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Blank verse

Blank verse is poetry written with regular metrical but unrhymed lines, usually in iambic pentameter. It has been described as "probably the most common and influential form that English poetry has taken since the 16th century", and Paul Fussell has estimated that "about three quarters of all English poetry is in blank verse".

The first known use of blank verse in English was by Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey in his translation of the Aeneid (composed c. 1540; published posthumously, 1554–1557 ). He may have been inspired by the Latin original since classical Latin verse did not use rhyme, or possibly he was inspired by Ancient Greek verse or the Italian verse form of versi sciolti, both of which also did not use rhyme.

The play Arden of Faversham (around 1590 by an unknown author) is a notable example of end-stopped blank verse.

History of English blank verse
The 1561 play Gorboduc by Thomas Norton and Thomas Sackville was the first English play to use blank verse.

Christopher Marlowe was the first English author to achieve critical fame for his use of blank verse. The major achievements in English blank verse were made by William Shakespeare, who wrote much of the content of his plays in unrhymed iambic pentameter, and John Milton, whose Paradise Lost is written in blank verse. Miltonic blank verse was widely imitated in the 18th century by such poets as James Thomson (in The Seasons) and William Cowper (in The Task). Romantic English poets such as William Wordsworth, Percy Bysshe Shelley, and John Keats used blank verse as a major form. Shortly afterwards, Alfred, Lord Tennyson became particularly devoted to blank verse, using it for example in his long narrative poem "The Princess", as well as for one of his most famous poems: "Ulysses". Among American poets, Hart Crane and Wallace Stevens are notable for using blank verse in extended compositions at a time when many other poets were turning to free verse.

Marlowe and then Shakespeare developed its potential greatly in the late 16th century. Marlowe was the first to exploit the potential of blank verse for powerful and involved speech:

"You stars that reign'd at my nativity, Whose influence hath allotted death and hell, Now draw up Faustus like a foggy mist Into the entrails of yon labouring clouds, That when they vomit forth into the air, My limbs may issue from their smoky mouths, So that my soul may but ascend to Heaven."

- Doctor Faustus

Shakespeare developed this feature, and also the potential of blank verse for abrupt and irregular speech. For example, in this exchange from King John, one blank verse line is broken between two characters:

"My lord?          A grave.                        He shall not live.                                                Enough."

- King John, 3.3

Shakespeare also used enjambment increasingly often in his verse, and in his last plays was given to using feminine endings (in which the last syllable of the line is unstressed, for instance lines 3 and 6 of the following example); all of this made his later blank verse extremely rich and varied.

"Ye elves of hills, brooks, standing lakes and groves, And ye that on the sands with printless foot Do chase the ebbing Neptune, and do fly him When he comes back; you demi-puppets that By moonshine do the green sour ringlets make Whereof the ewe not bites; and you whose pastime Is to make midnight mushrooms, that rejoice To hear the solemn curfew; by whose aid, Weak masters though ye be, I have bedimmed The noontide sun, called forth the mutinous winds, And 'twixt the green sea and the azured vault Set roaring war – to the dread rattling thunder Have I given fire, and rifted Jove's stout oak With his own bolt;..."

- The Tempest, 5.1

This very free treatment of blank verse was imitated by Shakespeare's contemporaries, and led to general metrical looseness in the hands of less skilled users. However, Shakespearean blank verse was used with some success by John Webster and Thomas Middleton in their plays. Ben Jonson, meanwhile, used a tighter blank verse with less enjambment in his comedies Volpone and The Alchemist.

Blank verse was not much used in the non-dramatic poetry of the 17th century until Paradise Lost, in which Milton used it with much license. Milton used the flexibility of blank verse, its capacity to support syntactic complexity, to the utmost, in passages such as these:

"....Into what Pit thou seest From what highth fal'n, so much the stronger provd He with his Thunder: and till then who knew The force of those dire Arms? yet not for those Nor what the Potent Victor in his rage Can else inflict do I repent or change, Though chang'd in outward lustre; that fixt mind And high disdain, from sence of injur'd merit, That with the mightiest rais'd me to contend, And to the fierce contention brought along Innumerable force of Spirits arm'd That durst dislike his reign, and me preferring, His utmost power with adverse power oppos'd In dubious Battel on the Plains of Heav'n, And shook his throne. What though the field be lost? All is not lost; the unconquerable Will, And study of revenge, immortal hate, And courage never to submit or yield:"

- Paradise Lost, Book 1

Milton also wrote Paradise Regained and parts of Samson Agonistes in blank verse. In the century after Milton, there are few distinguished uses of either dramatic or non-dramatic blank verse; in keeping with the desire for regularity, most of the blank verse of this period is somewhat stiff. The best examples of blank verse from this time are probably John Dryden's tragedy All for Love and James Thomson's The Seasons. An example notable as much for its failure with the public as for its subsequent influence on the form is John Dyer's The Fleece.

At the close of the 18th century, William Cowper ushered in a renewal of blank verse with his volume of kaleidoscopic meditations, The Task, published in 1784. After Shakespeare and Milton, Cowper was the main influence on the next major poets in blank verse, teenagers when Cowper published his masterpiece. These were the Lake Poets William Wordsworth and Samuel Taylor Coleridge. Wordsworth used the form for many of the Lyrical Ballads (1798 and 1800), and for his longest efforts, The Prelude and The Excursion. Wordsworth's verse recovers some of the freedom of Milton's, but is generally far more regular:

"Five years have past; five summers, with the length Of five long winters! And again I hear These waters, rolling from their mountain-springs With a soft inland murmur. – Once again Do I behold these steep and lofty cliffs..."

- Lines written a few miles above Tintern Abbey, lines 1–5

Coleridge's blank verse is more technical than Wordsworth's, but he wrote little of it: "Well, they are gone, and here must I remain, This lime-tree bower my prison! I have lost Beauties and feelings, such as would have been Most sweet to my remembrance even when age had dimmed mine eyes to blindness! They, meanwhile..."

- "This Lime-Tree Bower My Prison", lines 1–5

His conversation poems such as "The Eolian Harp" and "Frost at Midnight" are the best known of his blank verse works. The blank verse of Keats in Hyperion is mainly modelled on that of Milton, but takes fewer liberties with the pentameter and possesses the characteristic of Keats's verse. Shelley's blank verse in The Cenci and Prometheus Unbound is closer to Elizabethan practice than to Milton's.

Of the Victorian writers in blank verse, the most prominent are Tennyson and Robert Browning. Tennyson's blank verse in poems like "Ulysses" and "The Princess" is musical and regular; his lyric "Tears, Idle Tears" is probably the first important example of the blank verse stanzaic poem. Browning's blank verse, in poems like "Fra Lippo Lippi", is more abrupt and conversational. Gilbert and Sullivan's 1884 opera, Princess Ida, is based on Tennyson's "The Princess". Gilbert's dialogue is in blank verse throughout (although the other 13 Savoy operas have prose dialogue). Below is an extract spoken by Princess Ida after singing her entrance aria "Oh, goddess wise".

"Women of Adamant, fair neophytes— Who thirst for such instruction as we give, Attend, while I unfold a parable. The elephant is mightier than Man, Yet Man subdues him. Why? The elephant Is elephantine everywhere but here (tapping her forehead) And Man, whose brain is to the elephant's As Woman's brain to Man's—(that's rule of three),— Conquers the foolish giant of the woods, As Woman, in her turn, shall conquer Man. In Mathematics, Woman leads the way: The narrow-minded pedant still believes That two and two make four! Why, we can prove, We women—household drudges as we are— That two and two make five—or three—or seven; Or five-and-twenty, if the case demands!"

Blank verse, of varying degrees of regularity, has been used quite frequently throughout the 20th century in original verse and in translations of narrative verse. Most of Robert Frost's narrative and conversational poems are in blank verse; so are other poems like Wallace Stevens's "The Idea of Order at Key West" and "The Comedian as the Letter C", W. B. Yeats's "The Second Coming", W. H. Auden's "The Watershed" and John Betjeman's Summoned by Bells. A complete listing is impossible, since a sort of loose blank verse has become a staple of lyric poetry, but it would be safe to say that blank verse is as prominent now as it has been any time in the past three hundred years.

Blank verse in German literature
Blank verse is also common in German literature. It was used by Gotthold Ephraim Lessing in the tragedy Nathan der Weise (Nathan the Wise) in 1779, where the lines are 10 or 11 syllables long:

"Ja, Daja; Gott sei Dank! Doch warum endlich? Hab ich denn eher wiederkommen wollen? Und wiederkommen können? Babylon Ist von Jerusalem, wie ich den Weg, Seitab bald rechts, bald links, zu nehmen bin Genötigt worden, gut zweihundert Meilen; Und Schulden einkassieren, ist gewiss Auch kein Geschäft, das merklich fördert, das So von der Hand sich schlagen lässt."

title: Blank verse


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Barb Tarbox

Barb Tarbox, MSM (April 10, 1961 – May 18, 2003) was a Canadian anti-smoking activist. A lifelong smoker dying of lung and brain cancer, she openly discussed her illness, its cause and its consequences, which propelled her to prominence.

In high school, between the ages of 14 and 16, she was a model for fashion companies and joined many sports in her school. She wanted to be popular, and believed being a model was not enough; so she then became a smoker. During the last months of Tarbox's life she went around Canada teaching young adults the consequences of smoking. She emphasized how she was unable to quit smoking even after she found out that she had cancer.

Tarbox died at a hospital in Edmonton on May 18, 2003, at the age of 42 from brain cancer and lung cancer.

On December 5, 2003, Barb Tarbox was posthumously awarded the Meritorious Service Medal by Her Excellency, the Right Honourable Adrienne Clarkson, Governor General of Canada, for devotion to the anti-smoking cause. The decoration was accepted in Ottawa by her daughter, Mackenzie.

On December 30, 2010, the Government of Canada unveiled tougher anti-smoking images on their cigarette packaging including two images that feature Barb Tarbox during her last days.

license: Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/

title: Barb Tarbox


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Desperation (novel)

Desperation is a horror novel by American author Stephen King. It was published in 1996 at the same time as its "mirror" novel, The Regulators, itself published under King's Richard Bachman pseudonym. It was also made into a TV film starring Ron Perlman, Tom Skerritt and Steven Weber in 2006. The two novels represent parallel universes relative to one another, and most of the characters present in one novel's world also exist in the other novel's reality, albeit in different circumstances.

Desperation is a story about several people who, while traveling along the desolated Highway 50 in Nevada, get abducted by Collie Entragian, the deputy of the fictional mining town of Desperation. Entragian uses various pretexts for the abductions, from an arrest for drug possession to "rescuing" a family from a nonexistent gunman. It becomes clear to the captives that Entragian has been possessed by an evil being named Tak, who has control over the surrounding desert wildlife and must change hosts to keep itself alive. They begin to fight for their freedom, sanity and lives before realizing that if they are ever to escape Desperation, they must trap Tak in the place from which he came.

Plot
Peter and Mary Jackson are driving quietly on a desolate Nevada highway when they are pulled over and arrested by the disturbed Collie Entragian. They are taken to the police station of a deserted small mining town named Desperation, where Entragian kills Peter. Several other people are held captive here: the Carver family, whose daughter was also killed by Entragian; Johnny Marinville, a writer who was on a cross-country motorcycle trip to gather new material; and Tom Billingsley, the town veterinarian. Meanwhile, Johnny's assistant Steve, who had been trailing him at a distance, finds Johnny's bike and searches for him with Cynthia, a hitchhiker.

Entragian takes Ellen Carver with him, and during his absence, the intensely devout Carver son, David, manages to free everyone, and the party takes him on as a spiritual guide. They take refuge in an abandoned theater and are joined by Steve, Cynthia and Audrey, an employee of the mine. They realize that they are the only survivors of a wave of carnage committed by an evil supernatural entity named Tak. Tak had been imprisoned in an old mine shaft and can take possession of human beings, but this state quickly deteriorates the host and requires it to change hosts. Tak can also manipulate desert wildlife such as coyotes, buzzards, spiders and scorpions. Billingsley is killed by a cougar controlled by Tak, and Audrey, also under its influence, attempts to kill David. She nearly succeeds in strangling him, but is prevented by the intervention of Steve and Johnny. Tak occupies Ellen's body and takes Mary captive.

The survivors contemplate leaving the town, but David, having come out of a trance, reveals to them that God has other plans for them. Mary takes advantage of the rapid deterioration of Ellen's body to escape her, and upon Ellen's death, Tak occupies the body of a golden eagle. The group gather some ANFO to blow up the well from which Tak escaped. Tak attacks David, but kills his self-sacrificing father Ralph. Johnny prevents the now-orphaned David from giving his own life, and takes his place by blowing up the well and sealing Tak inside. David, Mary, Steve and Cynthia begin to leave the town of Desperation. While in Mary's car, David finds in his pocket the hall pass from his previous "deal with God" with a message from Johnny written on it.

Characters

 * Mary Jackson; poet and wife of Peter Jackson.
 * Peter Jackson; English professor and husband of Mary Jackson.
 * Collie Entragian; former police officer in Desperation, now the third host of Tak but first one introduced in the novel.
 * Kirsten Carver; daughter of Ralph and Ellen Carver, 7-year-old sister of David Carver, who calls her 'Pie'.
 * David Carver; son of Ralph and Ellen Carver, 12-year-old brother of Kirsten Carver. Has a close relationship with God that reveals itself throughout the novel.
 * Ralph Carver; husband of Ellen Carver and father of David and Kirsten Carver.
 * Ellen Carver; wife of Ralph Carver and mother of David and Kirsten Carver. Becomes Tak's fourth host.
 * Tom Billingsley; retired town veterinarian, former town councilman and alcoholic.
 * John Edward Marinville; author acclaimed for his novel Delight, now an old washed up has-been traveling the country on a motorcycle.
 * Steve Ames; Johnny's assistant, following him across the country in a truck.
 * Cynthia Smith; a hitchhiker picked up by Steve on Highway 50.
 * Brian Ross; David Carver's best friend. David made a deal with God so that Brian would come out of his coma after being hit by a drunk driver.
 * Cary Ripton; pit-foreman of the mining pit and Tak's first host.
 * Brad Josephson; receptionist for Desperation Mining Corporation and Tak's second host.
 * Tak, an extradimensional demonic entity which possesses humans.

Release and adaptation
King was inspired to write Desperation as a result of a cross-country drive in 1991, during which he visited the small desert community of Ruth, Nevada, near U.S. Route 50. His first thought was that the town's inhabitants were all dead. He then wondered who had killed them, and the idea occurred to him that the town's sheriff had done so. Desperation was released simultaneously with the novel The Regulators (published by King under the name Richard Bachman). In 2006, American network ABC broadcast a television film based on Stephen King's screenplay adaptation of his novel. The film was directed by frequent King collaborator Mick Garris and stars Ron Perlman, Tom Skerritt, Steven Weber and Annabeth Gish.

Connections to other works

 * The term can-toi is used in the Dark Tower series to describe the Low Men in Yellow Coats, which are strange animal-human hybrids.
 * In the Dark Tower short story "The Little Sisters of Eluria", the vampiric Sisters speak to each other in a language Roland does not recognize. All he can make out is "can de lach, mi him en tow", phrases from Desperation.
 * Tak also appears in The Regulators.
 * The character of Cynthia Smith first appeared in Rose Madder.
 * The character Ellen Carver is shown recalling a book, Misery in Paradise, which was a book written by Stephen King's fictitious character Paul Sheldon in his novel Misery.
 * The Tommyknockers are mentioned by the character Tom.

title: Desperation (novel)


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Talk:Pyrethrum

Untitled
Where is the reference for the section on pryethrums as companion plants? Epizootic (talk) 05:17, 22 November 2007 (UTC)

Not too sure but should the sentence read pyrethrins attack the nervous system instead of Pyrethrum? Dmsar 18:54 12 Jul 2003 (UTC)

Yes, I think so too. Reworded. Now can someone fill in the details of synergised pyrethrins? All I know is that some compounds enhance the effects of pyrethrins, and that some pyrethrin formulations take advantage of this... Malcolm Farmer 18:58 12 Jul 2003 (UTC)

Ok, Malcom, isn't this becoming a separate article on pyrethrins??? Shouldn't we just split it and make a link? Dmsar 19:20 12 Jul 2003 (UTC)

Perhaps. I think there's more that can be said about pyrethrins (a chemical srtructure drawing, and I'm curious about how they work), and the pyrethrum article could use a photo of the plant, but we don't have that at the moment... Hey, this is Wikipedia - be bold and split the article if you want. If anyone objects they'll revert it (I won't) -- Malcolm Farmer 09:14 13 Jul 2003 (UTC)
 * I used to live in Kenya, and my parents farmed Pyrethrum. I heard that the difference between Pyrethrum and pyrethrins was that Pyrethrum had both right and left-handed (molecules ??) but only one was effective. Synthetic pyrethrins only contain one-hand - the correct one, naturally. Sorry to be so vague .. Wizzy… ☎   08:50, 24 October 2006 (UTC)

Well if I knew a nursery or a place, I'd run out and use my digital camera and make it so. It seems to work ok here on the articles I've written. Dmsar 09:20 13 Jul 2003 (UTC)

Thanks, Heron. I over-read the colors in my zeal to add info. the &laquo was just me trying to be cute and experimenting. The misspelling wasn't mine, but I did miss it. Dmsar 21:49 12 Jul 2003 (UTC)

Fine. I did wonder for a moment whether there was some chemical significance in those brackets. :-) -- Heron

“ Ah, the glory of typographer's quotes… ” It's,  ,   and. See if you can find the other two special charectors I used in this post :) –Wulf 03:03, 22 April 2006 (UTC) In the Cronenberg movie Naked lunch this Bug killer is featured and the Pytethrum entry could benifit from including this infornmation.  —Preceding unsigned comment added by KAOSKTRL (talk • contribs) 04:19, 9 December 2007 (UTC)

Use in organic farming
Is the chemical called pyrethrum used in organic farming? What is its toxcity as it exists in residues on such organically produced food? Badagnani (talk) 05:20, 5 June 2008 (UTC)

Yes, could use a photo
I'd like to see some of the different kinds there are. I spoke today with a former distributor of 100% pyrethrin powder and she said about a year+ ago the EPA sent them a letter saying they either had to fork over some bucks for the EPA to do testing or they had to give up their license to sell the stuff. So out went the license. The powder worked really well. In my search today I only found .5% to 6% pyrethrin items for sale, not the pure ground up flowers. Looking to grow my own flowers to stop fleas. Kristinwt (talk) 07:24, 25 October 2008 (UTC)

Still in use
Why does it say "Pyrethrum was used for centuries as an insecticide, and as a lice remedy in the Middle East"? It's widely used in the US today as a lice remedy, under the brand name RID. Kendall-K1 (talk) 22:13, 20 January 2013 (UTC)
 * The tense has been changed. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2A00:23C4:7C87:4F00:9DD9:F3E:D6F0:6A21 (talk) 15:08, 13 July 2020 (UTC)

Toxicity in humans
I do not wish to get into an editor war. Perhaps someone more diplomatic than I am might add to the section on human toxicity. Source #3 is some gardener's blog. When I looked up (on Google) pyrethroid toxicity, I found good information from the University of Florida Agricultural Extension (USA). Reference:. Rat and rabbit LD-50 levels are very high for most (= very safe), with doses in some cases of about 1% of the animal's body weight required to cause significant mortality. So we humans can probably eat it in quantities of many grams without harm (other than for allergic reactions, of course). All my edits to Wikipedia have thus far been minor copyediting. To change this would be more than a minor edit. Perhaps someone might email me with a good way to begin such edits, without doing damage to the product or to feelings. Eugen Hamerle (talk) 00:02, 11 July 2013 (UTC)

Like this one: Pyrethrin?Jdevola (talk) 13:52, 9 June 2016 (UTC)

Big Edit
I find it interesting that this article exists in its present form. The first sentence starts out by basically saying "this is the wrong title for this article" by saying "Pyrethrum was a genus of several Old World plants now classified as Chrysanthemum..."

Well, if that is true, then the article should be entitled "Chrysanthemum" and there should be a redirect for "pyrethrum" that takes people to the "Chrysanthemum" title.

There is a "Chrysanthemum" article (where Pyrethrum is barely mentioned), so perhaps "pyrethrum" needs to be a subsection under the "Chrysanthemum" article. I don't know what the correct/best solution is, but I think it is pretty ridiculous to have an article basically calling itself out right from the start.

Perhaps it is a semantic or classification artifact? If that is the case, it should be clarified then to make it clear WHY this article with the title "Pyrethrum" exists. Beside that, does Wikipedia allow listing articles that are historical in nature (i.e., not contemporarily accurate)? It is not clear to me how this should be handled, but it seems clear that some digging and discussion is warranted. Thanks. Jdevola (talk) 13:24, 9 June 2016 (UTC)

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title: Talk:Pyrethrum