Experimental poetry 13: Breaking Structure

Variation in poetry? Yes please! Poetry doesn't always need to be beautiful, soothing or idyllic. Poetry can also be challenging, disturbing, grating, and even downright uncomfortable to read or listen to. Make your poem chaotic and you'll capture a lot of attention! 

How do you introduce variation into your poetry? Well, in previous posts in this series I have written about surprise end rhymes, anarchic poetry and random prompt poetry. Adding an unexpected element to your writing keeps people guessing and piques the interest. 

One of the great sins of poetry is to be predictable to the point of blandness. The key aim of all experimental poetry is to force you outside of your comfort zone and into uncharted territory. If you walk this pathway, no one will ever again be able to accuse you of being a boring poet!

Method 22: Assonant endings. Ditch the forced end rhyme! There's nothing worse than a poem that loses its credibility because the writer is forced into using words just for the sake of the rhyme! If you can't or won't break out of the shackles of the end rhyme, then try using assonance instead. Examples include love/enough and rise/tried. Here, only the vowel sound is consistent. Assonant endings will give you a greater variety of vocabulary to choose from. 

Method 23: Breaking the line. Write sentences that vary in length. Forget about tempo or rhythm. Let your words flow unobstructed across several lines. The sentence doesn't have to conclude at the end of a line. Bleed part of the sentence over into the next line. Then start another sentence on the same line. This is known as enjambment. Break up the sentence into punch sized smaller lines so that it cascades down the page. Spread the words out randomly across the page, with plenty of space between them. The options are multiple. 

Method 24: Breaking the structure. Take one of your previously written poems and examine it. What could you do to break up the structure? How could you change it by inserting line breaks, adding unconventional grammar, inserting strange punctuation, or unexpected words to jar or surprise your reader? Maybe a strange, repeated refrain will create intrigue... your variation is only limited by your imagination!

Steve Wheeler 

Previous posts in this series

Experimental Poetry 1: Found Poetry
Experimental Poetry 2: Stream of Consciousness
Experimental Poetry 3: Fake Translations
Experimental Poetry 4: Overlapping Voices
Experimental Poetry 5: Random Prompts
Experimental Poetry 6: The Movie Method
Experimental Poetry 7: Unexpected End Rhymes
Experimental Poetry 8: Calligrams
Experimental Poetry 9: Anarchic Poetry
Experimental Poetry 10: Timed Writing
Experimental Poetry 11: Paraphrasing
Experimental Poetry 12: Deliberate Malapropism

Image from Wikimedia Commons

Poetic devices 16: Euphony

Euphony is the opposite to cacophony. In cacophony, harsh, jarring, dischordent sounds are made, usually to draw attention to something unpleasant or dangerous. A siren wails to warn of impending danger. A harsh cry tells us something alarming is happening. In Euphony, rhythmic and harmonious sounds are made to draw attention to something pleasant or appealing. In movies, you'll note that mellow instruments such as flutes, strings or harps dominate music that illustrates a soothing, romantic or reassuring scene. 

In poetry or prose, a combination of words or a sequence of rhythmic sounds can achieve euphony. If they enjoy the sound texture or harmony, readers are more likely to enjoy the text of the poem too. The rhythm and tempo of the words in the lines is important. So too is the rhyme, whether internal or end placed. But not all poetry has to rhyme, so consonance and assonance are also important in creating euphony. Finally, repetition or refrain can also be used to create euphony. All of these have been described in previous blog posts in this series. Just click on the blue hyperlinks in the words to read those articles. 

To Autumn, by John Keats, features many of these devices to create a great euphonic poem:

Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness,
Close bosom-friend of the maturing sun;
Conspiring with him how to load and bless
With fruit the vines that round the thatch-eves run;
To bend with apples the moss'd cottage-trees,
And fill all fruit with ripeness to the core;
To swell the gourd, and plump the hazel shells
With a sweet kernel; to set budding more,
And still more, later flowers for the bees,
Until they think warm days will never cease,
For summer has o'er-brimm'd their clammy cells.

Notice how Keats uses regular repetition of stressed and unstressed syllables. There is also a very soothing end rhyme scheme in play. 

One of my all time favourite poems is Do Not Go Gentle by Dylan Thomas, which is presented in the form of a very pleasing, euphonic form known as a Villanelle. Here's the final stanza:

And you, my father, there on the sad height,
Curse, bless, me now with your fierce tears, I pray.
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Note that in a Villanelle, some lines naturally repeat, but it is the poet's use of soft consonants (sad, gentle, fierce) and long vowel sounds (pray, rage and good) that really gives this poem its soothing euphony. 

Previous posts in this series

1. Simile
2. Metaphor
3. Repetition and refrains
4. Alliteration
5. Assonance
6. End Rhymes
7. Internal Rhymes
8. Rhythm and Tempo
9. Enjambment

10. Allegory

11. Metonymy

12. Cacophony

13. Calligram

14. Personification

15. Paradox

Steve Wheeler

Image by Pickpik using Creative Commons

Poetic devices 7: Internal rhymes

When I first started writing poetry, way back in my late teens, I wrote in a fairly simplistic style. I'll admit, most of my lines were written to be incorporated into rock songs as lyrics. But some of my verses stood alone as poems. I learnt to use end rhymes because that is often the way song lyrics are constructed. 

It was only much later in life that I unearthed internal rhymes. I discovered that can add another dimension to my poetry. They take a little more thinking than simply writing a poem with, say, ABAB end rhymes. Choice of words is important, but so too is attention to the sound of words or phrases. Poets can manipulate the pace and feel of poetry using internal rhymes.

This poem was written recently, and you'll see it exploits the idea behind internal rhymes. Line 7 in particular uses 3 rhymes (page, sage, age) in one line. It also uses another literary device known as enjambment, which will be the topic of another blog post.

Lines 3 and 4 weave in and out of two separate internal rhymes. It's a little more complex, but effective. Hopefully this creates a cool tempo and injects a little more interest into the composition:

All That Sin

Your grin will soon begin to thin
when all that sin is factored in.
Your smile will ail and guile will fail
when all your style begins to pale.
The arrogance of second chance
completes a dance of circumstance.
You close the page of sage; old age
departs the stage with silent rage.

It's not that difficult to master if you think about it. But word choice is vital. Think of phrases that also might rhyme inside a line. 

The poem Galoshes by Rhoda W. Bacmeister is very popular with school children. It's used to show them what can be achieved by using internal rhymes to create musicality and rhythm in poetry. It is also a useful example of onomatopoeia, alliteration, repetition and assonance - all in one poem!

Galoshes

Susie’s galoshes
Make splishes and sploshes
And slooshes and sloshes,
As Susie steps slowly
Along in the slush.
They stamp and they tramp
On the ice and concrete,
They get stuck in the muck and the mud;
But Susie likes much best to hear
The slippery slush
As it slooshes and sloshes,
And splishes and sploshes,
All round her galoshes!

There are more outrageous internal rhymes in poetry. You just have to look out for them. Or perhaps you can create your own? I will leave you with one more example from the absolute master of the internal rhyme - one of my favourites - the English spoken word artist Harry Baker. This is a verse from his poem Knees, taken from his Unashamed collection:

Knees

My knees make your knees 

weak at the knees.

For my knees your knees

get down on one knee.

They ask my knees to join your knees

in holy matrimo-knee.

My knees say wait and see.

My knees have been known to tease.

I love the multiple internal rhyming, and absoloutely adore the pun in line six! You can have a lot of fun with internal rhymes. Have a go!

Steve Wheeler

Image from OpenClipArt

Other posts in the Poetic Devices Series:

1. Simile

2. Metaphor

3. Repetition and refrains

4. Alliteration

5. Assonance

6. End Rhymes

Poetic devices 5: Assonance

"What does assonance mean?" asks Frank Bryant, a professor of literature. "It means getting the rhyme wrong," he declares, before falling drunkenly off the stage, and crashing into his audience. 

The professor, played by Sir Michael Caine in the movie Educating Rita, takes a very jaded view of poetry. He's more interested in booze, and escaping from reality. Not unlike several well known, real-life poets...

But in one sense he's correct. 

Assonance isn't about end rhymes or 'getting the rhyme right.' It's about powerfully expressing ideas and emotion through the similar sounds made by adjacent words. The resemblance of vowel sounds is where the assonance occurs. If you use assonance effectively, it can change the tempo of your poetry or even intensify the mood you are trying to convey.

Here's a great example of assonance in the poem by Edgar Allen Poe called Bells:

Hear the mellow wedding bells

Golden bells!

What a world of happiness their harmony foretells!

Yes, Poe uses end rhymes too, but it's the assonance of mellow, wedding, bells, foretells that really makes the poem resonate. 

Another excellent example of assonance can be found in The Cold Wind Blows by Kerry Roper. This is a rich examples of internal rhymes too.

Who knows why the cold wind blows

Or where it goes or what it knows

It only flows in passionate throes

Until it finally slows and settles in repose

Want to make your poem memorable? What to step away from predictable rhymes?

Steve Wheeler

Image from Your Dictionary

To Rhyme Or Not To Rhyme

To rhyme or not to rhyme that is the question… to suffer poetic arrows of lines too narrow… ok,… I’ll stop!

Anyone familiar with my work knows that I am an ardent addict of anything that has to do with assonance or internal rhyme. If I could feed bleeds of rhyme intravenously I’d have an English lit drip right here on my desk!

However… Steve Wheeler put it best in his last blog to refine, define, and stretch your skills as a poet by stepping out of your box into that big wide world of what for and try something new. He illustrated a sweet timeline of historic writing styles to draw from. Howeever, this article is not about semantics. I’ll leave that to the experts! This is about the “world of what for”…

Too much rhyming can get rather absurd, obtuse, and downright annoying. Just like Dr Suess or a crazy tongue twister…. not many people enjoy poems about silly Sammy slurping down slushies by the seashore… are flavored ice drinks called slushies outside of the United States?! Just curious…

Anyway, I’ve fell prey to this so many times I’ve made paper airplanes out of my supposed masterpieces just to see how far they would go! Usually, they would nose dive before they even made the open window… they were SO HEAVY with rhymes.

I’ve come to find that rhyming is much like cooking… you tend to pepper your dish to taste, not just douse it on there! Many simple quatrains or octave stanzas are of the ABAB or AABB or ABBA variety, which is conservative enough. 

Yet when you mix those forms with internal rhyming, or setting words that rhyme continuously next to each other… that’s a whole different beast.

It can slap you out a beautiful word salad,, with nothing but limp lettuce. No crunchies in there to provide zest, no veggie messages, nothing nutritious… just a blubbering politician on a same old stump speech bobbling right down the middle of the road. Boringsville. Nothing burger.

                                    —

However… with a proper method, incorporating little clever wordplay and a calculated flow, internal rhymes can be incredible…! Consider these zingers by our very own Steve Wheeler in an exert of his poem entitled “I Poet”…

I wright fiction 

I write suction 

I kick up a ruction 

I cause friction 

with my diction 

it's poetic abduction. 

I create propaganda 

proper scandal and banter

like a candid backhander 

to the casual bystander. 

I'll write ya more slander 

than you'll care to handle 

so just take a gander

at the verses I land ya.

You can't hold a candle 

to the substantial anvil 

of my written write-angle

I'm a pen wielding vandal. 

Steve Wheeler © 21 June, 2023

Clever wordplay, eh?! An inspiration to rhymes everywhere, Steve can really kick out the jams when it comes to internal rhyming, making it enjoyable, smooth, and cognitively assessable all the the same time.

                                     —

On the flip side of this confederate coin, dissonance in poems works as well, making the words work against themselves to create a feeling of disorder and anarchy. This can really  sculpt themes relating to madness, war, confusion or even death. I offer a few lines from one of my own as an example here entitled “Evocative Dissonance”..

innocents bombed without remorse dissonant explosions! 

political analytical meat for a course; collateral damage to the eyes

of buildings once filled with laughter and cheer insidious incredulous explosions!

now desolation mutilated tombs of fear-castigated with impunity 

trespassing outlasting suppression of loss for fumigant transference of misery

pushing on for survival no matter the cost… oh, maleficent malignancy 

missiles like thistles ripping into the air those sequentially random aneurisms 

bemoaning homes in hopes of someone is there creating fractures inequitable 

©️Matthew Elmore 

Ok… so I threw a few of my trademark rhymes in there! I told you,… it’s an addiction!! So this is not a true example of dissonance. However, notice how some words work against each other… “remorse/dissonant explosions” “fractures/inequitable”… nothing fits here … except they compliment each other in a strange way. Funny… there were NO RHYMES in this originally… I had to sprinkle a few bits of assonance and rhymes the piece was so corse. Too corse! Yet that, of course, is just a matter of taste. I prefer a spoonful of sugar with such a bitter subject.

                                    —

Some poems do not use rhymes at all to get a point across. Take this piece of a poem out of my recently published book Constellation Road called “Rumors Of Wars”…

snarling fires burn wicked tounges unclean

such miscommunications lead to world wars

launch enervating embers in unknowing eyes

destitute of delight to negotiate indignation

situated in instability floating on despair 

©️ Matthew Elmore

Nothing about that rhymes. But it works somehow.

 

                                     —

Whether or not rhyming works for you is really just a matter of style. I love it! Rhyming sings to me like music. Yet music is known to have its random crescendos, blurps and bleeps as well. That is what makes this world interesting… because if it were all the same,… how boring would that be? Try it sometime! Vive la difference! 

Please feel free to leave your comments below. I always appreciate hearing from you! Write on poet…

Matt Elmore

Line evolution

Often I'm asked how I write my poetry. The source of my inspiration is an easy one to answer. How I construct my lines and infuse my poetry with tempo is a harder question to answer. I sometimes have to stop and think about that one, because writing poetry is like riding a bicycle or swimming. Once you've developed your skills, you don't really have to think about them too much - they become competencies that are fairly unconscious. 

But, just for the sake of analysis, here is a response about how I develop a line (or in most cases a phrase or an idea) into a stanza with a pleasing tempo. NB: Because I edit a lot, I use either a laptop, or more likely my smartphone to compose my poetry. It provides the provisionality that I need to do this.

Let's start with a simple line...

A river flows toward the sea

It's fairly bland, yeah? It's something you might say in a conversation. Let's add some adjectives to it. And let's change the definite article from 'A' to 'The'.

The silver river flows toward the stormy sea

Now it's a little more poetic. Let's evolve it further by enriching the adjectives and adding some personification...

The argent river flows toward
the mouth of a contentious sea

OK. Now it's transformed into two lines.  Argent means silver. 'Contentious' is not something people would normally use as an adjective to describe the sea, but it conjures up some imagery for me, so I will use it! I can add more description, further adjectives, maybe enrich the nouns.... and also include a metaphor!

The argent river dances its relentless flow
to kiss the angry maw of a contentious sea

Now it's a little close to becoming a little pretentious, but let's pursue this for the sake of poetry! At this point I can decide whether I want to add some more lines with or without a rhyme scheme... I'm changing the tense from present to past at this point too for effect. 

The argent river danced its cold relentless flow

to kiss the angry maw of a contentious sea

I sat on the river bank and watched...

I need to complete this poem now, splitting up the lines to improve the flow to 6 syllables for each line. The technical term for this is 'accentual syllabic iambic trimeter'. Fancy name,  but it doesn't matter what it's called as long as the poem sounds good and flows well. I'll add another metaphor, enrich it with an adjective and extend the clause with a simile to finish.

The argent river danced 
its cold relentless flow 
to kiss the angry maw
of a contentious sea 
I sat alone upon 
the jealous verdant banks
and watched the silent flow
mute as the fallow swan 

And there it is. A few minutes of writing and thinking and I have an Octave which has some narrative, some assonance and casual rhyming, and plenty of flow (pun intended). I hope that helps, but I write in a different style to you and it may not resonate with you. This post is just to offer some insight into my own writing process.  Each of us can develop their own process for writing poetry.

Steve Wheeler

Image from Wikimedia Commons