Classification

[DromeidaonLeah]

I have an amateur interest in poetry, but have never sat in on any classes or would know anything otherwise. I find formatting interesting and would like to know more about how to classify a work a priori.

I only know this poem, to begin with. What kind is it?


Death's the Classic Look, by John Ciardi

Death's the classic look. It goes
down stoneworks carved with Latin Prose
and Poetry. And scholar's Greek
that no one now can really speak,
though it's all guessed at. The long view
contains bits of Etruscan, too,
(as guessed at as the Greek is, but
no one yet has figured out
more than a first few words, and those
the names for fish, bird, water, rose
painted beside the painting of
what a dead man kept to love
inside his tomb). In back of that
the view runs desert-rimmed and flat
past writings that were things, not words:
roses, water, fish, and birds.
The thing before the letters came,
the name before there was a name.
And back of things themselves? Who knows?
Jungle spells it as it grows
where the damp among the shoots
waterlogs the classic roots,
and the skulls and bones of things
last half as long as a bird sings,
as a fish swims, as a rose fills,
opens, lets out its breath, and spills
into the sockets where things crawl,
and death looks like no look at all.

 

[GuiltyPleasure]

Welcome to the Poet's Haunt.

Unless I'm mistaken this poem is written in couplets - each line rhyming with the pervious, in couples hence "couplets", thought to have originated in France in the 1500s.

 

[UnderYourSpell]

Agreed, go to this thread for examples of Form.

 

[DromeidaonLeah]

I was reading that yesterday. I got hung up on "curtal sonnet".

 

[UnderYourSpell]

Wait until you get down to the Sestina

 

[Tzara]

Welcome to the Poet's Haunt.

Unless I'm mistaken this poem is written in couplets - each line rhyming with the pervious, in couples hence "couplets", thought to have originated in France in the 1500s.

It's also in iambic tetrameter, though quite a number of the lines are headless, meaning the initial unstressed syllable is missing.

 

[DromeidaonLeah]

I'm in too deep already.

 

[Tzara]

I'm in too deep already.

Why?

If you think you're in too deep, we can help dig you out. But I guess I want to ask why you posted that poem, in particular. John Ciardi is not exactly the kind of poet someone would bring in off the street with no other knowledge of poetry.

Why that poem, particularly?

 

[DromeidaonLeah]

That was the one that got me interested. You are suggesting?

 

[Tzara]

That was the one that got me interested. You are suggesting?

I'm not suggesting anything. It just seemed an unusual choice to post. Ciardi is neither contemporary (he died thirty years ago) nor is he one of the "major" poets of his era (always something subject to personal taste, of course, but Lowell, Bishop, and Berryman, for example, are all almost exact contemporaries of him and are all probably better known today).

It just seemed an odd selection to me, is all. I wondered where you encountered it and decided it was interesting enough to you to post about.

 

[DromeidaonLeah]

A good question. Let me see...

It was a cold, windy night. An old bookstore (now out of business) stood across the street behind the few remaining people on their way home for the evening. Out of the black glass peered a thick stack of dust-covered pages, and a more careful inspection revealed a chair, and a desk, that had been left in the room. Probably by the movers. Following the brick wall around the side, a green metal door appeared. It hung loosely on rusted hinges and a draft of stale, mildew-laced air brushed outside.