When it came to war reportage and military affairs, no magazine delivered like Yank, the Army Weekly. Born in World War II, Yank was on the scene for only three years, but during that brief period this unique GI tabloid won the hearts and minds of America’s Greatest Generation.

Yank Began Publishing in 1942

Yank was founded by Major Hartzell Spence in May 1942. Established primarily to inform and entertain the men of the United States Army, Yank was staffed exclusively by enlisted men who served as the magazine’s editors, correspondents, photographers, cartoonists and illustrators. Many of Yank’s staff members were eminently qualified, having worked in civilian life for big city dailies, slick magazines and small town newspapers.

Vol. 1, No. 1 of Yank rolled off the presses bearing the cover date June 17, 1942, with the headline: “FDR: Why We Fight.”

Yank Produced 21 Editions

Yank was published in 21 editions in 17 locations. The magazine’s domestic edition was produced at their main editorial offices in New York City. Other Yank editions were published around the globe in such far-flung places as London, Honolulu, Sydney, Rome, Paris, Cairo, Tehran, Calcutta, Puerto Rico, The Aleutians, Panama and Strasbourg.

As the Allies advanced, so did the offices of Yank. The Paris edition made its first appearance in September 1944 and was printed on the same rotogravure press that the German Army newspaper, Wehrmacht, had been published on weeks before the Allied liberation.

Yank even published a small pony-sized air mail edition for use by American troops on some of the more remote islands of the Pacific.

Yank’s Outstanding War Reportage

Yank quickly established itself as one of the war’s premier magazines. Its outstanding war reportage was second to none, as witnessed by a vast array of first-hand, eyewitness battle accounts. Among the best entries: “Infantry Battle in New Georgia” by Sgt. Mack Moriss, “Blown Off the Deck of an LST” by Sgt. James P. O’Neill, “The Dead End Kids” (from Burma) by Sgt. Dave Richardson and “Cameraman in Cassino” by Sgt. George Aarons.

In one article, “Schweinfurt Raid,” Yank correspondent Sgt. Walter Peters not only accompanied the B-17 Yank on its perilous mission over the skies of Germany but manned a .50-caliber machine gun as well. Upon landing back at their bomber base in England, Peters cabled his stunning eyewitness account to Yank’s editorial offices.

“Our formation across the North Sea was perfect,” Peters wrote in describing the massive American raid. “We led the ‘Purple Heart’ elements, and in front of us the sky was literally clouded by B-17s. We counted as many as 190 and then quit counting.”

Several of Yank’s correspondents and photographers lost their lives while carrying out their hazardous assignments. Sgt. John A. Bushemi, one of Yank’s most talented photographers, was killed during the invasion of Eniwetok in the Marshall Islands. Likewise, Sgt. Peter Paris lost his life while storming bloody Omaha Beach with the U.S. First Infantry Division on D-Day.

Yank’s Cartoons, Humor, Pin-ups

In addition to its magnificent war reportage, Yank also contained a number of other features. The magazine’s cartoons were especially well-received, showcasing the talents of such GI contributors as Sgt. Ralph Stein, Sgt. Frank Brandt, Sgt. Al Jafee, Corporal Ernest Maxwell (a.k.a. Cpl. Emax), Private Thomas Flannery and Sgt. George Baker (creator of “The Sad Sack”).

Humorous articles also populated the pages of Yank. A few hilarious examples: “Invasion of Mae West’s Dressing Room” by Sgt. Al Hine, “A Dogface Answers a Collection Agency” by Pvt. Oris Turner and “Hopeless McGonigle’s Brother Wins the DSC” by S/Sgt. L.A. Brodsky.

One of the magazine’s most popular features was the Yank Pin-up Girl, which featured a bevy of beautiful starlets and models. Among the Hollywood famous were: Lauren Bacall, Rita Hayworth, Carole Landis, Betty Grable, Martha Vickers, Ann Miller, Dorothy Lamour and Lizabeth Scott.

Yank’s Famous Contributors

Yank could boast of a handful of GI contributors and staff members who later found fame in civilian life. Among the roster: Pfc. Irwin Shaw, acclaimed novelist and author of The Young Lions and Rich Man, Poor Man; Sgt. Marion Hargrove, author of the bestseller See Here, Private Hargrove; Sgt. Walter Bernstein, Hollywood screenwriter; Pfc. Bil Keane, creator of the popular cartoon strip The Family Circus; and Sgt. Merle Miller, bestselling author and motion picture writer.

Yank’s Final Edition in 1945

Yank, with an honorable discharge gracing its cover, published its final edition on December 28, 1945. The war had ended three months earlier, and like an old soldier Yank merely faded away into history…

The main characters in “The Simple Gift” and “Only Ten” both feel that they do not belong at the beginning of the story. Billy feels alienated from his father, school, his town and the community. Hussein is first not accepted at his new school when he moves from his old war torn country. The idea of belonging is shown differently through the song “Small Town”. The man is shown to belong in the town and the community surrounding it.

The character Billy from “The Simple gift” is first shown to have a disconnection from his father which can be shown from the quote “Drink this instead to celebrate your son leaving home.” He is also shown to dislike school, from the quote “It’s the only time my schoolbag has come in handy.”

Billy feels that he connects with Westfield creek, and can be shown from the quote “I love this place”. Steve Herrick uses highly descriptive language to amplify a feeling of belonging though the characters.

Billy physically moves from his old lifestyle due to his sense of not belonging at home and school. Billy is accepted by Ernie the train driver, even though he is homeless. He is similarly accepted by the librarian in Bendarat, helping him in his transition to belonging. Billy finds old Bill, who is also homeless, living in an old train carriage. they are both outcast from society, and create their own sense of belonging. Billy and Old Bill both reject the pressure of mainstream society, but for different reasons. Billy chooses not to belong to his father, and Old Bill attempts to forget the death of his daughter and Wife.

Billy and Caitlin’s relationship develops throughout the verse novel. Caitlin does not judge Billy while he is eating food scraps at McDonald’s. The quote “I hate mopping” shows that they both dislike what they are doing.

Steven Herrick uses symbols throughout the novel, such as the key. this represents the gift Old Bill gives to Billy. Old Bill is able to move on with his life after giving the house to Billy.

The short story “Only Ten” tells the story of a young boy who has moved from a war torn countr. He struggles to belong at his new school and with the other children. The main character, Hussein, is shown to not belong anywhere. The quote “They can see in here” shows the fear of soldiers from his old country. Husseins paranoia is also evident when he is playing football. Hussein sees the ball falling from the sky and relates it to a bomb. The quote “You are here now” shows Bruce accepting Hussein and helping him to feel as he belongs.

Bruce attacks Hussein with a ruler, to see how he would react. This gives Hussein a greater feeling of alienation towards Bruce, and the rest of the children. Hussein is shown to have a desire to belong. This is evident as Hussein follows the other children around. Hussein is gradually more accepted throughout the story, allowing him to belong.

The song “Small Town” tells the story of a man that has belonged his whole life. This connection is created through the community, family and his home.

The quotes “Well I was born in a small town” and “Probly die in a small town” show how he feels about his lifestyle. The phrase “small town” is repeated throughout the song. This strengthens the man’s feeling of belonging in the town.

The quote “All my friends are so small town” shows that he has social connections where he lives. This also shows that his friends belong as well. He is shown to have family living in the town from the quote “My parents live in the same small town”.

He also shows that he does not wish to change his lifestyle from the quote “But my bed is in a small town”. It can also be shown from the quote “Gonna die in this small town.”

The three texts mentioned all show belonging in similar ways, all exploring aspects that create the idea. In my opinion, “The Simple Gift” best explores the concept through the simplistic characterization.

Sword and Sorcery is a sub-genre of the fantasy genre of fiction, taking its name from the sword-slinging adventurers who generally make up the genre’s protagonists and the sorcery-using characters who are often the villains and/or antagonists. This sub-genre will soon have been around for a hundred years, author Robert E. Howard generally being considered the founder of Sword and Sorcery in the late 1920s.

Howard is remembered as the creator of Conan the Barbarian, the best-known of all the characters from Sword and Sorcery. But Howard has not stood alone over the years. Many other authors have brought heroes and villains and tales of their own, including such writers as Michael Moorcock, Fritz Leiber, Andrew J. Offutt, John Jakes and others.

There is no single, solid definition of what makes a tale Sword and Sorcery, the sub-genre’s title having been coined by Leiber in the early 1960s, but most of the stories contain some similarities in content or tone or in other details. For example, most of the protagonists in Sword and Sorcery stories tend to rely on their own resources to get them through a struggle, often their brawn but just as often their wits. Action of course plays a consistent role in these tales and usually the use of magic is limited to the bad guys. But there are always exceptions. As an example of opposites, Moorcock’s Elric character is in nearly all ways an anti-Sword and Sorcery character since he is physically quite frail and often uses magic.

Another trait common to Sword and Sorcery stories is the mindset of the main character(s). While no two such characters think exactly alike, there are some similarities. For instance, while Sword and Sorcery protagonists often act in heroic fashion, they rarely think heroically. In other words, their deeds are usually not done altruistically. There is usually something to gain, often wealth in one form or another, but just as often the conflict can be about simply surviving. Unlike epic fantasy heroes, the main characters in Sword and Sorcery are rarely out to save the world or a kingdom or even an individual, unless it’s themselves or something for whom they have a personal interest, such as a lover or someone who owes them money, etc.

A genre with not the best reputation

Unfortunately for fans of this genre, Sword and Sorcery has in many reading circles, and often among the populace at large, come to have a bad reputation. This sub-genre is often thought of as lowbrow literature, stories that could only appeal to teen boys at best. To some extent, there is a kernel of truth to this. Sword and Sorcery is adventure fiction. It’s meant to be. But it also can appeal to adults and even to women.

Several things over the years have brought Sword and Sorcery it’s less-than-stellar reputation. First, the early stories were published in the 1920s and 1930s by magazines that had lots of space to fill, which meant that good Sword and Sorcery short stories were often tucked in with bad stories. Also, Hollywood has done this genre few favors, with most Sword and Sorcery movies being flat-out awful, with a few notable exceptions such as the original Conan the Barbarian movie.

However, there is plenty of good Sword and Sorcery available, some of older works written by the masters of the genre, and more modern works that are drawing plenty of readers.

Is Sword and Sorcery dead?

Not in the least. This sub-genre has changed much, especially over the last couple of decades, but it is still alive and well. Nearly all of the well-known Sword and Sorcery authors have passed away, but Moorcock is still going strong and every once in a while Andrew Offutt pens a story.

But, more importantly, is the newest generation of fantasy authors who are writing and publishing Sword and Sorcery and similar tales. Sword and Sorcery has a strong short story tradition, but in the last 20 or so years longer and longer works of fantasy have been hitting book store shelves. These newer works are rarely through-and-through Sword and Sorcery stories, but often they include Sword and Sorcery characters and themes mixed together with epic hero tropes as well as other action/adventure-oriented fantasy sub-genres. Steven Eriksonand Martin are two of the better-known authors in this trend, as well as the late David Gemmell and Robert Jordan.

Also, there is still plenty of short fiction focusing on Sword and Sorcery. Publisher Jason Waltz of Rogue Blades Entertainment is turning out anthologies of short stories that are strong heroic fiction, and the magazine Black Gate focuses almost entirely upon Sword and Sorcery fiction and tales in similar veins.

So, the next time you’re chomping at the bit to read some action-packed stories, don’t forget to give Sword and Sorcery a try. This fantasy sub-genre is alive and well and can provide plenty of thrills. And I’ve just touched upon all that is Sword and Sorcery; there are plenty more authors, modern and classic, who offer great tales of sword slinging.

Gary Dexter signs as editor to Poisoned Pens: Literary Invective from Amis to Zola published by Frances Lincoln Limited. It covers just about anything from ancient classical authors to modern time cat fights and is organised in chapters which don’t necessarily need to be read in the presented order. If you have a preference for venomous Victorians, feel free to start there. It also illuminates the reasons just why contemporary writers loath each other’s writing.

But to the aspiring troll, it gives invaluable examples like Oscar Wilde about Meredith: “As a writer he has mastered everything except language: as a novelist he can do everything except tell a story: as an artist he is everything except articulate.” That is what I call a well honed insult. Or Thackery on Swift: “Some of this audience mayn’t have read the last part of Gulliver, and to such I would recall the advice of the venerable Mr. Punch to persons about to marry, and day. Don’t.“

Take Jane Austen, one of the most revered and enduring English authors. Mark Twain, the American writer, was so irritated by Austen that he wrote in one letter: “Every time I read Pride and Prejudice I want to dig her up and hit her over the skull with her own shin bone.” You might attribute this to cultural differences, but I for my part am able to enter into his feelings, I would like to do the same.

Maybe you prefer to stay with the more refined poets. Byron described Keats’s work as “neither poetry nor anything else but a Bedlam vision produced by raw pork and opium” and offered his publisher to skin him alive. Shelley on the other hand described Byron’s work as “mischievous insanity” brought on by Byron’s taste for “bigoted and disgusting Italian women”.

I thoroughly enjoyed reading this book from cover to cover, and it reminded me of my own time at boarding school, when I described the Roman writer Curtius Rufus thus: “His writing has the depth, the scope, the view, and the style of the Sun or the Star.” The writer was subsequently struck off the curriculum of first our boarding school and later all schools.

I recommend this book especially to all new Triond writers to deal with their trolls. If a comment is not as well written as the one by Oscar Wilde, ignore it, if it is, take it as a compliment.

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But sometimes, for some readers, violence can be too much. It can be too powerful, even to the point of turning the reader off a certain author. Possibly such a reader won’t even finish the story they were reading.

What can a writer do about this? How can the writer know when their fictional violence has gone over the top?

It’s not easy. In fact, it’s mostly a subjective decision.

The writer has to take into account the genre in which they are writing and the potential reading audience. Violence obviously is a bit more acceptable in horror, for example. But even within the horror genre, there are many different levels of violence that could be portrayed. As examples, there is generally a huge difference in the violence as portrayed by an author like Dean Koontz than there is by someone like Joe R. Lansdale, a known “splatterpunk” writer. Koontz’s violence tends to be over fairly quickly and doesn’t focus on prolonged torture or gore. Lansdale, on the other hand, gets his hands dirty with the red stuff, then makes you do the same while smashing your face down in it.

Would you want your readers to have to deal with that level of violence? Maybe you do. There is such an audience for over-the-top violence, though it’s not a mainstream audience nor is it very large. Some writers enjoy delving into the darkest parts of humanity, as do some readers. Some writers intentionally set out to be offensive, even go out of their way to do so, but even this has a place within a free society with protected speech; if nothing else, such literature can get people to thinking and talking.

Most authors, however, will not want to go quite that deep into violence. Violence is often a necessity in fiction, but the truth is the majority of readers won’t want to dwell on it. And that’s fine, too.

Much of this depends upon the writer’s goals and what they wish to accomplish with their career and any given piece of their work. Someone striving for more mainstream success should generally shy away from writing graphic violence. Horror writers have a little more room to work with, as to some extent do men’s action writers, thriller writers and writers of Westerns. But even within those genres, there is much wiggle room. The best thing is to be familiar with your genre and its audience; this will help you know the boundaries of the levels of violence which you can approach in writing. And it can help you decided how far you want to stay within those boundaries, or if you want to leap over them.

And readers need to remind themselves what they are reading is only a story. It’s fiction. It’s not real. Yes, stories can have power, but only the power you allow them to have over you.

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Kirby McCauley, a famed Gothic critic, said “Gothic literature puts us in touch with a part of ourselves that we don’t know but that we feel.” Why does someone want to read something that they know will scare them? Of course, they must like to, but why? I agree with Kirby that a dusty, hidden string; buried deep within the mind; is pulled. We fell the string pulling us closer to the end, and know how to stop it. Yet, we read on.

Gothic literature is necessary in our civilized world today, because it drags out the uncontrollable feelings in us all. In “An Anatomy of Literature” by Robert Foulke and Paul Smith; there are four different categories, Romance, Tragedy, Comedy and Irony. Since Gothic can participate in all four of those, in any amount; it will appeal to a variety of readers and appear in a variety of styles. Good Gothic novels will incorporate more than one of the categories through the characters of the story. “Hop Frog” by Edgar Allen Poe illustrates this by the love between Hop Frog and Tripetta, the satire of the crown, and the horrifying tragic ending. These different forms enhance the suspense of the story by providing a feeling of reader control, so when the bottom falls out at the end, and all control is lost; a shock of adrenaline occurs. The reader is hooked. The climax is here. The Gothic writer will also use these forms of literature to emphasize an aspect of a character’s personality. In the story “Cask of Amontillado”, Poe uses Fortunato’s love of wine to dupe him into his demise, and for Montressor to offer him a considerably lesser quality wine to sooth his cough; shows the sarcastic irony of Montressor’s success. I use Poe works as an example since he is “The Father” of Gothic. Other authors also use this technique with equaled accuracy as the master, such as Stephen King, Clive Barker, and others.

Gothic literature is necessary to the society in that it offers the reader a release for feelings and needs deep within ourselves. Naturally, these needs and emotions will go on throughout life unfulfilled. It is with Gothic stories and movies that society can safely investigate these emotions. Gothic writer’s know about this primal need of man to experience this dangerous dark side of life; and they know how to pull it our from it’s well-guarded, hidden little corner of the reader’s mind. Stephen King once said that a good story depends on the strength of the “gotcha” it impresses on the reader. “Gotcha” is that feeling while you’re reading that you just can’t put it down; you have to know what happens to so-n-so and how the book ends.

Although Gothic follows a basic literary list of ingredients such as; plot, setting, unity, continuity and conflict; it has unlimited topic range. It can go from a dark, musty castle in Transylvania in the 17th century to a modernistic condo on the top floor of a skyscraper in the 25th century. The variety of stories is due mostly to the conflict of all Gothic between Good and Evil. From this conflict can arise a multitude of variations on the other ingredients, especially characters. In most battles especially Good – Evil someone must die, death is an ingredient that always emphasizes the climax. Since Evil is almost always portrayed as a demon or ogre or a creature of the night, we find another ingredient; the supernatural. Plus, only the bravest of souls can defeat such an intense foe. All these extra ingredients are fears of our society because they can not be explained through scientific means.

Society generally does not like anything that it can’t understand; so it will think Gothic stories as literature since it deals with unexplainable topics. If society would only look on the streets, they will notice that there really is a fine line between what is real and what is a fantasy. Just because we may not see it in our life styles, doesn’t mean the dark side is not out there. Since these DARK conditions are rare in real life, Gothic literature allows the reader to experience these situations in a safe, controlled surrounding. Is it safe and controllable?

Gothic stories like to lull the reader into a false sense of security and control, when suddenly the bottom drops out and we are left staring into a chasm of chaos and disaster and death. If the reader allows a good Gothic story to pull loose the chains that bind those fears; when we finally do read the last line, we leave with a sense of disgust, disillusion, satisfaction and often fulfillment.

There will always be those in society who think that bloody guts and gore mixed with the supernatural just isn’t “natural” and good literature. I think it is good to adventure into the DARK, as is fantasy and science fiction. After all as I recall history wasn’t always “glitz” and glamor. There are hundreds of war novels that are quite suitable for our greater educating environments such as “War and Peace”.

There are dozens of poetic forms, each one of them having a separate rhyme scheme and structure. A handful of them are: ballad, chant royal, triolet, roundel, sonnet, virelay, villanelle, ode, epic, haiku, tanka, and monotetra. This is just a slice of the pie: there are many different sub-species of forms as well, like the Petrarchan Sonnet, or the Grande ballade. Some are difficult, like the Crown of Sonnets, or the sestina, while others are a little easier to pull off like the ballad or the regular ode. Needless to say, there is enough resource for the venturing poet to keep busy for the rest of his or her life if he or she wants to be great at each and every form available.

The Blank Poem & Blank Verse

These are forms of poems that belong in the Poem section because even though they do not include a rhyme scheme, they are driven by meter and have a highly rhythmic nature.

Blank Verse

Many poets know what blank verse is, having read some of Shakespeare’s plays. Yet, to be sure: a blank verse is a type of metrical writing that can be shown, nine times out of ten, in iambic pentameter (five feet of disyllabic verse where the stress falls on the second syllable of each foot), but which does not incorporate rhyme except on a rare occasion. Blank verse can also be marked by caesura and enjambment.

An Example (Excerpt from Ulysses by Alfred, Lord Tennyson)

“It little profits that an idle king,
By this still hearth, among these barren crags,
Matched with an aged wife, I mete and dole
Unequal laws unto a savage race,
That hoard, and sleep, and feed, and know not me.
I cannot rest from travel; I will drink
Life to the lees. All times I have enjoyed
Greatly, have suffered greatly, both with those
That loved me, and alone; on shore, and when
Thro’ scudding drifts the rainy Hyades
Vext the dim sea. I am become a name;
For always roaming with a hungry heart
Much have I seen and known, — cities of men
And manners, climates, councils, governments,
Myself not least, but honored of them all, —
And drunk delight of battle with my peers,
Far on the ringing plains of windy Troy.
…”

Blank Poem

The blank poem is an off-shoot of the blank verse idea. This is very tight form of poem, in spite of how it sounds, because even though it has no rhyming pattern, its every word is qualitatively measured right into the poem’s rhythmic structure so that though it has no rhyme, it surely reads like it might at any time. It’s dependence on meter or cadence and the content is obvious the more of it you read.

An Example (An Excerpt from Lullaby by Wystan Hugh Auden)

“Lay your sleeping head, my love,
Human on my faithless arm;
Time and fevers burn away
Individual beauty from
Thoughtful children, and the grave
Proves the child ephemeral;
But in my arms till break of day
Let the living creature lie,
Mortal, guilty, but to me
The entirely beautiful.”

Meter: The Engine

In a poem, the structure is like the frame of the car. Rhyme and verbiage can be considered the shiny body of the car. But meter is the engine that drives it. The one thing that every poem needs to be successful, other than appropriate content, is proper meter. But let’s not confuse rhythm with meter; rhythm is brought about by combinations of meter and structure. Rhythm is set by separation of thougts, length of line and stanza, and purpose. So what is meter?

Meter is the cadenced language which flows with the rise and fall of stressed and unstressed syllables. A stressed or accented syllable takes longer to pronounce. An unstressed or unaccented syllable takes a shorter time to pronounce. If you are used to reading faster than a speeding bullet, or if you have not ‘trained your ear’ for words, then you are going to miss the importance of meter. You probably won’t even realize there are such things as stressed and unstressed syllables. Yet, look in any dictionary for pronunciation guidelines, and you will see which is which. The stressed syllable in a dictionary will have a ` or ,) in front or in back of it. Let’s take the word pronunciation for instance. The dictionary tells us (using ` and ,) that it should be said pro-NUN-see-AY-shun, in essence showing that there are two stressed syllables. In poetic dictionaries and guides,  the unstressed syllable is shown by a ~ or ^ while the stressed is shown by – or /. In my own notes, I have begun to use the + sign as the stressed syllable and the – sign as the unstressed.

Before we get into the technical details, we must first understand the nature of meter. We must come to know the natural sounds of words and how they are pronounced. Most single syllable words are stressed. Yet, some are not. Most of those that are not are prepositions, pronouns, conjunctions and other smaller articles of speech. But, I don’t want you to worry about all that. Instead, let’s take the time to ‘listen’ to how people stress certain syllables in their every day speech. To make obvious what I mean, I will show you using capitalized letters the natural stresses in the next few lines. IN EVeryDAY LANguage, you can SENSE the WEIGHT of what PEOple SAY. AS they SPEAK, their NATural inFLECtions TELL you exACTly WHAT it IS they WANT you to HEAR and UNderSTAND. YET, there ARE TIMES, with CERtain FORCED proNUNciAtions, when they WANT you to REalIZE and REcogNIZE a parTICular WORD that HE OR SHE MIGHT EMphaSIZE for CERtain efFECT. Do you see what I mean now?

Parts of Meter

A metrical ‘foot’ is a measure in poetry of fixed combinations of stressed and unstressed parts of speech. There are many. The iambus or iamb (~  –), one unstressed syllable followed by one stressed syllable, is perhaps the most commonly used in English poetry. The following is a list of 6 of the most widely known and used. There are others, but for now let’s stick to the most commonly known and used.

The Six Most Common Feet

• iamb or iambus  (~  –)  [unstressed, stressed]  ex.: create; destroy; for me; [iambic]
• trochee or choree  (–  ~)  [stressed, unstressed]  ex.: anger; loving; try me; [trochaic]
• anapest or anapaest  (~ ~ –)  [unstressed, unstressed, stressed]  ex.: to the store; in the woods; [anapestic]
• dactyl  (–  ~ ~)  [stressed, unstressed, unstressed]  ex.: tragedy; silliness; twenty in; [dactylic]
• spondee  (–  –)  [stressed, stressed]  ex.: deep brook; broad sea; [spondaic]
• pyrrhic  (~ ~)  [unstressed, unstressed] ex.: in the; to a; was a; [pyrrhic] To some prosodists, the pyrrhic is not considered an actual measure because of its lack of an accented syllable. Yet, to those who have remained faithful to the spirit of poetry, ie. Donne, Milton, Hardy, Tennyson, etc., the pyrrhic has its place in recorded poetic theory.

The iamb is perhaps the most commonly known and used. It has perhaps been used by every poet up until the mid-modern age (1980s) and in fact is still used by many. The trochee, which is the opposite of the iamb, is running a close second place to the iamb’s popularity and usage. The anapest is the foot used in writing limericks, among other forms of Light Verse. Dactyls, though not as sprighty as the anapest, have a similar flair for Light Verse. The pyrrhic and spondee, though not as popular as the iamb and trochee, have had their moments in versification, the former usually cropping up in narrative and the latter sometimes happening with a sound effect.

A poet should take care when using these metrical forms, for they are the engine that spur the flow of any poem, and it is through learning how to recognize the natural inflections of pronounced syllables that we grasp the intention of meter.

Organizing Your Meter

When we write a line of verse then break to the next line, and so on, the meter is what carries the beat or flow. So how do we organize these feet to follow a rhythm? Well, let’s take a look at the different metrical lines and figure that out.

Rows of Metrical feet are called:

• Monometer (one foot line) [rare] ex.: ‘Prisoner…’ {dactylic monometer}
• Dimeter (two foot line) [less common] ex.: ‘In woman’s eyes…’ {iambic dimeter}
• Trimeter or tercameter (three foot line) [fairly common] ex.: ‘Well there once was a man on the street…’ {anapestic trimeter}
• Tetrameter (four foot line) [common] ex.: ‘Kill me now or wait till later…” {trochaic tetrameter}
• Pentameter (five foot line) [most common] ex.: ‘Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?’ {iambic pentameter}
• Hexameter (six foot line) [less common] ex.: ‘Fortune is a lady no man leaves behind him.’ {trochaic hexameter} Called an alexandrine when concluding a Spenserian Stanza.
• Heptameter (seven foot line) [rare] ex.: ‘I have decided—none shall venture far without my help.’ {iambic heptameter} Also known as a septenary or fourteener.
• Octometer (eight foot line) [very rare] ex.: ‘In darkness weighs victorious the light that leads the convoy home.’ {iambic octometer} This is also known as an octonarius.

Choosing Meter

Depending on how much we want to say per line, and how we want our basic rhythm to move, we then should choose the type of meter according to that formulation. For instance, if I wanted to start my poem by saying “I love the woods”, then it would fall under iambic dimeter and I would have to choose the next few lines carefully enough to match that first pattern. For instance:

I love the woods,    (iambic dimeter)
its shady moods,    (iambic dimeter)
and all its verdant patterns.    (iambic trimeter)

This is a kind of play on the basic structure of the first two lines of the ballad stanza.

Stanzas: The Poem’s Paragraph

A stanza is a recurring unit of verses or lines in a poem that can range in size anywhere from one to two hundred lines plus. The most common stanza is the quatrain, a four-line set of verses. Much like the paragraph of prose, there are many varieties and many ways to choose which stanzas  will suit the content of the poem. The quatrain, for instance, is suitable for most stories, fables, and songs, and most common among the quatrains is the ballad stanza, which has alternating lines of six and eight syllables that rhyme together.

Here is a list of the most common stanzas found in poems.

• Monostich (one line stanza) [very rare] Also known as a mote, or glose.
• Distich or Couplet (two line stanza) [common]
• Tristich or tercet (three line stanza) [rare in English]
• Tetrastich or quatrain (four line stanza) [very common]
• Pentastich or cinquain (five line stanza) [less common] Also known as quintet or quintilla.
• Hexastich or sextain (six line stanza) [less common] Also known as sestet.
• Heptastich or septet (seven line stanza) [rare]
• Octonarius or octet (eight line stanza) [common] Also known as octave.
• Neuvain (nine line stanza) [very rare]
• Decastich or dizain (ten line stanza) [less common]

Larger stanzas are only typical of longer or epic poems, so should be avoided when writing shorter poems.
There are many poems that have a pre-determined metrical pattern, like the sonnet, or villanelle, or haiku, or rondel. However, there are forms of poems that don’t require you to follow an already set pattern or rhyme scheme, like the virelay or ballad.

Haiku and tanka, which are Japanese styles, do not require either a set metric or rhyme scheme, but must follow a strict syllabic pattern. Of course, there is much more to these forms than just syllables. See the link below for the origins and theories of the haiku.

No Particular Requirement

In choosing the size and style of stanza, the poet can create a poem that doesn’t have to match any traditional form such as the roundel or chant royal. The form in itself should be an aid to the content and vice versa, not to mention, you don’t have to stick to a strict formula for creating stanzas. Thomas Hardy is popular for his varieties of stanza forms. Here is an example called “The Walk“:

    “You did not walk with me
    Of late to the hill-top tree
        By the gated ways,
        As in earlier days;
        You were weak and lame,
        So you never came,
And I went alone, and I did not mind,
Not thinking of you as left behind.

    I walked up there to-day
    Just in the former way:
        Surveyed around
        The familiar ground
        By myself again:
        What difference, then?
Only that underlying sense
Of the look of a room on returning thence.”

Now that you know all about the integral parts of a poem, you should have no problem, right? Well, I guess that depends on how you view the material here. I can certainly understand that there is much to learn, and I did not touch on everything, only on the basics. If I were to expand on this article by explaining all of the different poetic devices and forms, this would turn into a one hundred page book at least. It can all be quite overwhelming. However, I hope this article in principle helps you to understand the workings of poetry. As you can see from these articles, a free verse is not a poem, a blank verse is not free verse, and not everything can become poetry simply because it was expressed.

I hope this series becomes the spring-board that you use to propel yourself into a deeper understanding of the world of poetry.

World of Poetry 1: Four Elements, Three Divisions

World of Poetry 2: The Free Verse

World of Poetry 3: The Free Form

World of Poetry 5: Rhyme

Other Articles by Adam Henry Sears:

The True Haiku and its Origins,

Writer’s Block 1, Writer’s Block 2,

If You’re Going to Write, Read, Read, Read,

Self-Editing Made Easy,

12 Quotes To Inspire All Writers,

Poem, Free Form, Free Verse: Recognizing the Differences,

Blogs & IMs: The Band of Good Writing Habits

A Free Verse by Adam Henry Sears

Running Through The Fog

Some Poems by Adam Henry Sears

A Tiara for Tiara

A Tribute To Arwen After The Age of Men

Venusian Temple

Dragon’s Child

Wearing Frowns

“Well”, we warmed up for news when they returned. “How was it?”

“Fine,” one of them said.

“What exactly did you see?” we asked, noticing that there wasn’t much coming forth naturally.

None of them was able to describe what exactly they saw.

Traveling is a Learning Experience

It turned out that these friends of ours had gone to Kenya in a group, carrying with them German medicines, foods, water and so forth. They had stayed in a German-owned hotel and kept to themselves as a group thus missing all the fun of travel.

Travelling should be a fun-filled learning experience. When you leave your home and you familiar culture to visit others, you are actually saying you are a special person who is willing and eager to learn. Traditional Africa recognized this special character of travelers. Men had a special fire place near the entrance to their homesteads where they would welcome and learn from travelers. Travelers brought to them stories about other peoples and cultures, animals, insects, folklore and economic opportunities. To travel is to sample foods, to wear different clothes, to sing different songs… to experience new ways of life.

Travelling to Africa as my German friends did encourages misconceptions about our continent. And worse, if they are writers, they miss a wonderful opportunity to learn and gather materials for their writing. Yet for anyone, writers included, the continent offers plenty of opportunities to learn, plenty of opportunities make your soul grow and plenty of opportunity for the travel writer to make money writing.

Gather Article Materials as You Enjoy Yourself

The following tips can make your travel to Africa much more fun, meaningful and a profitable source of your writing materials:

1. Remember that traveling is a learning experience. Don’t go with preconceived ideas about what you will see. Be curious and engaged, always ready to learn something new.
2. Focus on the positive in order to gain more from your travelling experience
3. Determine to truthfully share what you have learned with others. Not everyone is lucky or rich enough to travel. But we are all eager to listen, to read and to know and to understand how people other parts of the world live. If you have the privilege to travel, then you have the duty to truthfully share your experience and education with others.

If you are a writer, write articles and share your experiences. Publish the pictures you took and show them to your friends and family. Of course, you can earn money giving speeches on what you learned to schools, universities, clubs and other organized groups.

After living in Europe for a few years, I wrote the novel, The Surface Beneath, which describes my experiences in Europe and especially in Germany. I believe the book has been very helpful to those travelling abroad for education.

• Determine to become a change agent. Most travelers – and travel writers – are looking for what they think they audience back home will be anxious to hear or read about. But you should be different. Great travelers such as the North African Ibn Battuta (1304 – 1369) took learning from travelling seriously and devoted more than 30 years of his short life to travelling, learning and writing about what he learned. From him, the world has learned a lot and many “souls have grown” from his experiences.

You too, can do the same for your own sake, for the sake of your audience and for the sake of your pocket.

First of all, we accept that if a book is both old and remembered, then no modern writer can match it. We also assume that a classic was always a classic, that the society which first encountered it accepted it as such, and that therefore it must be some sort of conservative celebration of its own time and place. So we tend to lump whole centuries together. The 19th century in particular falls victim to this fate. Zola and Hugo are both bound up together in series with names like “Masterpieces of World Literature,” so we see them just as two old French farts and not as two very different writers with interesting views.
So the process of making classics ends up ignoring an incredibly revolutionary leap which occurred in 19th century literature-the leap from sentimentalism to realism, which really came about thanks to Madame Bovary. And what a revolutionary leap it was! To write about life as we actually experience it and not as some sort of morality tale? It simply had never been done.

You almost have to wonder why no one thought of it sooner, but in truth, someone had probably thought of it, but Realism didn’t catch on prior to Flaubert for two reasons: first, what was the point of writing about “real life” when we experience it every day? Surely literature shouldn’t just reflect what we do, it should teach us valuable lessons. A condescending, pompous attitude, but one which led to the second reason why Realism didn’t catch on: it was seen as dangerous and immoral. Real life, after all, is a nasty thing. It’s about as easy to stuff the events of our daily existence into a morality tale framework as it is to stuff a dog into a Halloween costume. Good is not always rewarded. “Sin” is not always punished. That is the way of things, but nothing could have been more offensive to the pre-Realist mindset (particularly in Victorian England).

And that is why, while Realism caught on in France, it never achieved much of a following in England-at least not for some time. Flaubert published Bovary in 1856, and after that, Realism swept across the continent. We remember Ibsen as the controversial fellow he was, but Tolstoy was also considered a radical Realist in his day. Zola was perhaps the most radical of all, for he brought in a left-wing political component. He was the one who took it upon himself to report straight facts in literature: to remove the moralizing and editorializing and get on with the brutal realities of alcoholism, poverty, working conditions, labor strikes, etc.

But England never really took a shine to it. The Brits really had to wait until Thomas Hardy before someone was willing to tell it like it was-to say, yes, this plowman may be a good person, but that doesn’t mean all of his wildest dreams will come true. Shaw as a critic championed the Realists, but his best work had to wait until the end of the Victorian era. And George Eliot? She was definitely of a more realistic frame of mind. After all, what she was really criticizing in her essay “Silly Lady Novelists” was the sentimental mode of writing. I can think of a few other notable exceptions. For instance, Anne Bronte, despite the highly romanticized writing style of her sisters, was a controversial Realist who wrote stark portrayals of alcoholism, class antagonism, etc. There was also the lesser-known George Gissing. But still, I think it’s safe to say that Victorian England clung longer than most to the old sentimentalism. Britain would have to wait for George Moore and the death of Victoria for naturalism, the most controversial form of Realism, to appear.

British literature held out for so long for two reasons, both of which stemmed from the famed Victorian reserve. First of all, the author was blamed for the behavior of his or her characters. It was therefore his or her duty to mete out punishments and rewards. Adultery had to mean a sudden drowning or a bolt from heaven. Most of all, the Victorians were terrified at the thought of people doing what they wanted to do. For one reason or another, the thought of people decided what they enjoy and pursuing it seemed incredibly dangerous. What? Nora Helmer is leaving her husband? Surely her remorse will drive her to ruin and suicide. Or perhaps she will return in the end, a chastened but virtuous woman once more. If authors let their characters off the hook, they were seen as jail wardens who had let all the convicts escape.

Victorians were also horrified at the reality of human behavior. They preferred to think that everything we do is motivated by a sort of cold, calculated, good-evil analysis. If you were motivated to do something wrong or hurtful or stupid, it was because you had given in to the devil’s temptations, but don’t worry-your remorse will make you a broken person for the rest of your days. And if you did “the right thing,” it meant that you had successfully denied yourself whatever it was you wanted and you could go about your miserable, virtuous way. Here’s Jane Eyre, for instance, on human behavior. Jane is trying to decide whether or not to travel across Europe as the mistress of Mr. Rochester, the man she loves, or to stay put as a village schoolmarm:

“Which is better?- To have surrendered to temptation… to have sunk down in the silken snare; fallen asleep on the flowers covering it; wakened in a southern clime, amongst the luxuries of a pleasure villa; to have been now living in France, Mr. Rochester’s mistress; delirious with his love half my time… which is better, I ask, to be a slave in a fool’s paradise-fevered with delirious bliss one hour-suffocating with the bitterest tears of remorse the next-or to be a village schoolmistress, free and honest, in a breezy mountain nook in the healthy heart of England?”

Well, obviously the first one is much better. Any Realist treatment of the situation would allow that Jane might spend her life in “delirious bliss,” without also being destroyed by guilt. But the Victorian treatment won’t allow it. Jane cannot behave as a person, but as a cutout figure in a morality play. Everything she does has to be filtered through the good-evil analysis, which is why the pre-Bovary novels can come across as so morosely sanctimonious.

Now, which writers in particular am I talking about here? Most of the great Victorian novelists had already been published before Madame Bovary came out, including Dickens, Elizabeth Gaskell, Charles Reade, Trollope, Thackeray, the Brontes, and many others. But when we speak about the sentimental, romantic school, we can rule out Thackeray and Trollope, the hard-nosed satirists. What about the others? I don’t mean to portray them as sanctimonious saps-they were in fact brilliant writers. What’s more, most of them were “left-wing” in the sense that they were concerned by social injustice and the stupidities and hypocrisies of society. But they were not “radical.” Orwell makes this point in his essay on Dickens. Certainly they were not interested in revolution, and mostly, they limited their critiques to specific institutions, such as prisons or schools. What’s more, every political doctrine had to be filtered through the good-evil analysis. Here’s Jane Eyre again on human equality: “I had to remind myself daily that [the poor students she teaches] were made of flesh and blood every bit as good as that of the scions of the wealthiest families.” In order to understand the issue, she has to filter it through a pious adage. And even if Jane reminds herself of this daily, she doesn’t seem to put it into practice.

The way she speaks of the students and their families is cloyingly patronizing. She speaks of their “simple gratitude” and delights in seeing them change from “quite torpid… hopelessly dull… heavy-looking, gaping rustics” to “docile, obliging, and amiable pupils.” What she is really praising is their ability to become more like herself. Without education, Jane sees the people around her as utterly vile. She remarks: “It is a well-accepted fact that prejudices find fertile soil in uneducated minds”-an amusing statement considering how prejudiced it is in itself. This after some mean jokes at the expense of the uneducated person in question.

Not that Charlotte Bronte was unfeeling toward the working class. I haven’t read her novel Shirley, but apparently it deals with the Luddite rebellion and is quite pro-worker. But she still seems to feel that things can be fixed only through the study of certain moral “laws.”
Elizabeth Gaskell is better on the class front. In fact, she stands alone among the Victorians for her maturity and genuine sympathy. She portrays “rustics,” for instance, who aren’t on the page simply to be mocked or molded by educated people. Some of her works dealing with poverty and injustice can come off as sentimental, but she was willing to portray poor people with real emotions who might merit the reader’s interest. She also went after the realities of the economic system, instead of simply addressing certain improper “attitudes.” Jane Eyre (and, we can assume, Charlotte Bronte) feels she can right the wrongs of society by memorizing platitudes. Gaskell is much less simplistic, and her works are therefore more interesting. What’s more, she sympathized with working and lower class movements for political and economic rights. The other Victorians tended to hold these at arm’s length.
And Dickens? He is sometimes derided as the most sentimental of them all, but I think he has a realism of his own.

Particularly when he deals with childhood. His characters are outlandish, fantastic caricatures, but when you are a kid that is how the adult world appears. Everything is larger because you are so small. The tiniest accident becomes the greatest tragedy, and petty bullies become the outrageous monsters that appear on Dickens’s pages. No Realist, at least as far as I know, ever wrote so well about the way children see the world, and the way injustices affect them. Also, Dickens is not so pious and moralizing. He doesn’t always propose easy answers to the problems he confronts.

Probably the best way to describe the politics of the pre-Realist school would be “tolerant.” Reade, Gaskell, Dickens, Charlotte Bronte, and others were “tolerant” of the working and lower classes, and they were intolerant of injustice. But keep in mind that in order to be “tolerant” of something, that thing must be distasteful to begin with. None of the writers, with the exception of Gaskell and poor, overlooked Anne Bronte, truly made an effort to understand the lower class and to see them as real people with real aspirations, real hopes, and real anger. The true rage of undemocratic social structures is missing from their work.

I’ve probably made it sound as though I’m a partisan of the Realists. That’s a bit misleading. In reality, I’ve spent much more time reading the sentimentalists than I have the Realists. I myself have a mawkish streak, and I can understand the drive to moralize even if it grates on me after awhile. I am not at all trying to suggest that the great Victorian novelists should be downplayed in literature courses and such. Far from it. But I do feel that even the best work of these writers is affected for the worse by this sentimentalist, moralizing streak. For instance, I think the best passages in Jane Eyre can be found in the first hundred pages or so of the book-when Jane is still a child. The character hasn’t yet internalized all the necessary pious platitudes, and her behavior therefore seems much more real and convincing.

Once Jane is grown, sure, she has believable emotions and reactions, but the reader has to dig through a pile of Victorian reserve and priggishness to get to them. Here’s the ideal situation: to have seen Dickens, the Brontes, and all the rest plopped down in the Realist era and to have let them write about the very real anger and frustration of their characters-which are clearly there, only buried-in a world which would have let them do it.

1. Bungalow

   
   

   This word actually came from a Hindi word which basically means “something belonging to a Bengal”. During the British ruling in India somewhere around the 17th century, bungalows were usually referred to cottages built in Bengal area for the British settlers.

2. Pyjamas

   

   Originally, this word was from Urdu words “pay” or leg and “jama” or clothing. “Payjama” or leg clothing was a common, loose pair of trousers made of cool cotton or silk worn by men and women in countries like India and Turkey. However, because the loose garments are pretty comfortable, the Europeans who were living in these countries at that time wore them to bed.

3. Horde

   
   

   This word now refers to a large crowd of people. However, it was originally the name of a tribe of nomads who lived in tents and migrated from one place to another. This word came from the Urdu word “ordu” or royal camp.

4. Jungle

   
   

   This word actually came from a Hindi word which originally meant wasteland or uncultivated land. The root word was taken from Sanskrit language which means rough and arid. However, now this word refers to an area of tropical forest where trees and plants grow very thickly.

5. Chit

   
   

   The word came from Hindi “chitthi” or a note or a pass. Now, it refers to a short written note, signed by somebody, showing an amount of money owed.

6. Shampoo

   
   

   This word was from a Hindi word “campoo” or press. This word was used during the 18th century by the Europeans who were in the Turkish baths. This is basically a word to give instruction to the masseur to press and massage. Somehow or rather along the way, the word became shampoo and it refers to the liquid soap used to clean hair, furniture, carpet and so on or the act of washing hair using shampoo.

7. Thug

   
   

   This word came from a Hindi word “thag” or thief or swindler. The thags at that time were professional robbers who pretended to be travelers in the deep forests of India. They robbed and killed whoever came along the way. The thug now refers to similar type of violent person, usually a criminal.

8. Loot

   
   

   The word came from Sanskrit “lut” or to rob. During the British ruling in India, the soldiers would usually take away all the valuables from the enemy after winning a battle. Basically the meaning of the word remains and it also now refers to the act of stealing from anyone.

9. Cushy

   
   

   This was originally an Urdu word “kushi” or pleasure. It basically refers to easy job or pleasant situation.

10. Kedgeree

    
    

    This word was from Hindi word “kichri” or a dish of rice. Now, this word refers to hot dish of rice, fish and egg cooked together.

11. Juggernaut

    
    

    This word came from Sanskrit “Jagannatha” or Lord of the World. This word refers to the Hindu God Krishna who will be worshipped by the followers and each year there will be a procession to drag his huge image on a large chariot. The word was unconsciously borrowed by the English in the 19th century to refer to heavy vehicles like large lorry and a heavy-duty truck.

12. Jodhpurs

    
    

    This word came from the word Jodhpur which is a city in west India. The men in this city wore a type of garments. In late 19th century, the English used similar type of garments, i.e. trousers that are loose above the knee and tight from the knee to ankle, worn when riding a horse.