#6

I decided to post some information about four-line stanzas. As mentioned in our packet "The History of form", four-lined stanzas are most popular form in the European literature. The most common type of quatrain is the ballad stanzas and thats what i'm going to post information about.
Ballads have strong associations with childhood much children's poetry comes in ballad form, and English poets traditionally associated ballads with their national childhood as well.

Ballads emphasize strong rhythms, repetition of key phrases, and rhymes; if you hear a traditional ballad, you will know that you are hearing a poem. Ballads are meant to be song-like and to remind readers of oral poetry

Ballads do not have the same formal consistency as some other poetic forms, but one can look for certain characteristics that identify a ballad

• Simple language.
• Stories. Ballads tend to be narrative poems, poems that tell stories
• Ballad stanzas. The traditional ballad stanza consists of four lines, rhymed abcb (or sometimes abab--the key is that the second and fourth lines rhyme). The first and third lines have four stresses, while the second and fourth have three.
• Repetition. A ballad often has a refrain, a repeated section that divides segments of the story. Many ballads also employ incremental repetition, in which a phrase recurs with minor differences as the story progresses.
• Third-person objective narration. Ballad narrators usually do not speak in the first person (unless speaking as a character in the story), and they often do not comment on their reactions to the emotional content of the ballad.

I got this information from this address:

http://www.cs.grinnell.edu/~simpsone/Connections/Poetry/Forms/ballad1.html

#5

My favorite poem is Acquainted with the Night by Robert Frost. I like this poem because it is very straight forwarded. When I read this poem for the first time. I took it very literally. I was thinking that he was sad about being stood up by a girl or just taking a walk and reminiscing on his past relationships. I think he writes this poem to show his frustrations. But after reading this poem a couple more times I see that he is really writing about a community in the city. How unhappy and miserable he is. And how everyone view the city as a wonderful and exciting place but unfortunately in he case he feels the loneliness of being isolated and not knowing/having someone to talk. The second stanza influenced my opinion because it says "I have looked down the saddest city lane. I have passed by the watchman on his beat. And dropped my eyes, unwilling to explain." He uses the words saddest city lane as a metaphor for his loneliness. The last line dropped my eyes unwilling to explain is a symbol of depression not wanting to talk to anyone.