Ghost sculpture, Vezio, Italy
PREMIERE CONTEST
In ancient Greek literature, an eidolon was a spirit-image of a living or dead person, a shade or phantom look-alike of the human form.
Much Western poetry consists of an introduction, the development of the plot, and the conclusion. First, you were asked to write a 120–150 words vignette which is a snapshot in time and not a story, ie without an introduction or a conclusion. Then in the entomology contest, you were encouraged to relate the meaning of your name in free verse using a minimum of 70 words. And lastly, you were required to write an introduction to a hypnagogic dream in a mere 5-line hendecasyllable verse in iambic pentameter hypercatalectic metre. In all of these contests you were instructed to show, and not tell. The aim is not to foster cookie-cutter poets, but to create a platform where poets may express themselves and develop their own poetic voice. The following is an example from my book, DOWNTOWN – Poetic Devices:
This seems to trip up many poets who tend to describe a scene in the manner of an essay, instead of bringing the poem to life for the reader by the use of poetic devices. From my Suzette Prime poem, Redamancy Lament (the introduction)—SHOW, ie in the moment.
emotions are coursing over gnarled Travertine rocks
surreal
tears are my broken dream’s shards
scattered on a barren soil
TELL: I am numb with shock and my emotions are raw. The tears are flowing freely. The dream I had for our future is now forever lost.
Today, we are zooming in on the versatile alexandrine. Up until the 19th-century, English poetry was mostly written in quatrain or couplet form, or a combination of the two. During the 16th-century the basic English sonnet structure as we know it today, and favoured by William Shakespeare (c.1564–1616), was introduced by Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey (1516/17–1547). In the Shakespearian sonnet the couplet often summarises the theme of the poem, or it introduces a fresh new look at the theme. Furthermore, the Spenserian stanza is a fixed verse form invented by Edmund Spenser for his epic poem, The Faerie Queene (1590–96). Each stanza contains nine lines in total: eight lines in iambic pentameter followed by a single alexandrine line in iambic hexameter. A single alexandrine couplet might serve as the inspiration for a longer poem, highlighted as a quote or the introduction to a poem, or even the conclusion. In my Suzette sonnet, I use two alexandrine couplets internally to lend interest to the poem and it may act as pivots (opposed to the traditional volta) which aid in the development of the plot. We also find alexandrines in the French sonnet, which comprises entirely of 14 alexandrines, and incorporates a choice of specific rhyme schemes – the rhyming couplet is at L9 & L10 and follows the volta (turn). My new poem, Eidolon, is based on the French sonnet form.
Short poems, like flash fiction, are notoriously difficult to write. It is like a rare glimpse of a bird-of-paradise flitting through the canopy of a verdant forest, or the moon that favours you with a brief sighting before the clouds obscure your view, or even the fleeting ghost of a thought that crowds in while your concentration is elsewhere. What makes a single alexandrine beautiful is its wording, its rhythm and its poetical meaning – it could be considered as the French counterpart of the Japanese haiku because of its brevity, but it follows normal grammar rules. Also, internal rhymes (single perfect or syllabic rhyme) make a single alexandrine sound more beautiful, but in practice it is not mandatory.*
- In single perfect rhyme the final syllable in a given word is stressed and without a shadow of doubt, forms the basis of solid rhymes in anything from nursery rhymes to rap music.
- In syllabic rhyme the unstressed syllable at the end of a word clings like a shadow to the rest of the word, inextricably part of the whole and does not rely on a stem word for its existence.
For the Eidolon –the Halloween edition contest, write one unrhymed alexandrine couplet with an enjambment between the two lines, and an internal rhyme scheme a1–a2; b1–b2; on the topic of the phantom/spirit of someone. It may include psychopomp(s) – it falls under the poetic device symbolism. The full details and provisos are per the contest page. I have also included a handy TICK LIST. If you wish to stand a ghost of a chance of a placement in this contest, please adhere to ALL the stipulations, including the Do’s and Don’ts Rules.
Psychopomps (Greek, literally meaning the guide of souls) are creatures, spirits, angels, or deities in many religions whose responsibility is to escort newly deceased souls from Earth to the afterlife. Symbolism is not to be confused with metaphor, which is a direct relationship where one thing or idea substitutes for another. Symbolism is the use of specific objects or images to represent abstract ideas. On the other hand, an analogy is saying something is like something else (you may use metaphor or simile when creating an analogy) to make some sort of an explanatory point, for example, the phrase ‘Eternal Sleep’ is a euphemism for death, based on the analogy between lying in a bed and a tomb.
On the topic of accent and how it might affect scansion and syllable counts
For example, my son, who was 2 years old at the time, used to pronounce cat as having 2 syllables: c-at, but this is not how we normally speak. For instance: bait has two vowels that are NOT pronounced separately, ie the diphthong ‘ai’ is pronounced as one sound. But when in certain accents it should be pronounced as having two syllables, it is called a diaeresis, defined by two dots over the second vowel to indicate that it is does not form a diphthong with the first, for example, as in the word naïve (the normal spelling and pronunciation). Quantitative verse, in prosody, is a metrical system based on the duration of the syllables (the amount of time it takes to pronounce) that make up the feet, without regard for the accents or stresses, for example, the dash above the ‘a’ (in a dictionary) in the word age; the dash above the ‘o’ (in a dictionary) in the word both, etc, indicating long sounding vowels. However, a stressed word such as sloth might be pronounced either with a sort sounding vowel (hence the full stop above the ‘o’ in the dictionaries), or a long sounding vowel (hence the dash above the ‘o’ in the dictionaries). These are uncommon in English poetry where the metre is accentual rather than quantitative, and should not have a bearing on the syllable counts of your poem.
Then we have the variable syllable counts of certain words, such as really (stress on the first syllable): per Howmanysyllables.com, as well as Syllable Counts here at Poetry Soup = 3 syllables. However, per the Oxford dictionary = 2 syllables; per Merriam-Webster dictionary = either two or three syllables, depending on dialect. My sincere apology for being dogmatic about this in the past and insisting that really has 3 syllables. I live and learn.
As per usual, please use this BLOG to pose questions or make suggestions.
Happy quills!
Suzette
__________________________________________________________________________
Recommended reading
*How to Write Alexandrines ... : 5 Steps – Instructables