Zero to Hero, a Guide - 11. Poetry Prompt 7 – Blank Verse

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Poetry Prompt 7

Let's Write Some Blank Verse!

Each language has a natural cadence. Since we’ve established poetry is about the musical lilt words can take in any specific language, it’s only natural a set pace will emerge as the most comfortable to recite out loud.[1] For the Greeks and Romans, they felt twelve syllable lines were just perfect to convey a thought completely before turning the line to add more detail or begin a new sentence. With English – our great late-bloomer of a language – we discovered our natural cadence in Blank Verse.

Seldom are great innovations attributable to one person, as nothing spreads faster than a good idea, but the system of ten-syllable (non-rhymed) lines we know today was invented by the poet Henry Howard in the mid-1500s. [2] He did it for his translation of Virgil, being responsive to how the Latin sounded when recited, he fell into a natural rhythm when his lines shortened to ten beats in English. This integral vocal/musical quality drew Christopher Marlowe to put it on stage. Soon all the poet-playwrights had drafted Blank Verse as the workhorse of their dramas. It is a most excellent storytelling form; perhaps the best there is.

Here’s an example of Howard’s ‘new’ verse from Book IV of his Aeneid:

Such words inflamed the kindled mind with love,

Loosened all shame and gave the doubtful hope.

And to the temples first they haste, and seek

By sacrifice with hogrels of two years[3]

Chosen as ought to Ceres that gave laws;

To Phoebus; Bacchus; and to Juno chief

Who hath in her care the bands of marriage.

If you count along, you’ll see each line is a perfectly settled expression where nothing hangs or holds the reader up, and you will see each line is a perfect 10 syllables. Here, even at the birth of the form, we can sense the ease with which Howard’s Blank Verse can tell us a story.[4]

And it’s this storytelling ability that has made Blank Verse the standard for so many later poets. Only recently did I come to learn that Robert Burns was a genuine master of the form. Here is his Tragic Fragment, whose theme of being an outcast for ‘sin’ should resonate deeply with anyone of the LGBT community.

All devil as I am, a damnèd wretch,

A hardened, stubborn, un-repenting villain,

Still my heart melts at human wretchedness;

And with sincere but unavailing sighs

I view the helpless children of distress:

With tears indignant ‘hold the oppressor

Rejoicing in honest man's destruction,

Whose un-submitting heart was all his crime.

Ev'n you, ye hapless crew! I pity you;

Ye, whom the seeming good think sin to pity;

Ye poor, despised, abandoned vagabonds,

Whom Vice, as usual, has turned o'er to ruin.

Oh! But for friends and interposing Heaven,

I had been driven forth like you forlorn,

The most detested, worthless wretch among you!

Oh injured God! Thy goodness has endowed me

With talents passing most of my compeers,

Which I in just proportion have abused –

As far surpassing other common villains

As Thou in natural parts has given me more.

Burns’ example introduces us to another element frequently encountered. Even in the Blank Verse of Shakespeare, an extra, 11th syllable is quite acceptable. Writing this poetry is not easy, and a certain about of ‘fudging’ is perfectly all right. So don’t beat yourself up if you need that extra word or sound. That goes for an occasional line with 9 syllables, but do be conscious not to make lines of Blank Verse either 8 syllables (which alters it to Lyric poetry), or 12 syllables, which makes it too breathy to serve as Blank Verse.

A great master of Blank Verse in the 20th century was Horace Gregory. A beautiful and subtle poet, he too was drawn to the grandeur of Rome. His Blank Verse translation (running to approximately 10,000 lines!) of Ovid’s Metamorphoses is a masterpiece of the poet’s craft. It should inspire all of us to be dedicated to our art.

Reading Gregory's work is almost a meditative experience. The Zen-like character seeps into your bones. Here is a quote from Book X dealing with Orpheus.

One day, while walking down a little hill,

He sloped upon a lawn of thick green grass;

A lovely place to rest — but needed shade.

Yet when the poet, great-grandson of the gods,

Sat down to sing and touched his golden lyre,

There the cool grass waved beneath green shadows,

For trees came crowding where the poet sang:

The silver poplar and the bronze-leaved oak,

The swaying lina, beechnut, maiden-laurel,

Delicate hazel and spear-making ash,

The shining silver fir, the ilex leaning

Its flower-weighted head, sweet-smelling fir,

The shifting-coloured maple and frail willow

Whose branches trail where gliding waters flow;

Lake-haunted lotus, the greening boxwood,

Thin tamarisk, the myrtle of two colours,

And viburnum with darkly shaded fruit.

And with them came slender-footed ivy,

Grapevine and vine-grown elms and mountain ash,

The deeply wooded spruce, the pink arbutus,

The palm whose leaves are signs of victory

And the tall pine, beloved of Cybele

Since Attis, loyal priest, stripped off his manhood,

And stood sexless and naked as that tree.[5]

Now, I may have overloaded you with classical examples, but lest you think this form is only good for gods and goddesses, let’s look at a how an American master of modern writing utilized Blank Verse. Hart Crane was a genius whose life ended much too early. However, it was not unhappy as his straight biographers like to make out, and one period saw him living contented with the love of his life and writing freely. As the Brooklyn flat of his partner’s father faced Manhattan, he and Emil Opffer would lie on the roof getting some sun, with Crane sketching poems about love and the sights.[6] From this sprung his magnum opus, The Bridge. Here is the title poem of the collection – To the Brooklyn Bridge – and it’s in Blank Verse.

How many dawns, chill from his rippling rest

The seagull’s wings shall dip and pivot him,

Shedding white rings of tumult, building high

Over the chained bay waters Liberty –

 

Then, with inviolate curve, forsake our eyes

As apparitional as sails that cross

Some page of figures to be filed away;

– Till elevators drop us from our day...

 

I think of cinemas, panoramic sleights

With multitudes bent toward some flashing scene

Never disclosed, but hastened to again,

Foretell to other eyes on the same screen;

 

And Thee, across the harbor, silver paced

As though the sun took step of thee yet left

Some motion ever unspent in thy stride –

Implicitly thy freedom staying thee!

 

Out of some subway scuttle, cell or loft

A bedlamite speeds to thy parapets,

Tilting there momently, shrill shirt ballooning,

A jest falls from the speechless caravan.

 

Down Wall, from girder into street noon leaks,

A rip-tooth of the sky’s acetylene;

All afternoon the cloud flown derricks turn...

Thy cables breathe the North Atlantic still.

 

And obscure as that heaven of the Jews,

Thy guerdon.... Accolade thou dost bestow

Of anonymity time cannot raise:

Vibrant reprieve and pardon thou dost show.

 

O harp and altar, of the fury fused,

(How could mere toil align thy choiring strings!)

Terrific threshold of the prophet’s pledge,

Prayer of pariah, and the lover’s cry,

 

Again the traffic lights that skim thy swift

Unfractioned idiom, immaculate sigh of stars,

Beading thy path—condense eternity:

And we have seen night lifted in thine arms.

 

Under thy shadow by the piers I waited

Only in darkness is thy shadow clear.

The City’s fiery parcels all undone,

Already snow submerges an iron year...

 

O Sleepless as the river under thee,

Vaulting the sea, the prairies’ dreaming sod,

Unto us lowliest sometime sweep, descend

And of the curveship lend a myth to God.

The Prompt: imagine you are free-floating in space, in orbit around the Earth. Don’t worry about a spacecraft or spacesuit – you are just able to orbit the earth – describe what you see, feel, think and expect to happen. Make it at least 10 lines, but remember, the more practice the better. Try to make it as long as you can.

As final inspiration, here’s a bit more from Horace Gregory’s Metamorphoses. This is the conclusion of Book VIII:

Who has been changed once, but then no more?

Others have been transfigured many times,

Like Proteus, who lives within the kingdom

Of that great wave whose arms encircle the earth.

O Proteus, how many times your image

Comes to us as a young man from the sea,

Then as a lion, then a raving boar,

Or as a snake whom many fear to touch!

Horns change you to a bull, or you might be

A sleeping stone, a tree, or water flowing,

Or fire that quarrels with moisture everywhere.

Self-Review: Now that you have written at least ten lines of Blank Verse, I ask you to perform a self-check against the following set of questions. If you answer ‘Yes’ to one or more of them, and this leads to feelings of dissatisfaction with your results, turn to the appendix List of Random Prompt Ideas and choose one to try the Blank Verse challenge again. Check this list of questions with your second attempt and whittle those ‘Yes’s down to a comfortable level before going on to the Haiku prompt challenge.

Ask yourself DID I:

- Fall short or go over on the syllable counts?

- Make hard stops at the end of each line?

- Treat the poem as a bunch of random lines and not a stanza?

- Regress to haiku-speak?

- Fail to make my stanzas of Blank Verse unified and flowing?

- Sacrifice basic grammar to achieve syllable count?

- Fail to create a pleasant metre for my poem? It does not have to be any one form of metre, but is the overall effect engaging to read? (You may try reciting your poem out loud to answer this question.)

Remember, this course is designed to build knowledge and confidence step by step, so please feel comfortable with Blank Verse before you proceed.

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