Triadic-line poetry or stepped line is a long line which "unfolds into three descending and indented parts". Created by
William Carlos Williams
William Carlos Williams (September 17, 1883 – March 4, 1963) was an American poet and physician closely associated with modernism and imagism. His '' Spring and All'' (1923) was written in the wake of T. S. Eliot's '' The Waste Land'' (1922). ...
, it was his "solution to the problem of modern verse" and later was also taken up by poets
Charles Tomlinson
Alfred Charles Tomlinson, CBE (8 January 1927 – 22 August 2015) was an English poet, translator, academic, and illustrator.
He was born in Penkhull, and grew up in Basford, Stoke-on-Trent, Staffordshire.
Life
After attending Longton High S ...
and
Thom Gunn
Thomson William "Thom" Gunn (29 August 1929 – 25 April 2004) was an English poet who was praised for his early verses in England, where he was associated with Movement (literature), The Movement, and his later poetry in America, where he adop ...
.
Background
Williams referred to the
prosody of triadic-line poetry as a "variable foot", a metrical device to resolve the conflict between form and freedom in verse. Each of the three staggered lines of the stanza should be thought of as one foot, the whole stanza becoming a
trimeter
In poetry
Poetry (from the Greek language, Greek word ''poiesis'', "making") is a form of literature, literary art that uses aesthetics, aesthetic and often rhythmic qualities of language to evoke meaning (linguistics), meanings in addi ...
line. Williams' collections ''Journey to Love'' (1955) and ''The Desert Music'' (1954)
[''Collected Poems'' ed. Christopher MacGowan, ''Collected Poems Vol II'', Carcanet Press, Manchester, 2000 ] contained examples of this form. This is an extract from "The Sparrow" by Williams:
Practical to the end,
::::::it is the poem
::::::::::of his existence
See also
*
Tristich
A tercet is composed of three lines of poetry, forming a stanza or a complete poem.
Examples of tercet forms
English-language haiku is an example of an unrhymed tercet poem. A poetic triplet is a tercet in which all three lines follow the same r ...
*
Trimeter
In poetry
Poetry (from the Greek language, Greek word ''poiesis'', "making") is a form of literature, literary art that uses aesthetics, aesthetic and often rhythmic qualities of language to evoke meaning (linguistics), meanings in addi ...
*
Tercet
A tercet is composed of three lines of poetry, forming a stanza or a complete poem.
Examples of tercet forms
English-language haiku is an example of an unrhymed tercet poem. A poetic triplet is a tercet in which all three lines follow the same r ...
References
External links
Triadic-Line Poetry-An Analysis of its Prosody-Eleanor BerryStructural Surprise in Triadic-line poetryInterview with W C Williams-Paris Review Vol6
Poetic devices
{{poetry-stub