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“Forsythia” (1966), by Mary Ellen Solt, is an example of concrete poetry, a genre that lacks such traditional poetic elements as regular measures or rhyme and instead takes exclusively visual forms. By permission of Mary Ellen Solt Form, in effect, is like the doughnut that may be said to be nothing in a circle of something or something around nothing; it is either the outside of an inside, as when people speak of “good form” or “bourgeois formalism,” or the inside of an outside, as in the scholastic saying that “the soul is the form of the body.” Taking this principle, together with what Cunningham says of the matter, one may now look at a very short and very powerful poem with a view to distinguishing the forms, or schemes, of which it is made. It was written by —a great English poet somewhat sunken in reputation, probably on account of misinterpretations having to do more with his imputed politics than with his poetry—and its subject, one of a series of epitaphs for the dead of, is a soldier shot by his comrades for cowardice in battle. I could not look on Death, which being known, Men led me to him, blindfold and alone. The aim of the following observations and reflections is to distinguish as clearly as possible—distinguish without dividing—the feelings evoked by the subject, so grim, horrifying, tending to helpless sorrow and despair, from the feelings, which might better be thought of as meanings, evoked by careful contemplation of the poem in its manifold and somewhat subtle ways of handling the subject, leading the reader on to a view of the strange delight to art, whose mirroring and shielding power allows him to contemplate the world’s horrible realities without being turned to stone. There is, first, the obvious external form of a rhymed, closed in iambic (that is, five poetic “feet,” each consisting of an unstressed followed by a stressed syllable, per line).
There is, second, the obvious external form of a single sentence balanced in four grammatical units with and in counterpoint with the metrical form. There is, third, the conventional form belonging to the epitaph and reflecting back to antiquity; it is terse enough to be cut in stone and tight-lipped also, perhaps for other reasons, such as the speaker’s shame. There is, fourth, the fictional form belonging to the epitaph, according to which the dead man is supposed to be saying the words himself.
There is, fifth, especially in this instance, the real form behind or within the fictional one, for the reader is aware that in reality it is not the dead man speaking, nor are his feelings the only ones the reader is receiving, but that the comrades who were forced to execute him may themselves have made up these two lines with their incalculably complex and balance of scorn, awe, guilt, and consideration even to tenderness for the dead soldier. There is, sixth, the form, with its many ranging from the through the pathetic to and: dying in battle is spoken of in language relating it to a social occasion in drawing room or court; the coward’s fear is implicitly represented as merely the timorousness and embarrassment one might feel about being introduced to a somewhat superior and majestic person, so that the soldiers responsible for killing him are seen as sympathetically helping him through a difficult moment in the realm of manners.
May 12, 2015 - In this lesson, we will explore the idea of rhythm, or beat, in poetry. Every poem that. Poetry: Rhythm Elements of Poetry: Rhymes & Sounds. Rhythm in poems is best described as a pattern of recurrence, something that happens with regularity. Poets use the following to create rhythm: Repetition – the repeating of words creates rhythm.