There’s a John Hollander poem today on Poetry Daily. I admit that it didn’t embrace me with open arms; to get the full experience, one needs more than a passing acquaintance with Latin.
Hollander’s name will be forever linked in my mind to my favorite book on prosody–Rhyme’s Reason. He was my first guide to verse forms, and the book was so clear and full of wit, so comforting to me as an aspiring versifier, that, to this day, the syllables of his name have a pleasing quality. Even the book’s compact size (88 pages) and handy index contribute to accessibility. The aspiring versifier could put it in a purse or jacket pocket; she could carry it at all times, in case she ever needed to know how to compose a clerihew.
What sets Rhyme’s Reason apart is that each example of a form is demonstrated in the form itself. On the couplet, for example:
Couplets can be of any length,
And shorter size gives greater strength
Sometimes–but sometimes, willy-nilly,
Four-beat couplets sound quite silly.
(Some lines really should stay single:
Feminine rhymes can make them jingle.)
He demonstrates the feminine rhyme as he explains their effect. And he works in history, too, as in this excerpt from the section on rhyming quatrains:
After the heydey of such rhyme’s renown,
After the weariness of World War I
Modern poets built in a sad letdown
By rhyming quatrains thus: abax.
The aspiring versifier apprehends the form more easily by seeing it in practice, true, and this is why most prosody manuals have examples of verse forms. But these are often taken from well known poems, in which multiple strategies are usually at work. Hollander’s method is better, because he isolates each formal element in turn.
There’s also a cumulative effect that comes from seeing so many formal elements side-by-side, with relatively neutral “content.” Distinct moods arise from each entry. Going from limerick
(This most famous of forms is a fiddle
That we rub with a sexual riddle;
But the best of a limerick—
Though in Dutch or in Cymric
Are the little short lines in the middle.)
to pantoum
(Pantuns in the original Malay
Are quatrains of two thoughts, but of one mind.
Athwart my two pontoons I sail away,
While touching neither; land lies far away.)
is a journey from a light, jagged place, to a softly ominous one, even when the verses aren’t about anything evocative.
And this is one reason why, I submit, novice and practiced versifiers alike benefit from studying forms, even if they reject formal verse as predictable and retrograde, even if their own verses are free as a darting swallow, even if they will never, ever write a villanelle (I know I won’t). No matter which writers a writer admires, learning how language works through patterns, and which patterns have endured, can only help.
Want to set yourself free? Cast off the fear of corniness, clumsiness, and irrelevance. Try a limerick.