Cover versions

Why do recording artists do cover versions? It’s not like they are going to get lots of money from copyright fees – in fact they will usually have to pay the original authors, or their publishers, substantial amounts!

What they gain however is the pleasure of familiarity with the material, as well as being able to showcase their talents by putting a distinctive twist on their interpretation of the lyrics and mood. We listen to a cover version because we already like that type of song, but then appreciate the way the artist has enhanced the original.

Poets are the same. They often take well-known poetic styles and show how versatile they can be within that genre:

• Shakespeare wrote 150 versions of a sonnet
• More recently, Michael Symmons Roberts played around with the constraints of 15 line poems, creating 150 new verses in Drysalter.

Alternatively, poets can lead us from familiarity into new styles, just like someone wanting to listen to The House of the Rising Sun can end up encountering a folk, blues, rock, punk, dance or dubstep version of the classic folk ballad.

Keats’ experiments

John Keats (1795-1821) did not have a wealthy background or fine education, but immersed himself in books wherever he could lay his hands on them. As he developed into one of the most significant of the Romantic poets (before his premature death aged 24) he experimented with the different genres of poetry he came across. If we are to appreciate the talent he applied to each form, we need to get familiar with his starting materials.

Quatrains

In La Belle Dame Sans Merci, Keats takes the traditional quatrain verse form of a ballad (see last month’s blog) and plays against our expectations of a neatly tied up unit of sense by leaving the story sparse and unresolved. Check out here the familiar version of the quatrain.

Spenserian stanza

Just as today we are still influenced by poetry which, like Keats’, was written 200 years earlier, so Keats had a huge admiration for Edmund Spenser’s The Faerie Queene, published 200 years before he was born. Keats used Spenser’s verse form (the Spenserian stanza) as a way of paying homage in his own narrative poem, The Eve of St Agnes.

Ottava rima

In another long, dramatic poem, Isabella: or The Pot of Basil, Keats works within the Italian verse form known as ottava rima, which was brought to England in the Renaissance. His contemporary Romantic, Lord Byron, used the tight format to highlight his satiric tone (see Ottava rima, whereas in Keats’ work we almost forget the restraints of rhyme etc. as the story sweeps us along.

La Belle Dame, Isabella, The Eve of St Agnes – they are all, in one sense, cover versions of an existing format. It is how Keats – or any other poet - adapts them that demonstrates real talent.