Kevin: Not very "humbly" if you're using words like "challenge," "fallacy" and "theory."
Roy: OK, have it your way. No humility, but curiosity.
Kevin: But, to explain, first, it's not a "theory" -- it's a literary convention and fact. There are exceptions to the rule, but those are exceptions, not invalidations of the rule itself. And the literary conventions go back thousands of years.
Roy: Evolution is a theory. That we exist is a theory. There are no facts, especially in poetry, and no matter how old a convention is, it is originally based on some theory. So don't be offended by "theory" the way literalists are offended by "myth."
Kevin: But, to explain, the term "couplets" can be confusing because it can refer to one of two things:
1. Two lines rhymed together,
Roy: OK, that makes sense, the rhyming is what makes them a couplet, that is acceptable.
Kevin: but otherwise part of a continuous poem, as with the two final lines of a Spenserian or Shakespearean sonnet, or any of the pairs of rimes in Marion's poem "The Dreamer's Tale" over at the Deep End, or for that matter, most of the Canterbury Tales.
2. An individual stanza composed of two lines, which, in rimed verse, by its nature is a rimed couplet.
With Marion's poem, as with Chaucer's, it's a piece of narrative verse. Since it's very short, it's done as a single stanza made from multiple couplets, the same as a very short story is usually printed as a single paragraph made of multiple sentences.
Basically, you break a stanza where you'd break a paragraph, and you break a canto where you'd break a chapter. Of course, poetry is a tricky beast, and poets like to play tricks with it, so it is possible to have a sentence run over the stanza break, though this is usually only done when there is some natural twist or turn in the sentence and the stanza break can serve to emphasize the transition.
Roy: Yes, and "random" cuts can often turn up something emphasized that the poet did not realize, adding to the meaning; if it works, it works.
Kevin: For example, in a sonnet, you have the octave (a stanza of eight lines, in the Shakespearean sonnet rimed ABABCDCD, technically formed from two quatrains) followed by the sestet (a stanza of six lines, which in the Shakespearean sonnet is composed of a quatrain and a couplet, EFEFGG). Many times you'll see poets separate these two stanzas for emphasis of the volta (the logical turn in the subject matter of the sonnet) and on rare occasions you'll even see the concluding couplet set off by itself, but I have never seen the octave set as two separate quatrains because part of the rules of the sonnet is that the first eight lines need to be unified in subject matter, and as such, the stanza needs to be unified as well, not split randomly.
Roy: That's fine. We accept those rules when we accept rigid, time-tested form, trusting that it will turn up something of a disturbance of words within words that we hope for if we follow the rules.
Kevin: If you look at my Umunum Song over at the Deep End, you've got a poem composed of AABB quatrains. After experiments, I settled on quatrains of fourteeners because of the logical breaks between the subjects of each quatrain, like the breaks in paragraphs in a formal collegiate essay. But as with paragraphs, to a certain extent, where to break them is a matter of the poet or the author's judgement.
Roy: That last sentence makes enough sense to give rise to free verse eventually.
Kevin: If a paragraph is particularly long, it's often best to break it into subparagraphs, but you still do that where there are logical turns in the sense, not just wherever you think it will be aesthetically pleasing.
Roy: That may be true, but in most working poems there is an underlying unconscious rhythm of image, word, or thought, or emotion, or all of these, such that if you cut the poem's lines in to a certain way, that rhythm is revealed.
Kevin: The continuous stanzas of a work done all in couplets can be wearying to read for some folk, but read aloud, they sound fine, and if printed in a book, the page breaks, illustrations and occasional typographical ornament (this last inserted at a scene break, if there is one) will generally make it all work properly.
On computers, however, what we look at is a continuous scroll, which can be tiresome, but is no reason to go inserting random breaks into something meant for other print forms.
Roy: You have made this perfectly clear. I believe, however, that the look on the page should be to clue the reader how to breathe and pause when "decaliming" the poem or even whispering it. We should read them all aloud, and how they sound best aloud should be reflected on the page.
That is a THEORY and an OPINION which, like an umbilicus, most everyone is entitled to. I accept our literary tradition, and feel that formal metrics should be mastered before venturing into "free" forms. That is why I, and I believe most of us, spend so much time on "The Deep End."
This has been informative, Kevin.
Not so humbly,
Roy
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