Stephen Fry on Form, Part 11
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 11, on shaped verse.
This section goes through many different forms of poetry, but the thing the forms all have in common is that it’s the shape the words make (and/or placement of specific letters) that is the emphasis. Fry talks about the well known poets who have done such things, though ultimately, he seems to dismiss a lot of these forms as too silly in his estimation.
While there are definitely forms of shaped verse that I haven’t tried, I find a lot of these forms can make for some interesting poems. Sometimes the shape of the poem can be fairly subtle, while other times it’s quite clear. And I’ve seen other contemporary poets do all sorts of things with shaped verse that is absolutely astonishing. For me, the main thing keeping me from doing more of this style is the complexities of rendering shapes made from words on paper and/or electronic formats. There are markets out there that will take unusual forms/formats, but by and large, most markets want something they can print or post without too much difficulty.
The exercise in this section is for two pattern poems and one acrostic poem.
Next up, we reach the final portion of the book on diction, in two sections. (Though I may wind up combining the two into a single post. We’ll see!)
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