Odes! Poems of Celebration

It’s not true that all poems are depressing! Odes can: Celebrate Commemorate Meditate on people, events, or, in Neruda’s case, ordinary objects

A Brief History of the Ode Originally Formally structured Written for choruses in Greek plays to sing or chant

Pindaric Odes Chorus speaks and moves left, speaks again and moves right, finishes with a third response Left = strophe Same stanza form Right = antistrophe Final response = epode = different form Pindaric odes were celebratory and heroic The Pindaric is named for the ancient Greek poet Pindar, who is credited with inventing the ode. Pindaric odes were performed with a chorus and dancers, and often composed to celebrate athletic victories. They contain a formal opening, or strophe, of complex metrical structure, followed by an antistrophe, which mirrors the opening, and anepode, the final closing section of a different length and composed with a different metrical structure. 

“Ode on Intimations of Immortality from Recollections of Early Childhood” Wm Woodsworth There was a time when meadow, grove, and stream, The earth, and every common sight To me did seem Apparelled in celestial light, The glory and the freshness of a dream. It is not now as it hath been of yore;-- Turn wheresoe’er I may, By night or day, The things which I have seen I now can see no more.

Horation Ode Short lyric poems (lyric poems express thought or feelings rather than telling a story) Stanzas of 2-4 lines In the manner of the Roman poet Horace intimate and reflective rather than celebratory and heroic Often addressed to a friend and deal with friendship, love, and the practice of poetry.  The Horatian ode, named for the Roman poet Horace, is generally more tranquil and contemplative than the Pindaric ode. Less formal, less ceremonious, and better suited to quiet reading than theatrical production, the Horatian ode typically uses a regular, recurrent stanza pattern.

Example: An extract from 'Ode to a Nightingale' by John Keats (1795-1821) My heart aches, and a drowsy numbness pains (A) My sense, as though of hemlock I had drunk, (B) Or emptied some dull opiate to the drains (A) One minute past, and Lethe-wards had sunk: (B) 'Tis not through envy of the happy lot, (C) But being too happy in thy happiness,- (D) That thou, light-winged Dryad of the trees, (E) In some melodious plot (C) Of beechen green, and shadows numberless, (D) Singest of summer in full-throated ease. (E)

Cowleyan Ode Used by modern poets such as Neruda Modern odes may be humorous, but still commemorate the beauty poets find in unexpected places With the Cowleyan Ode, the ode is freed from formal constraints of rhyme and meter and stanza pattern Neruda uses short-lined free verse for his odes Irregular Ode or Cowleyan Ode, as the first name implies is an ode made up of a number of strophes that are unalike in structure. This verse is also sometimes called the Cowleyan Ode for 17th century English poet Abraham Cowley who studied the odes of Pindar and attempted to emulate them. But unlike Pindar, Cowley's odes did not relegate the various strophes to the triad order of the Pindaric Ode. Neither did it retain the uniform stanzas of the Horatian, Keatsian or Ronsardian Odes.  The various strophes of the Irregular or Cowleyan Ode vary in purpose, line length, number of lines, meter, and rhyme. The frame of each strophe changes at the discretion of the poet.