Blues Stanza

Blues Stanza:  I've found sources that say the blues stanza is either written in loose iambic pentameter measures or loose iambic tetrameter, but schematic diagram is usually the same.  The second line is often an incremental repeton of the first line, while the third line is a synthetic parallel giving a consequence of the first two lines.  Each stanza is a triplet and the last stanza ends with a couplet.

Diagram:

xX xX xX xX xA or xX xX xX xX [either iambic pentameter or iambic tetrameter all the way through]

xX xX xX xX xA

xX xX xX xX xa (still an iamb at the end)

xX xX xX xX xB

xX xX xX xX xB

xX xX xX xX xb ect...

...[couplet] can be used to summarize or do whatever you wish to do with it.

xX xX xX xX xd

xX xX xX xX xd

Example:

Envoi in a Boneyard

Just let me drop this note into the dark,

Yes, let me drop this note into the dark---

I'll light it with a match and watch it spark.

I'll sail it into night with fire and flare,

Fly it into darkness, see it flare

And wink out in those shadows circling there.

I'll watch it take its place among the stars,

among the minor planets and the stars.

I'll hum the blues, not much - a couple bars -

Until the spark has died to inky ash,

And words have flickered into smoken ash.

Then I'll have me a sip of sour mash,

And lean against this marker made of stone,

That will not last as long as ink or bone.

• Wesli Court

Langston Hughes was said to have struggled with the this stanza form...producing some good quality poems, while others not so much.  Here's what the critics of the Blues Stanza say: "It is not a form of folk song that stands up particularly well when written down" (8). A poet who wants to write blues can avoid this trap by poeticizing the form -- but this is only to fall into another trap, for blues made literary read not like refined folk song but like bad poetry."  So...take it as it goes...

I myself am not fond of the example I gave because I tend to agree with the critics...but I also think that it merits at least experimentation, and perhaps you'll be more successful than other writers.

-Ryan