Hello, beautiful people. 

If you fancy writing poetry, you may find this blog series quite entertaining. I will be going over different poem structures and how to write them, so stick around if you're interested! The series will use basic definitions and terms for simplicity's sake. This is mainly for those of us who haven't had much experience with traditional poetry, but you still can find something useful here even if you're slaying those octelles. Let's start with just a few words of introduction, and then look at some of the main techniques.

What Is Fixed Form Poetry?

A "fixed form" poem is a general term – you can describe many poems of all shapes and sizes as being in fixed form, if they follow a pattern. Fixed form poems will have a certain meter and rhyme scheme applied to the whole of it, and thus determine the pattern. As opposed to free verse, a fixed form poem will require that you know all the rules concerning the structure of the particular form.

When we talk about a "fixed form" poem, we presuppose a "form" (duh). The sonnet, the ballade, the virelai, the canzone and many others are all examples of forms, each with their own rules, structures and relevant subject matter. This blog series will discuss each of these in separate posts moving forward.

What You Need To Know To Write Fixed Form

For a poet who comes from a free verse background, writing fixed form can be intimidating – there is, after all, more nuance to tango with. But like every other practice, the craft of writing fixed form becomes easier with time. Here are some of the things you need to know to start (keep in mind these aren't the only ones):

• Meter
• Rhyme schemes
• Tone of form
• Special requirement of form

Meter

Meter in poetry is the rhythm of a line. Meter length is counted in syllables, and meter type is determined from where the emphasis is put throughout the line. The proper term for this "meter type" in poetry is "foot". In the future there will be a dedicated blog post all about this here.
An example of a meter that most people will know is iambic pentameter. Here, "iambic" is the type, while "pentameter" comes from the word "penta", Greek for five, and is the length.
You will notice this naming convention with all meters: there is a number in Greek right behind the word "meter". That number refers to how many "feet" the line has. An "iamb" is a foot with two syllables. So, if we have five iambs in iambic pentameter, we're going to have ten syllables in a line. In this meter, we're ending up with a length of ten syllables and a foot type of iambs.

Shall I compare thee to a summer's day? – five iambs/ten syllables
- Shakespeare

You can keep the foot type and change the length – iambic tetrameter, for example, is a line with four iambic feet, therefore eight syllables (remember that an iamb has two syllables).

Straight in her heart did mercy come – four iambs/eight syllables
- Shakespeare

Rhyme Scheme

Rhyme scheme is easier. It's just which lines rhyme with which. We use a lettering system to talk about rhyme – the number of letters is the number of lines in a stanza, their order is the order of the lines, and repeating letters signify which lines are rhyming. 
So, an AABB stanza will have rhyming 1st and 2nd lines, and rhyming 3rd and 4th lines. In an ABAB stanza the 1st and 3rd lines will rhyme, then the 2nd and 4th lines.
A repeating letter marks a repeating rhyme: a new letter, like in ABAC, would be a line that doesn't rhyme with any of the others. We've been using Shakespeare for our examples, so let's stick with it:

Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?
Thou art more lovely and more temperate.
Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May,
And summer's lease hath all too short a date.     – ABAB rhyme scheme
- Shakespeare

Tone

Tone of form is trickier. Better to speak in examples: the sonnet, for one, is traditionally touching on themes of love or death. The rondeau originated as a dance form, so as a poetic form it will traditionally be merrier and more upbeat. 
It's important to research and understand these characteristics because whatever you write in fixed form will be understood and absorbed by the reader in those exact emotional tones most of the time. Fixed form poetry comes with a lot of historical baggage that's been ingrained in writing culture, and it's very hard to read a sonnet, for example, and not feel that it's being sentimental, even if you're unfamiliar with the form's history. 
That being said, we as poets can use these emotional preconditions and twist the memo in our favor. Once you understand that the sonnet is about love, and that the reader will likely feel that way too, you can take your sonnet-form poems in a completely different direction – not for the sake of it, but to influence the reader's emotional response. This topic will be covered in more detail in a future post, to save us from a lot of unnecessariness now.

Special Requirements/Techniques

Last but not least, some forms will use a special trick - a line, a verse, a repetition - as part of their structure. 
Let's look at the sonnet as the most widely known example. A typical sonnet will consist of 14 lines, often divided into one 8-line stanza and one 6-line stanza. Apart from these general guidelines, the sonnet (Italian variation) will use what's called a volta. The volta is a shift in the poem's tone, or an answer to a question. The first stanza will typically remark a question or a problem (like one-sided love), and the second stanza will then answer it (but I will bear it). The 9th line, i.e. the spot where the stanzas switch, will usually be the place you would consider the volta – which is the turn in the poem's tone, emotion, or intent. 

 

Final Words

Let's wrap up this discussion with a final Shakespeare example, a full sonnet this time. Pay attention to how a beautiful woman is compared to summer within the first 8 lines, and how the problem is presented – summer will inevitably dim and pass. Then, the 6 line stanza whips up a volta, saying that this woman and her beauty, as opposed to actual summer, will never fade away.

Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?
Thou art more lovely and more temperate.
Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May,
And summer's lease hath all too short a date.
Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines,
And often is his gold complexion dimmed;
And every fair from fair sometime declines
By chance, or nature's changing course, untrimmed;

But thy eternal summer shall not fade,
Nor lose possession of that fair thou ow'st,
Nor shall death brag thou wand'rest in his shade,
When in eternal lines to Time thou grow'st.
So long as men can breathe, or eyes can see,
So long lives this, and this gives life to thee.

- Shakespeare, Sonnet 18

*****

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Next up, all about sonnets.