Poetry structures

0:00- [Hannah] Hello, readers, and welcome to Hannah's Poetry Corner, where today we're discussing the question, how does a poem work? I think a lot of people have this impression that poetry is kind of fancy or out of reach, but poetry can help us understand and express how we feel about the things that matter most to us.

0:18To demonstrate that, I brought on my colleague, David. Say hi to the people, David.

0:23- [David] Hi to the people. Hey, Hannah. - [Hannah] Hey. David, what is poetry?

0:28- [David] Fundamentally, poetry is language art. It's art that plays with the sound and shape of language. Sometimes it rhymes, the vowel and consonant sounds match up with each other, and sometimes it doesn't.

0:39- [Hannah] Like how house rhymes with mouse or syllable rhymes with billable?

0:43- [David] Billable. - [Hannah] You know, billable hours. Shakespeare's gotta get paid.

0:47- [David] I hear that. - [Hannah] So prose, everyday language, the stuff we write and speak normally, using complete sentences that have no set rhythm. It's usually organized into paragraphs. The equivalent of a paragraph in poetry is called a stanza, and each stanza is made of lines.

1:04- [David] And do those lines have to be full sentences?

1:07- [Hannah] They do not. Think of that William Carlos Williams poem "This is just to say". "This is just to say I have eaten the plums that were in the icebox an which you are probably saving for breakfast. Forgive me, they were delicious, so sweet and so cold."

1:23- [David] It's like a post-it note poem. Man, you could really make a poem out of anything.

1:27- [Hannah] Yeah. So between I have eaten and the plums, there's a line break. The phrase "I have eaten the plums" is broken up across two lines. But on the individual line level, the plums is not a sentence or even really a clause. It's just some words.

1:43- [David] And that's fine for poetry. You don't need to have sentences.

1:48- [Hannah] Notice also that it doesn't rhyme.

1:50- [David] And "I have eaten the plums that were in the icebox", those four lines, those make up a stanza. In this poem, every stanza is the same length, four lines.

2:00- [Hannah] Do stanzas have a standard length?

2:03- [David] No, they don't. Stanzas can be any length, and they don't even need to be the same length in one poem, right? It's more about how the lines are grouped together and the space between each chunk. Stanzas are a poem chunk.

2:14- [Hannah] So, this is a three-stanza poem, and that's one of the ways you can think about the shape of poetry, how it's broken into stanzas. Another way is through its rhythm.

2:24- [David] So, where the emphasis falls in a word, in the rhythm, we call those stresses. Hannah, let's play "Name that fruit". What is that? - [Hannah] Apple.

2:34- [David] Okay, cool. Now, say it slowly.

2:37- [Hannah] Apple - [David] Not apple. - [Hannah] No, that sounds pretty weird to me, David.

2:43- [David] Apple. - [Hannah] Apple. - [David] Apple. So apple is not standard. It's apple. And that's how stresses work. In this word, the first syllable is stressed, and the second syllable is unstressed. Apple. Doctor. A regular pattern of stresses in poetry is called meter.

3:00- [Hannah] And the most common meter in English is iambic pentameter. An iamb is unstressed stress. Ta-dah.

3:07- [David] Hello. Ta-dah. And penta means five.

3:10- [Hannah] Exactly. So it's five of those iambs per line. David, hit me with a little Shakespeare, won't you?

3:17- [David] All right. Sonnet 18. "Shall I compare thee to a summer's day? Thou art more lovely and more temperate?"

3:24- [Hannah] Ta-dah, ta-dah, ta-dah, ta-dah, ta-dah. Shall I compare thee to a summer's day? Five iambs, 10 total syllables.

3:32- [David] Iambic pentameter is really interesting to me because in many ways, it matches the ordinary rhythms of English speech. Hey Hannah, what you gonna do today?

3:40- [Hannah] Hey, hey Hannah, whatcha gonna do today?

3:43- [David] Nice iambic pentameter, but no, I was seriously asking.

3:47- [Hannah] Poems don't have to be metered. They don't have to rhyme. They can just be.

3:51- [David] It's true. You may have heard about Japanese haiku and how they have these syllable requirements, five syllables in the first line, seven in the second, and five syllables again in the final line. But to be honest, especially in translation, it's less about the syllables and more about the vibe.

4:07My favorite haiku that breaks the syllable rules is this 18th century haiku by Yosa Buson, translated by the American poet XJ Kennedy. "On the one-ton temple bell a moon-moth, folded into sleep, sits still.

4:23- [Hannah] Whoa, so this haiku, it's capturing a moment before that bell rings, the moment of quiet before the noise.

4:30- [David] Yeah, I think different poems have different functions. It's my belief that haiku are kinda like photographs. They can capture single moments in time. But my point is like not just in translation, but even in the original Japanese, that poem doesn't have the quote unquote proper syllable count.

4:45So if you're a poet and a rule doesn't serve your poem, break the rule.

4:50- [Hannah] Fascinating stuff. Hey, thanks for coming on Hannah's Poetry Corner.

4:54- [David] My pleasure, Hannah. - [Hannah] Thanks for watching, everyone. You can learn anything. Hannah and David out.