Judson Jerome still lives

In 1980, Judson Jerome's book, The Poet's Handbook, was published. It's still available today. It's lasted on store bookshelves for almost 40 years because, today, poets still use the same artistic tools that were used in 1980.

In the book's first section, titled How to Use This Book, Jerome wrote that "Good poetry ... is metrical writing."

Jerome elaborated: "Metrical means measured. A measure, or predetermined form, forces a poet to put his thoughts into a framework. The framework requires the poet to pick and choose, twist, to manage these contortions with grace. It is the tug-of-war between form and content that makes the art of the poem."

Writing poetry is challenging; it is a tug-of-war. But it's not just a battle between form and content. It's also a battle among the content. The framework alone is not the only thing forcing a poet to pick and choose, to weigh her words. The message the poet wishes to c0nvey also pushes and pulls words on and off the page.

Prose also imposes a framework.

When writing prose, its framework imposes two main restrictions upon you. First, write in sentences. Second, write in paragraphs. Prose writing is thus much less imposing than poetry writing, which can be viewed as an elevated form of prose writing. When writing a poem, its author is taking his prose to a higher level. He's willing to submit to a poetic form's constraints to gain its benefits.

Though poetry and prose differ in the framework they impose, they both depend on the same building material: words.

Given that words underlie all poetic forms, one way to begin a poem is by placing words on a page without attempting to impose any poetic framework upon them. The website textetc.com illustrates that technique by starting with a prose description.

Whittier's words about Maud Muller

Whittier wrote Maud Muller in 1854. In the book, The Complete Works of John Greenleaf Whittier, Whittier provided some background information on the poem.

The recollection of some descendants of a Hessian deserter in the Revolutionary war bearing the name of Muller doubtless suggested the somewhat infelicitous title of a New England idyl. The poem had no real foundation in fact, though a hint of it may have been found in recalling an incident, trivial in itself, of a journey on the picturesque Maine seaboard with my sister some years before it was written. We had stopped to rest our tired horse under the shade of an apple-tree, and refresh him with water from a little brook which rippled through the stone wall across the road. A very beautiful young girl in scantest summer attire was at work in the hay-field, and as we talked with her we noticed that she strove to hide her bare feet by raking hay over them, blushing as she did so, through the tan of her cheek and neck.

Listen to Charles M. Johnson recite Maud Muller by clicking the Play button below.

Kathleen, a daughter much beloved

The second stanza of Whittier's ballad, Kathleen, illustrates the poet's skill at compressing a substantial amount of meaning into a small space:

There was a lord of Galaway,
A mighty lord was he;
And he did wed a second wife,
A maid of low degree.

The third stanza introduces the second wife's evil ways.

She whipped the maids and starved the kern,
And drove away the poor;
"Ah, woe is me!" the old lord said,
"I rue my bargain sore!"

The lord's second wife's cruelty extended far beyond bread. She harmed the maids, the poor, and even the lord's soldiers — the kern. Her misbehavior caused the lord to rue his bargain, but what bargain did he make? By "bargain" does he mean his marriage?

Then, in the fifth stanza, a significant shift occurs. The "song of old Ireland begins":

This lord he had a daughter fair,
Beloved of old and young,
And nightly round the shealing-fires
Of her the gleeman sung.

In the above stanza, Whittier uses two more words no longer in common usage: shealing and gleeman.

Shealing, also spelled "sheeling," is, according to Webster's Revised Unabridged Dictionary, published 1913 by C. & G. Merriam Co. "A hut or small cottage in an exposed or a retired place (as on a mountain or at the seaside) such as is used by shepherds, fishermen, sportsmen, etc.; a summer cottage; also, a shed."

A gleeman was a traveling storyteller and minstrel during the Middle Ages; they were noted for their juggling ability.

So began the tale of the lord's daughter, a girl who had captured the hearts of many.

Kathleen, a ballad by Whittier

John Greenleaf Whittier wrote another poem about a young woman named Kathleen. For some reason, Whittier referred to Kathleen as a ballad rather than a poem.

Here's his comment on Kathleen:

This ballad was originally published in my prose work, Leaves from Margaret Smith's Journal, as the song of a wandering Milesian schoolmaster. In the seventeenth century, slavery in the New World was by no means confined to the natives of Africa. Political offenders and criminals were transported by the British government to the plantations of Barbadoes and Virginia, where they were sold like cattle in the market. Kidnapping of free and innocent white persons was practised to a considerable extent in the seaports of the United Kingdom.

Here's Kathleen's first stanza:

O NORAH, lay your basket down,
And rest your weary hand,
And come and hear me sing a song
Of our old Ireland.

As he did with another poem, Maud Muller, Whittier begins Kathleen with a woman's name; however, unlike Maud Muller, the woman whose name begins Kathleen is not the woman whom the poem's about. Instead, she is the woman to whom the ballad is being sung.

Here's a listing of all Whittier's poems on Project Gutenberg.