Stephen Fry - The Ode Less Travelled: Unlocking the Poet Within

Unlocking the Poet Within

FICTION

The Liar

The Hippopotamus

Making History

The Stars Tennis Balls

NON-FICTION

Paperweight

Moab Is My Washpot

Rescuing the Spectacled Bear

with Hugh Laurie

A Bit of Fry and Laurie

A Bit More Fry and Laurie

Three Bits of Fry and Laurie

Unlocking the Poet Within

HUTCHINSON

LONDON

Published by Hutchinson in 2005

Copyright Stephen Fry 2005

Stephen Fry has asserted his right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988 to be identified as the author of this work

This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, resold, hired out, or otherwise circulated without the publisher's prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser

First published in 2005 in the United Kingdom by Hutchinson

H UTCHINSON
The Random House Group Limited 20 Vauxhall Bridge Road, London SWIV 2SA

Random House Australia (Pty) Limited 20 Alfred Street, Milsons Point, Sydney New South Wales 2061, Australia

Random House New Zealand Limited 18 Poland Road, Glenfield Auckland 10, New Zealand

Random House South Africa (Pty) Limited Isle of Houghton, Corner Boundary Road & Carse OGowrie, Houghton, 2198, South Africa

The Random House Group Limited Reg. No. 954009

www.randomhouse.co.uk

A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

ISBN: 1-4295-2143-0

The mediocre teacher tells. The good teacher explains. The superior teacher demonstrates. The great teacher inspires.

W ILLIAM A RTHUR W ARD

For Rory Stuart, a good, superior and great teacher.

Foreword

How to Read this Book. Three Golden Rules

1 Metre

I How We Speak. Meet Metre. The Great Iamb. The Iambic Pentameter. Poetry Exercises 1 & 2

II End-stopping, Enjambment and Caesura. Poetry Exercise 3 . Weak Endings, Trochaic and Pyrhhic Substitutions. Substitutions. Poetry Exercise 4

III More Metres: Four Beats to the Line. Mixed Feet. Poetry Exercise 5

IV Ternary Feet: The Dactyl, The Molossus and Tribrach, The Amphibrach, The Amphimacer, Quaternary Feet. Poetry Exercise 6

V Anglo-Saxon Attitudes. Poetry Exercise 7 . Sprung Rhythm.

VI Syllabic Verse. Poetry Exercises 8 & 9 : Coleridges Lesson for a Boy .

T ABLE OF M ETRIC F EET

2 Rhyme

I The Basic Categories of Rhyme. Partial Rhymes. Feminine and Triple Rhymes. Rich Rhyme.

II Rhyming Arrangements.

III Good and Bad Rhyme? A Thought Experiment. Rhyming Practice and Rhyming Dictionaries. Poetry Exercise 10

R HYME C ATEGORIES

3 Form

I The Stanza. What is Form and Why Bother with It?

II Stanzaic Variations. Open Forms: Terza Rima, The Quatrain, The Rubai, Rhyme Royal, Ottava Rima, Spenserian Stanza. Adopting and Adapting. Poetry Exercise 11

III The Ballad. Poetry Exercise 12

IV Heroic Verse. Poetry Exercise 13

V The Ode: Sapphic, Pindaric, Horatian, The Lyric Ode, Anacreontics.

VI Closed Forms: The Villanelle. Poetry Exercise 14 . The Sestina. Poetry Exercise 15 . The Pantoum, The Ballade.

VII More Closed Forms: Rondeau, Rondeau Redoubl, Rondel, Roundel, Rondelet, Roundelay, Triolet, Kyrielle. Poetry Exercise 16

VIII Comic Verse: Cento, The Clerihew. The Limerick. Reflections on Comic and Impolite Verse. Light Verse. Parody. Poetry Exercise 17

IX Exotic Forms: Haiku, Senryu, Tanka. Ghazal. Luc Bat. Tanaga. Poetry Exercise 18

X The Sonnet: Petrarchan and Shakespearean. Curtal and caudate sonnets. Sonnet Variations and Romantic Duels. Poetry Exercise 19

XI Shaped Verse. Pattern Poems. Silly, Silly Forms. Acrostics. Poetry Exercise 20

4 Diction and Poetics Today

I The Whale. The Cat and the Act. Madeline. Diction. Being Alert to Language.

II Poetic Vices. Ten Habits of Successful Poets that They Dont Teach You at Harvard Poetry School, or Chicken Verse for the Soul Is from Mars but You Are What You Read in Just Seven Days or Your Money Back. Getting Noticed. Poetry Today. Goodbye.

I NCOMPLETE G LOSSARY OF P OETIC T ERMS

A PPENDIX Arnauds Algorithm

A CKNOWLEDGEMENTS

F URTHER R EADING

I HAVE A DARK AND DREADFUL SECRET . I write poetry. This is an embarrassing confession for an adult to make. In their idle hours Winston Churchill and Nol Coward painted. For fun and relaxation Albert Einstein played the violin. Hemingway hunted, Agatha Christie gardened, James Joyce sang arias and Nabokov chased butterflies. But poetry ?

I have a friend who drums in the attic, another who has been building a boat for years. An actor I know is prouder of the reproduction eighteenth-century duelling pistols he makes in a small workshop than he is of his knighthood. Britain is a nation of hobbyistseccentric amateurs, talented part-timers, Pooterish potterers and dedicated autodidacts in every field of human endeavour. But poetry ?

An adolescent girl may write poetry, so long as it is securely locked up in her pink leatherette five-year diary. Suburban professionals are permitted to enter jolly pastiche competitions in the Spectator and New Statesman . At a pinch, a young man may be allowed to write a verse or two of dirty doggerel and leave it on a post-it note stuck to the fridge when he has forgotten to buy a Valentine card. But thats it . Any more forays into the world of Poesy and you release the beast that lurks within every British breastand the name of the beast is Embarrassment.

And yet

I believe poetry is a primal impulse within us all. I believe we are all capable of it and furthermore that a small, often ignored corner of us positively yearns to try it. I believe our poetic impulse is blocked by the false belief that poetry might on the one hand be academic and technical and on the other formless and random. It seems to many that while there is a clear road to learning music, gardening or watercolours, poetry lies in inaccessible marshland: no pathways, no signposts, just the skeletons of long-dead poets poking through the bog and the unedifying sight of living ones floundering about in apparent confusion and mutual enmity. Behind it all, the dread memory of classrooms swollen into resentful silence while the English teacher invites us to respond to a poem.

For me the private act of writing poetry is songwriting, confessional, diary-keeping, speculation, problem-solving, storytelling, therapy, anger management, craftsmanship, relaxation, concentration and spiritual adventure all in one inexpensive package.

Suppose I want to paint but seem to have no obvious talent. Never mind: there are artist supply shops selling paints, papers, pastels, charcoals and crayons. There are How To books everywhere. Simple lessons in the rules of proportion and guides to composition and colourmixing can make up for my lack of natural ability and provide painless technical grounding. I am helped by grids and outlines, pantographs and tracing paper; precise instructions guide me in how to prepare a canvas, prime it with paint and wash it into an instant watercolour sky. There are instructional videos available; I can even find channels on cable and satellite television showing gentle hippies painting lakes, carving pine trees with palette knives and dotting them with impasto snow. Mahlsticks, sable, hogs-hair, turpentine and linseed. Viridian, umber, ochre and carmine. Perspective, chiaroscuro, sfumato , grisaille, tondo and morbidezza . Reserved modes and materials. The tools of the trade. A new jargon to learn. A whole initiation into technique, form and style.