[Kristin Gulotta]

Hello! I'm hoping someone may be able to help. I'm attempting to put together a presentation on nonce poetry that would include the history of the form. Since, arguably, all forms began as nonce forms, I've been having some trouble finding any specific information. Does anyone have a good source (book or article) on the history of the nonce? Thanks much for any help.

[Ann Drysdale]

I've been sitting on my hands waiting for someone else to reply to this because I was interested in Kristin's idea and wanted to see the answers.

I wasn't sure whether I was alone in my feelings on the subject. Sometimes I do things that I think are fine jokes and just wait to see if anyone "gets" them. These are mainly subverted forms and hidden syllables that I find hugely satisfying.

I find it hard to use the term "nonce" in this connection, though, because in Britain it is a term for a predatory paedophile although I do use "for the nonce" to mean "for the time being".

So, for the nonce, I'll say no more. I just wanted to bump this up because it deserves some sort of acknowledgement. And to add extra questions. Why are you all so silent on the subject? Is it because, like me, your instinct is to hug these secrets to yourselves?

And does it still count as a nonce form if you do it more than once? Or, more interestingly, does it only count as a nonce form if you do do it more than once...

[Janice D. Soderling]

Kristin, you would perhaps get more response if you introduced yourself and said more clearly why you were asking or if you had participated in past discussions and the other members "knew you".

When I first read this I thought you were probably a kid wanting a quick fix for a high school or college paper due tomorrow. (it happens.)

But I see you have a blog and other creds.

In Lewis Turco's Book of Forms p.94, edition before the brand-new one, he precedes his list of form definitions thus:

One final note: Many poems are "regular", that is, traditionally formal, but the specific combinations of stanza pattern, line lengths, rhyme schemes, and meters have sometimes been created by the poet for that specific poem. Such patterns are called nonce forms.

He mentions also under the entry for "canzone" (...) the third stanza in each strophe (the sirima or cauda) is structurally different from the piedi, but the structures of piedi and sirma are nonce forms: the poet's invention.

There are seven other references in Mr. Turco's book.

Have you tried the library?

[E. Shaun Russell]

No offense intended at all, Janice, but...why in the world should it matter whether or not Kristin has "credentials" before she asks a question? It is, after all, a valid question, and in keeping with the topics of a lot of other threads here. And if Kristin is a "kid wanting a quick fix for a high school or college paper due tomorrow," what of it?

I just don't understand the aversion.

[Roger Slater]

I don't quite understand the question. I'd be surprised to learn that someone invented the "nonce form," as if poetry started out on day one with sonnets, villanelles, etc., and only later did people figure out that they could devise their own ad hoc forms.

[John Whitworth]

So a nonce form is one I invest, as opposed to one I take from the shelf fully formed. Presumably a Meredithian sonnet was a nonce form for him but not for us, since he invented it (if he did). I can't see how you can have a history of forms that are made up on the spur of the moment, as it were.

Ann, nonce, ponce, Beyonce. But isn't the last beyonSAY?

[Janice D. Soderling]

Shaun, I agree that I could have worded my statement more carefully. Sometimes, not often, but often enough to be remembered, a lazybones will, without identifying themselves or their purpose in asking, just pop up with a first post to get help with a school assignment. Then they plop back into the deep waters whence they came, perhaps with a passing grade.

I am not the first to post this kind of questioning reply.

I agree also, Shaun, that my post might have seemed unfriendly, not only to Kristin but to those who perceive me as Msssss. Scrooge, hissing and grouching on a daily basis.

Welcome Kristin to the Sphere and I hope I haven't frightened you off. I hope you will hang around and make many more posts and comments. It's a lovely place to learn and the vast majority are perceived as friendly and helpful.

(Though I did give an answer of sorts, didn't I? The only one so far.)

Cross-posted with a bunch of folks while I was thinking.

[Michael Cantor]

Well, Shaun, I had the same reaction as Janice. Kristin is a student at the U of Wisconsin, and if she didn't google until her fingers bled to come up with the information that Janice did - and more - before joining the Sphere, getting on line, and asking a pack of strangers to do her homework for her; then she's taking advantage of the kindness of others, gaming the system, etc. If, on the other hand, she's done a good deal of basic research and is using the Sphere to augment her other work - bless you, Kristin.

Either way, however, I agree with Janice that - once you get beyond simply suggesting a book or article - Kristin's request was sketchy. Lesson for today, Kristin - if you're going to ask people to help you in writing a paper it's both gracious and extremely helpful to your cause if you take some time to introduce yourself, and provide more background on where you are, what you know, and where you want to go. The more you provide in terms of defining your request, the more informative and responsive our guys are going to be.

(And, whatever you do, don't mess with the word "nonce". It's one of my solid alibis. Whenever I'm lost, or screw up a form, or cheat, I can wave a hand airily in the air and mutter something about "nonce". It's the formalist's equivalent of It's Chinatown, Jake.)

[Marcia Karp]

I think Ann, Roger, and John all gave very good answers, Janice, so you are not alone in being helpful. I waited to write because I share their bafflement as to what is being asked. (If you don't want to be thought of as unfriendly, don't be unfriendly, dear Janice. Better an unscolded miscreant than a scolded innocent, no?)

If the question is what poems have been written in nonce forms, that requires research. Look at Donne and Tennyson and Barnes and Hardy and everyone. There is, too, the Princeton Encyclopedia of Poetry and Poetics for starters. Paul Fussell's Poetic Meter and Poetic Form. But read poems and think about them.

Here is Paul Valéry:

Sometimes I am the kind of man who, if he met the inventor of the sonnet in the underworld, would say to him with great respect (if there is any left, in the other world):

“My dear colleague, I salute you most humbly. I do not know the worth of your verses, which I have not read […]; but however bad they are, however flat, insipid, shallow, stupid, and naively made they may be, I still hold you in my heart above all other poets on earth and in Hades! … You invented a form, and the greatest poets have adapted themselves to that form.”

I always find him amusing in his enthusiasms, but I think he is here mistaken. The best sonnets are those where the Sonnet has been adapted by the poets -- noncely or not.

Best,
Marcia

[Ann Drysdale]

No. Poesy did not spring fully "formed" from the brow of some mystical muse. All forms must have started somewhere and it's the little nicks in their insulation where the "what-ifs" and the "yes, buts" leak sparks that start fires that Kristin is looking for. What triggers them? Do they occur at moments of social change, periods of affluence between conflicts? Is there something within poetry itself that spawns the need for change? Are we talking evolution here, as distinct from (Oh, for Pete's sake lets not go there...).

Who are the noncers? I keep thinking of Hecht and Hollander and their ridiculous, hilarious, irresistible double dactyl. A series of rules, each more outlandish than the last, all set up to be followed by gullible idiots besotted with forms-for-form's-sake to whom it was offered as double-dactylic, two-fingered salute. Oh, Yessss!

Is a nonce form a response to a need or a bid for freedom? When does a nonce form become an established form - is it when enough people have passed it from hand to hand till it's polished like a pebble? Is it when the noncer's name's forgotten?

Roddy Lumsden invented the "Sevenling" but he based it on the shape of a poem by Anna Akhmatova. Where did she get it from? How many other forms are born this way?

John - help me out here - what was that form called a "Davidian" - who invented that one, and why?

There is mileage in your idea, Kristin. In fact, it's bursting with juice. Perhaps you need to start with a rough timeline of established forms and then track them back to their noncenesses, establish a thesis and test it to destruction.

I thought there might be others here who'd fancy kicking it around a bit, which is why I bumped it up. Oh, dear - I'm sorry.