The ode less travelled: unlocking the poet within (38 page)

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Authors: Stephen Fry

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How to explain the rules of this strict fifteenth-century form? A
PANTOUM
(pronounced
pan-tomb
) must be composed in full cross-rhymed quatrains:
abab, cdcd
and so on. It must begin and end with the same line, and this is how the scheme unfolds–
draw breath
. The second and fourth lines of the first stanza become the first and third lines of the second stanza, the second and fourth lines of the second stanza become the first and third of stanza three and so on until you reach the end.
Where
the end comes is up to you: unlike the sestina or the sonnet there is no prescribed length to the form, but when you do end you must use the two lines you will not yet have repeated, the first and third of the opening stanza, they are
reversed in order
and become the second and fourth of the final quatrain. It sounds loopy, but if you look up and see what I have done it really isn’t that hard to follow. I have numbered and lettered the lines to make it clearer.

The effect, as my example suggests, can be quite hypnotic or doom-laden. It can seem like wading in treacle if not adroitly handled. Such a form seems to suit dreamy evocations of time past, the echoes of memory and desire, but it need not be limited to such themes.

How the pantoum arrived in France from the Malayan peninsula in about 1830 I am not entirely sure–its importation is attributed to Victor Hugo. I believe the original form, still alive and well in the Far East, uses an
abba
rhyme-scheme and insists upon eight syllables a line and thematic changes in each quatrain. I have managed the syllable count but stuck to the more usual cross-rhymes and consistency of subject matter. Since its first European use by Hugo, Baudelaire and other French practitioners it became moderately well-known and popular in England and especially America, the best-known examples being by Anne Waldman, Carolyn Kizer, John Ashbery, Donald Justice and David Trinidad. The playwright Peter Shaffer, who clearly relishes the challenge of old forms (he has experimented with villanelles, and sestinas too) composed an excellent pantoum entitled ‘Juggler, Magician, Fool’.

Here is the opening of Carolyn Kizer’s ‘Parents’ Pantoum’. She eschews rhyme which, given the lexical repetition demanded by the form, seems perfectly permissible. Note that enjambment and some flexibility with the repeated lines is helpful in refreshing the mood of the piece: the line ‘How do they appear in their long dresses’ reappears as ‘In their fragile heels and long black dresses’ for example, and there are additional buts and thoughs that vary the iterations. All this is usual in the modern, Western strain of pantoum.

Where did these enormous children come from,

More ladylike than we have ever been?

Some of ours look older than we feel.

How did they appear in their long dresses

More ladylike than we have ever been?

But they moan about their aging more than we do,

In their fragile heels and long black dresses.

They say they admire our youthful spontaneity.

They moan about their aging more than we do,

A somber group–why don’t they brighten up?

Though they say they admire our youthful spontaneity

They beg us to be dignified like them

If you are a nerdy, anagrammy, crossword puzzler sort of a person, as I tragically and irredeemably am, you will be especially drawn to the pantoum. The art, as with other lexically repetitive and patterned schemes, is to choose ‘open-ended’ repeating lines allowing ambiguity and room for manoeuvre. It is one thing, of course, to write them as a fun exercise, quite another to make a poem of readable qualities for others. Technically the ideal is to push the normative requirements of the mode hard, sometimes to breaking point. There in lies the knack–stretching the bubble until
just before
it bursts. Without hard pressure on the inner walls of its membrane the pantoum–and this holds true of the other complex forms–can seem a flaccid, futile exercise in wordsmanship.

T
HE
B
ALLADE

B
ALLADE
is not an easy form to crack

No other rhymes, but only A or B;

The paeon, dactyl and the amphibrach,

The antispast, molossus and spondee

Will not assist us in the least degree

As through the wilderness we grimly hack

And sow our hopeful seeds of poetry.

It’s always one step forward, two steps back.

But let me be Marvell, not Kerouac

The open road holds no allure for me.

A garden path shall be my desert track,

The song of birds my jukebox melody,

The neighbour’s cat my Neil Cassidy.

With just a mower for a Cadillac

I won’t get far, but nor will they. You see–

It’s always one step forward, two steps back.

A hammock is my beatnik bivouac

My moonshine bourbon is a cup of tea.

No purple hearts, no acid trips, no smack

My only buzz the humble honeybee.

So let them have their free-verse liberty

And I shall have my handsome garden shack

We’ll see which one of us is truly free,

It’s always one step forward, two steps back.

Envoi

Prince and peasant, workers, peers or bourgeoisie

McGonagall, Lord Byron, Pasternak

Of mongrel stock or high born pedigree—

It’s always one step forward, two steps back.

The
BALLADE
, not to be confused with the ballad (or with the musical
ballade
devised by Chopin), is a venerable French form of some fiendishness for English poets. The difficulty arises, not from any complexity of patterning or repetition such as is to be found in the sestina, but from the number of rhyme sounds needed. It ends with an envoi which, tradition dictates, must be addressed to a
Prince
. Indeed the very word ‘Prince’ is usually the envoi’s first word: this happy convention, maintained even by modern poets like Dorothy Parker, is a nod to the royal patronage enjoyed by early practitioners such as François Villon and Eustache Deschamps. Those who elected to write sacred ballades would begin their envois with the invocations ‘Prince Jesus!’, or ‘Prince and Saviour!’. Each stanza, the envoi included, ends with the same refrain or
rentrement
. Early ballades were often composed in three seven-line stanzas, but these days an eight-line stanza with an envoi of four lines seems to have been settled upon by English-language poets. The usual rhyme scheme is
ababbabA ababbabA ababbabA babA
, in other words ten
a
rhymes (and a refrain, A, to rhyme with them) and
fourteen b
rhymes. This is no doubt a doddle in French but the very bastard son of a mongrel bitch in English. G. K. Chesterton’s ‘The Ballade of Suicide’ is one of the better-known examples:

The gallows in my garden, people say,

Is new and neat and adequately tall;

I tie the noose on in a knowing way

As one that knots his necktie for a ball;

But just as all the neighbours–on the wall–

Are drawing a long breath to shout ‘Hurray!’

The strangest whim has seized me…. After all

I think I will not hang myself to-day.

To-morrow is the time I get my pay–

My uncle’s sword is hanging in the hall–

I see a little cloud all pink and grey–

Perhaps the rector’s mother will not call–

I fancy that I heard from Mr Gall

That mushrooms could be cooked another way–

I never read the works of Juvenal–

I think I will not hang myself to-day.

The world will have another washing-day;

The decadents decay; the pedants pall;

And H. G. Wells has found that children play,

And Bernard Shaw discovered that they squall,

Rationalists are growing rational–

And through thick woods one finds a stream astray

So secret that the very sky seems small–

I think I will not hang myself to-day.

Envoi

Prince, I can hear the trumpet of Germinal,

The tumbrels toiling up the terrible way;

Even to-day your royal head may fall,

I think I will not hang myself to-day.

It reminds me of Fagin’s song ‘I’m Reviewing the Situation’ from Lionel Bart’s musical
Oliver!
the refrain to which, ‘I think I’d better think it out again’, forms a similarly memorable decasyllabic chorus. Bart’s number is not a ballade, of course, but the similarity demonstrates the form’s derivations from, and yearnings towards, music. One of the more successful and regular tillers of the ballade’s rhyme-rich soil was the Round Table with Dorothy Parker. Here is her ‘Ballade of Unfortunate Mammals’:

Love is sharper than stones or sticks;

Lone as the sea, and deeper blue;

Loud in the night as a clock that ticks;

Longer-lived than the Wandering Jew.

Show me a love was done and through,

Tell me a kiss escaped its debt!

Son, to your death you’ll pay your due–

Women and elephants never forget.

Ever a man, alas, would mix,

Ever a man, heigh-ho, must woo;

So he’s left in the world-old fix,

Thus is furthered the sale of rue.

Son, your chances are thin and few–

Won’t you ponder, before you’re set?

Shoot if you must, but hold in view

Women and elephants never forget.

Down from Caesar past Joynson-Hicks

Echoes the warning, ever new:

Though they’re trained to amusing tricks,

Gentler, they, than the pigeon’s coo,

Careful, son, of the cursèd two–

Either one is a dangerous pet;

Natural history proves it true–

Women and elephants never forget.

L’Envoi

Prince, a precept I’d leave for you,

Coined in Eden, existing yet:

Skirt the parlor, and shun the zoo–

Women and elephants never forget.

VII

More Closed Forms

The rondeau–rondeau redoublé–the rondel–the roundel–the rondelet–the roundelay–the triolet and the kyrielle

Yeah, right. You
really
want to know about all these French Rs. Your life won’t be complete without them. Well, don’t be too put off by the confusing nomenclatorial similarities and Frenchy sound they seem to share. You are probably familiar with the concept of a musically sung
ROUND
(‘Frère Jacques’, ‘Row, Row, Row Your Boat’, ‘London Bridge’ etc.) All these forms are based on the principle of a
poetic
round, a (mercifully) short poem as a rule, characterised by the nature of its refrain (
rentrement
). The avatar of these genres is the
RONDEAU
, pronounced like the musical rondo, but with typical French equal stress.

R
ONDEAU

O
F MY
RONDEAU
this much is true:

Its virtues lie in open view,

Unravelled is its tangled skein,

Untapped the blood from every vein,

Unthreaded every nut and screw.

I strip it thus to show to you

The way I rhyme it, what I do

To mould its form, yet still retain

The proper shape and inward grain

O
F MY RONDEAU
.

As rhyming words in lines accrue

A pleasing sense of déjà-vu

Will infiltrate your teeming brain.

Now…here it comes the old refrain,

The beating drum and proud tattoo

O
F MY RONDEAU
.

Most scholars of the genre seem to agree that in its most common form, as I have tried to demonstrate, the rondeau should be a poem of between thirteen and fifteen lines, patterned by two rhymes and a refrain
R
, formed by the first half of the opening line. The scheme is represented by
R-aabba aabR aabbaR
. A notable example is the Canadian poet John McCrae’s rondeau, ‘In Flanders Fields’:

I
N
F
LANDERS FIELDS
the poppies blow

Between the crosses, row on row,

That mark our place, and in the sky,

The larks, still bravely singing, fly,

Scarce heard amid the guns below.

We are the dead; short days ago

We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,

Loved and were loved, and now we lie

In Flanders fields.

Take up our quarrel with the foe!

To you from failing hands we throw

The torch; be yours to hold it high!

If ye break faith with us who die

We shall not sleep, though poppies grow

In Flanders fields.

This very earnest poem subverts the usual characteristic of the form in French verse, where the rondeau is a light, graceful and merry thing that refuses to take life very seriously. Although the two examples you have seen are, so far as my very unscholarly researches can determine, the ‘correct’ form, the appellation rondeau has been used through the ages by English-language poets from Grimald to the present day to apply to a number of variations. Leigh Hunt’s ‘Rondeau: Jenny Kissed Me’ adheres to the principle of a refrain culled from the first hemistich of the opening line, but adds a rhyme for it in line 6. The Jenny in question, by the way, is said to have been Thomas Carlyle’s wife.
¹³