How can a poem have texture?

 

When I think of texture, I think of cable-knit wool sweaters, beach sand, seashells, pine needles, corduroy – all touchable and recognizable by our fingertips. Obviously, we can’t do that with poetry, so how can we give our poems texture?

A definition might help. According to poets who know about such matters, texture can include figurative language (metaphor, simile, etc.) and rhyme or rhythm (musicality.)

To give you an example, let’s look at the well-textured opening of this famous poem that most of us studied in high school but didn’t have a clue about what it mean until now:

The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock

by T. S. ELIOT

 

Let us go then, you and I,

When the evening is spread out against the sky

Like a patient etherized upon a table;

Let us go, through certain half-deserted streets,

The muttering retreats

Of restless nights in one-night cheap hotels

And sawdust restaurants with oyster-shells:

Streets that follow like a tedious argument

Of insidious intent….

Read that verse aloud to get the full impact of its texture and beauty. Then read aloud this bare-bones version, picked clean of the good stuff:

Let us go,        

When evening is spread against sky

Like a patient on a table;

Let us go, through streets,

The retreats

Of nights in hotels

And restaurants:

Streets

Of intent….

See? Hear? Poems need more than flat sentences and totally understandable statements. They need texture – something to alert or even disturb the wandering mind.

This week, I’ve been reading a wonderful book, Painting Abstracts, by Rolina van Vliet. She talks about visual art, of course, but her definition, “What is texture?” helped me to understand more in relation to poetry:

“By texture we mean all the effects which disturb and penetrate the smooth… surface. It is the varied layers we use to construct our work…. It is how we vary the surface area using irregularities, emphases, rhythms, height, differences or roughness. Texture is a very strong artistic element….”

The author-artist goes on to list some of the things texture can accomplish:

• activates imagination, creativity and expression
• initiates experimentation and discovery
• stimulates the discovery of one’s own imagery, our artistic vocabulary
• lead to unexpected, interesting and surprising effects
• ensures variation, contrast, emphasis and dynamics

and more – always more as you revise your poems, play with lines, and experiment with the sounds and meanings of words.

 

©2021, Mary Sayler, poet-writer

 

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Good times to write in rhymes

Steady rhyme and rhythm with no variations usually produce boringly predictably poems with a sing-song beat and end-line ping that sometimes prejudice readers (and other poets!) against rhyming poems of any kind. Nevertheless, rhymes have been popular for many, many centuries, and their echoing sounds continue to expand our options as poets, writers, readers, and people ready to learn.

Repetitive sounds help readers to remember the poems they like. Strong rhymes and a lively beat also help people of all ages to learn, relearn, or retrieve information. Therefore, poems with rhythmic rhymes can be very useful in helping children to learn new information or helping elderly patients and stroke victims to retrieve information and recover memories.

Effective rhymes emphasize thoughts and feelings. If rhymes happen to be key words at the end of the lines, the emphasis increases – again, making a poem easier to recall.

Sometimes poems with regular rhymes and rhythm readily sing their way into song lyrics and hymn ballads.

Poets with a strong sense of musicality – and poets who fret over where to break a line in free verse – may find traditional forms useful to study and liberating to write.

Poets who enjoy writing humorous poetry can often bump up humor with the drum roll of a strong beat and sound of true rhymes. If those rhyming words have three or more syllables, so much the funnier.

Amusing or not, end-line rhymes work best when active verbs and strong nouns add sense to each sentence.

Conversely, end-line rhymes usually do not work well when they consist of abstract concepts or weak words that cannot be pictured such as love/of/above.

End-line rhymes can become problematic, too, when they hinder creativity or the flow of ideas, locking a poet into rhyming words that torture syntax (sentence structure) or thwarting poets from developing their unique voice.

If you like to write in true rhymes but don’t like end-line jingles, enjambment will often soften the sound as you wrap a sentence around one line onto the next.

To vary sound echoes, slant rhyme and alliteration provide interesting substitutes for true rhymes.

For more help with rhymes, see these articles on The Poetry Editor blog:

• Rhyme, rhythm, and reality: traditional English verse
• Unlocking clockwork rhyme



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© 2011, Mary Harwell Sayler, all rights reserved. Please do not use the above without permission.

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Sonnets traditionally require poets to use rhythmic rhymes and argue nicely in fourteen lines

Poets who prefer writing with rhyme and rhythm do well to get acquainted with traditional forms of English poetry. Why? Traditional verse forms, such as the villanelle discussed last time or the sonnet this time, have been popular since their appearance many years before Gutenberg invented the printing press in 1450.

If you’re inclined to write poetry of 20 lines or less with strong rhymes and solid rhythmic beat, consider revising those poems with the sonnet in mind. If you’re inclined to write poems with strong opinions and solid arguments, that’s even better!

So, what do you need to do to shape a poem into a sonnet?

Even up the meter. Although other types of meter can certainly be used, let’s stick with the old standby – iambic pentameter. As discussed in the previous article “Scan a poem. Catch the beat,” iambic pentameter means each line has five feet, most of which are iambs. And, as previously discussed in the same article and in “Poetry forms help re-form a poem as you revise,” an iamb is a foot of meter consisting of two syllables that end on an upbeat note.

Occasionally, a poem might have an extra syllable or two to allow variation without losing the beat, but generally a line of iambic pentameter has 10 syllables per line with the even numbers accentuated the majority of the time.

Confine your sonnet to 14 lines.

Follow a rhyme pattern of your choice. An “a” marks the first rhyme, “b” the second, and so on with the most long-lived patterns being Italian (Petrarchan), Spenserian, and Shakespearean. Each of those forms has its own rhyme scheme as follows:

Italian or Petrarchan Sonnet – The first eight lines (octave) have a rhyming pattern of a b b a a b b a, while the last six lines (sextet) offer rhyme options such as c d c d c d or c d e c d e.

Spenserian Sonnet – Edmund Spencer, author of The Faerie Queen, invented the pattern of a b a b b c b c c d c d e e.

Shakespearean Sonnet – William Shakespeare experimented with the use of three quatrains (verses of four lines each) in his sonnets, which closed on a couplet (two rhyming lines.) That rhyme scheme usually followed this pattern:

a b a b
c d c d
e f e f
g g

The couplet at the end of a Shakespearean sonnet can nicely close a debate or open the ending of the poem into a new way of thinking. An Italian sonnet, however, might state a case in the octave and present the other side in the last six lines. So, while a villanelle works well when you want to emphasize and repeat a particular thought or obsession, the sonnet works great when you present an unusual viewpoint, express an opinion, make a case, or just feel like arguing!

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© 2011, Mary Harwell Sayler
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Rhyme, rhythm, reality: traditional English verse

As holidays make the rounds again, most of us reach toward the familiar ring of tradition before that circle passes by for another year. Somewhere in the rounds, poetry holds a special place of honor with holiday patterns of rhyme and rhythm, for example, in hymn lyrics, carols, Christmas bedtime stories, and those favorite nursery rhymes that go over the rivers and into the woods to find Grandma’s idyllic house among the oaks and pines. But stop! Grandma not only lives in a condo near the strip mall where she works, she will seriously chastise you if you call her Granny.

Despite such deterrents, some of us just want to go back. Some of us still want poetry that chimes each line’s end with the regular beat of our own hearts. Some of us cling to old traditions, but more likely, we simply do not want to throw out the customs, practices, or convictions of many, many hundreds of years of traditional English verse. Maybe we like repetition and meter. Maybe we hold sentiments even though we do not want our poems to be sentimental. Maybe we don’t want our writing to be ritualized but want it to be real.

So how do we keep old patterns yet adapt them realistically to contemporary poetry? First we need to hear the rhythm that pulsed within our ancient English predecessors. Usually this could be counted as regular thumps of four beats per line with a slight pause or caesura mid-way. On either side of that mini-break stretched vowels with fairly equal waves of sound. In addition, alliteration echoed the consonants from line to line, turning up the volume and making each poem more memorable – a particularly important technique since pen and paper had not yet confined poems to silence on the written page.

Those patterns of Old English verse still provide a fun form for practicing poetry writing. But language developed, and so did sophisticated, sometimes highly intricate, patterns of end-line rhyme. The rhythmic rap changed somewhat, too, as iambic pentameter became the popular choice of poets and readers. Why? Practicalities! Each line of approximately ten syllables nicely fit the width of the page and also the natural breath of the reader.

To break down that line-break even more: Pentameter = the Latin word penta (meaning five) + meter (measure) of iambic feet. These feet do not make a yardstick, but they’re just as basic. i.e., An iamb is two syllables with emphasis placed on the second syllable, which makes the iambic foot upbeat. The next most popular foot, a trochee, also has two syllables but with the accent first, and it’s downhill from there. So a trochee is downbeat. Poems can be written in trochees, of course, but usually a trochaic foot steps into a line of iambic pentameter to bring a little jazz step – a variation that does not lose the beat.

Once you know this basic two-step dance of poetry, it’s as though you’ve learned a new language or discovered how to fly, and you feel like your poems can do anything! You can rhyme or not. You can devise a mid-line rhyme scheme or begin lines with rhyme or substitute slant rhyme in a Shakespearean sonnet pattern. Yes, your poems might draw from another time, but absorbed by sound and beauty, you’ll find lively ways to adapt old traditions to your renewed voice and perhaps step into a unique place in poetic history.



(c) 2010, Mary Harwell Sayler