Recognising poetry

Earlier this month, the UK celebrated National Poetry Day. Across the media there was a feast of readings and a special focus in many schools.

Verse that lives on

Poetry is an enduring medium. Since the earliest days of our oral culture, handing down dramatic narratives in verse form helped make them more memorable for both the teller and the audience. Gathering together to listen to these verse stories was the equivalent of watching the telly together today, drawn in by a dramatic tale.

An exam expectation

Poetry is a key component of all A Level English Literature syllabuses today and, apart from studying the output of well-known poets, examiners also like to put candidates on the spot by asking for an analysis of a previously unseen poem. Students are expected to recognise what style of text they are looking at, so that they can see how the author has played with – or against – the expectations of that particular genre. But how are you meant to know?

At crossref-it.info you’ll find an entire section under ‘Aspects of poetry’ dealing with Recognising poetic form. Each brief article explains what is meant by a particular genre, the era in which it was most prevalent and the stylistic aspects by which it can be recognised. And this week three new articles have been added to the section.

What is alliterative poetry?

One of the earliest types of poetry in the English language was what we now call alliterative poetry:

• Rather than grouping thoughts together by a connecting rhyme-scheme (e.g. rhyming couplets) Old and Middle English alliterative poetry contained stressed words which alliterated, giving energy and narrative flow to the verse
• A very early example is Beowulf, an epic poem probably composed in the sixth century CE
• The alliterative genre endured until about 1500 and another well-known example is Piers Plowman, written by a contemporary of Chaucer’s, William Langland. 

To find an example of how the verse works, visit here.

Ballads

Another more enduring style of poem is the ballad. Originally associated with song, these simple rhyming folk narratives captured dramatic situations in an easily repeatable form and often served as commentaries on the events of the day. Later the genre was also employed by learned writers who wanted to capture the genre’s expectations of simple and direct communication. Find out more here.

Help!

Both ballads and alliterative poems are fairly easy to recognise, with regular rhymes or rhythms or familiar subject matter. But what if what you are looking at doesn’t seem to obey any of the ‘rules’ you expect of poetry, with no consistent metre, stanza form or rhyme-scheme for example?

Free verse

You may find you are analysing what is known as free verse. This twentieth century development echoed the modernist desire to forge new literary forms which were not tied to the constraints of tradition. Have a look here and see what you think.

Then watch out for more helpful definitions of poetic styles in November!