Stephen Fry on Form, Part 4
As I mentioned previously, I’m working through Stephen Fry’s The Ode Less Travelled very slowly to absorb as much wisdom as I can about writing poetry. This week’s post covers Chapter 3, Section 4, on heroic verse.
Heroic verse, which is iambic pentameters in rhymed couplets, is an older form that goes back to Chaucer, but has evolved and transformed over time. The bulk of this chapter talks about the history of the form, giving snippets from some of the exemplars of the form. It tends to be used for longer poems, and while early versions tended to use each line for a specific thought or sentence, later poets using the form embraced enjambment to make the flow of this form feel more like natural speech.
And most of the time, this form is about speech, about a character telling a story. While the character themself may not be a hero (and one could argue that was the case all the way back to Chaucer), the name still sticks with the form. In fact, the exercise in this chapter invites the reader to write heroic verse about a stoned person in police custody trying to explain the marijuana on their person.
Next up, the ode!
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