[stylist] Definition of blank verse

[Bridgit Pollpeter]

blank verse (from equating blanks with prose) unrhymed lines of iambic
pentameter often used in long poems and dramatic verse. The form is very
flexible and adapts itself well to monologues and soliloquies in which
richness and variation are key qualities. But it has also been a
favorite and dependable form for a variety of moods and subjects over
the past four hundred years. It is the most common form of stichic verse
in the English language. Surrey's translation of The Aeneid (1540) was
the first use of the meter, and it became the standard measure for
Elizabethan and later drama. It reached its highest expression in the
hands of Marlowe, Shakespeare, Milton, Wordsworth, Eliot, and Stevens.
Milton's opening of Paradise Lost is a well-known example:
Of Man's first Disobedience, and the Fruit Of that Forbidden Tree, whose
mortal taste Brought Death into the World, and all our woe, With loss of
Eden, till one greater Man Restore us, and regain the blissful Seat,
Sing Heav'nly Muse. ..
In recent times, critics tend to refer to any unrhymed metrical form as
b.v., but the form is not used in contemporary poetry as much as it was
in the past. 

Pete (ongoing joke between Brad and me, grin)

Sincerely,
Bridgit Kuenning-Pollpeter
Read my blog at:
http://blogs.livewellnebraska.com/author/bpollpeter/
 
"History is not what happened; history is what was written down."
The Expected One- Kathleen McGowan