Welcome
Welcome to High Voltage Poetry!
High Voltage Poetry is an interactive, online learning tool that teaches users how to locate and identify poetic turns. It aims to attune readers to the presence and power of the turn in poetry.
A “turn” is a shift in a poem’s rhetorical and/or dramatic trajectory. Turns generally are well known features of sonnets, in which the turn is referred to as a “volta.” However, all kinds of poems—not just sonnets—turn. In The Art of Syntax, poet-critic Ellen Bryant Voigt states, “The sonnet’s volta, or ‘turn’… has become an inherent expectation for most short lyric poems.” In his essay “Andrew Marvell,” T. S. Eliot notes that the surprising turn has been “one of the most important means of creating poetic effect since Homer.” Knowing about turns, being able to identify them in poems and understand their dynamics—including understanding that poems often behave very differently before and after their turns—is an important part of being able to read and write poems well.
For all its importance, though, only recently has critical and pedagogical attention to the turn become more systematic—in the book Structure & Surprise: Engaging Poetic Turns, and on websites such as “Structure and Surprise” and “Voltage Poetry.” High Voltage Poetry capitalizes upon and advances this work.
Some important notes:
- The poems featured on High Voltage Poetry are poems that make use of one very clear turn. The dynamics of turning, however, are much more complex than this. For example, poems very often have more than one turn, and the precise locations of those turns are not always so easy to pinpoint.
- High Voltage Poetry should be understood as an introduction to the poetic turn. While it is hoped that this site will be of interest to a wide variety of poetry readers, it has been designed with the advanced high school / early career undergraduate in mind.
- Of course, you are welcome to jump right into using High Voltage Poetry. Go for it! However, you are strongly encouraged to read the Instructions page. It contains some important information. Additionally, if you want to do well right away, you may wish to—if you have not already—familiarize yourself with the poetic turn, including some of the most important varieties of turns. Again, key resources for this work include:
Engage, and enjoy!