The Ode Less Travelled: Unlocking the Poet Within is a book by author, actor, comedian and director Stephen Fry about writing poetry. Fry covers metre, rhyme, many common and arcane poetic forms, and offers useful exercises. Fry contrasts modern and classic poets, and displays a depth and breadth of knowledge in poetry that is surprising in someone who does not publish his own poetry nor pursue the teaching of literature full-time.
Fry's starting point can be summed up by the quotation with which he heads Chapter One: 'Poetry is metrical writing./If it isn't that I don't know what it is.' (J. V. Cunningham.) In a 'rant' near the end of the book he states: 'I think that much poetry today suffers from anaemia. There is no iron in its blood, no energy, no drive.' The same cannot be said of Fry's own writing which is instructive, humorous and occasionally provocative.
Fry sets out to explain the many tools available to a poet in order to organise writing, noting poetry's essential metrical basis and introducing the many technical terms, terms which he introduces clearly and logically, with explanations and exercises. The book offers twenty 'Poetry Exercises', with one or two in each chapter.
The first main section, 'Metre', has six chapters, introducing the natural rhythm of spoken English and many forms of metre. In fact, 28 are listed in the 'Table of Metric Feet' which concludes this major section of the book. The next section, 'Rhyme' has three chapters, explaining the 'basic categories', 'rhyming arrangements' and discussing what is good or bad rhyme. Eleven chapters follow on 'Form', starting with a chapter on 'The Stanza. What is Form and Why Bother with It?' Closed and open forms, heroioc verse, forms of ode, ballads, comic verse, sonnets, shaped verse; these and several more are explained along with examples. The book's final section is entitled 'Diction and Poetics Today'. There is also a 600 (approx) word 'Incomplete Glossary of Poetic Terms'.
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