Many books categorize poetry into three main verse forms: (1) rhymed verse (regular rhythm & meter, plus rhyme); (2) blank verse (regular rhythm & meter, but no rhyme); (3) free verse -- what R&J and some books call "open-form poetry -- neither regular rhythm & meter, nor rhyme (though still possessed of rhythmical and sound effects, since it is poetry). R&J and some books categorize (1) and (2) as "closed-form poetry," differentiating it from (3), "open-form poetry."

        Further, poetry may be divided into stanzaic (has stanzas) or continuous form (no stanzas, just one more or less continuous unit). Stanzas can come in units of from two lines each (couplet) all the way through fourteen lines each (an interesting example of a poem with fourteen-line stanzas --- sonnets as stanzas --- is Percy B. Shelley's poem "Ode to the West Wind"). Furthermore, some stanzaic poems contain stanzas with variable numbers of lines (e.g., a particular poem might have some stanzas of three or five or seven lines).

        The section on "Blank Verse" in R&J might mislead some students into thinking that only very long (and very old) poems or poetic dramas (particularly by Shakespeare) have been written in blank verse. However, many modern poets have used this verse form, as can be seen by looking at several poems by Robert Frost in Ch. 24 ("Three Poetic Careers") in R&J. The poems "Mending Wall," "Birches," and "'Out, Out ---- '" all exemplify blank verse.

1. (A) Do a scansion (prosodic analysis) of line 3 of "Mending Wall" and line 2 of "Birches." What rhythmical pattern emerges in each instance? (B) What ideas or notions, both parallel and opposite to the regularity of the rhythm and meter in line 3, might be conveyed by the content of the line vis-a-vis its rhythm and meter?
 

Questions on Jean Toomer's "Reapers"

1. The best line to start with for scansion of the poem's predominant rhythm and meter (though, like all poems, it has variations that help convey character, setting, theme, and content of an individual line), is line 4. Apply Prinsky's three-step scansion process (in the Notes & Questions on Ch. 19) on the line. (A) How does the regularity of the rhythm of the line help convey its content -- that is, aspects of the reaping? (B) How do the predominant meter and rhyme scheme of the poem help to convey aspects of the sharpening and of the reaping?

2. (A) The opening of lines 1 and 5 have significant variations from the predominant rhythm and meter of the poem; what is the rhythmical or metrical pattern of just "Black reapers" (line 1) and "Black horses" (line 5)? (B1) How does the metrical or rhythmical pattern of the opening of lines 1 and 5 help emphasize the color and also help equate the two beings referred to, along with repetition and grammatical parallelism? (B2) How does the equation effected between the openings of lines 1 and 5 contribute to the poem's criticism of the plantation system and its racism? (C) How might the field rat contribute, through what it implicitly symbolizes, to the poem's criticism of the plantation system and its racism?

3. (A) How does the first sound effect noted by R&J in their question 3 help convey something about the sharpening or the reaping? (B) How is onomatopoeia used to convey the content and theme of the second quatrain of the poem?
 

Questions on Dylan Thomas's "Do Not Go Gentle into That Good Night"

1. This poem will never be the same after its use in the Rodney Dangerfield comic movie Back to School. College students -- especially college students in English courses -- should especially appreciate some of the film's humor. How is the analysis of this poem by the character played by Dangerfield at the end of the film accurate, though crude?

2. This poem, like Elizabeth Bishop's "One Art" and Theodore Roethke's "The Waking" in Ch. 19 of R&J, exemplifies the special form called the vilanelle. (See the study questions by R&J on Bishop's poem.) (A) One dominant characteristic of the form -- how? -- is repetition. How does repetition help convey the speaker's anger and obsessiveness in the poem? What is the speaker angry and obsessive about, perhaps best revealed in the poem's last stanza? (B) Another dominant characteristic of the form, through limitation of rhyme sounds (how many?) and required repetition of certain lines in certain places in the poem (where? which?), is limitation or restrictiveness. How does the concept of limitation or restrictiveness relate to what bothers the speaker?