Triadic-line poetry

Triadic-line poetry or stepped line is a long line which "unfolds into three descending and indented parts".^[1] Created by William Carlos Williams, it was his "solution to the problem of modern verse"^[2] and later was also taken up by poets Charles Tomlinson and Thom Gunn.^[3]

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.^[4] Each of the three staggered lines of the stanza should be thought of as one foot, the whole stanza becoming a trimeter line.^[5] Williams' collections Journey to Love (1955) and The Desert Music (1954) ^[6] 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
• Trimeter
• Tercet

References

1. Hirsch. Edward 'A Poet's Glossary', Houghton Mifflin Hsrcourt, Boston, 2014 ISBN 9780151011957
2. Berry Eleanor, 'William Carlos Williams: Triadic-line Verse - An Analysis of its Prosody' Twentieth Century Literature Fall 35.3 1989
3. Schmidt, Michael, Lives of the Poets, Weidenfeld & Nicolson, London 1998 ISBN 978-0753807453
4. "Interview with Stanley Koehler", Paris Review Vol 6 April 1962
5. Hartman, Charles, Free Verse an essay on Prosody, Northwestern University Press, Evanston 1996 ISBN 0-8101-1316-3
6. Collected Poems ed. Christopher MacGowan, Collected Poems Vol II, Carcanet Press, Manchester, 2000 ISBN 1-85754-523-0

External links

• Triadic-Line Poetry-An Analysis of its Prosody-Eleanor Berry
• Structural Surprise in Triadic-line poetry
• Interview with W C Williams-Paris Review Vol6