the readers, to write poetry for ourselves. As Fry rightly points out, a poem must be constrained by its metre, rhyming structure and form to be interesting. The attempt to express oneself within these restrictions is what energises the poem - it is the human spirit trying to break free, just as we all yearn to escape from the internal and external constraints that govern our lives. Totally free-form poetry of the 60s “anything goes” school is simply lifeless and dull - “arse-dribble” to use Fry’s pungent phrase. We must have form so that we can subvert it.
Knowing about the technicalities of poetry really helps. I did a few of the exercises that are scattered throughout the book and was astonished at the effect that quite simple techniques like enjambment had on turning my initial doggerel into something that at least looked like poetry. Don’t get me wrong, it was still rubbish. But at least I could see that with a bit of work I could produce something that I at least would find satisfying.
One thing you won’t get from this book is any sense of what Fry himself is like as a poet. There are some clever self-referential examples of sestinas, roundelays and the like but these are clearly intended for didactic rather than inspirational purposes. Fry writes poetry for himself (and, I would guess, his partner) alone. As he puts it “My poems come from another me, a me who went down a road I did not take. He never entered the loud public world but became, I suspect, a teacher and eventually, in his own small way, a poet”. Well, it’s good to see Fry the teacher make an appearance. I certainly learned a lot and feel a better person for it.