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Excess verse

Genre
Pronunciation

Understanding ARPABET Pronunciation

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The pronunciation guide uses the ARPABET phonetic system—the same system used in speech recognition and text-to-speech applications.

Vowel Examples:
AE1 = cat, bat
EH1 = bed, head
IY1 = see, me
OW1 = go, boat
UW1 = boot, do
Stress Numbers:
0 = no stress (unstressed)
1 = primary stress (loud)
2 = secondary stress (medium)
Example:
AH0 TH IY1 N AH0
= a-THEE-na (Athena)

The stressed syllable (marked with 1) is pronounced louder and clearer than others.

Quick Definition

Poetry thematically or stylistically marked by extravagance or surplus expression

Detailed Definition
Excess verse embraces stylistic abundance—hyperbole, ornate diction, cascading imagery—to overwhelm restraint and celebrate plenitude, often as political or aesthetic rebellion; associated with Baroque, Surrealist, or Queer poetics, it rejects minimalism in favor of ecstatic, uncontainable expression.
Example
Example in poetry:
John Donne’s “The Sun Rising” exaggerates lover’s bed as world center; Sylvia Plath’s “Lady Lazarus” exaggerates resurrection as circus act; Allen Ginsberg’s “Howl” uses excess verse to catalog suffering; Hart Crane’s “The Bridge” uses ornate excess to mythologize America; Frank O’Hara’s “Having a Coke with You” uses conversational excess; contemporary poets like CAConrad use ritual excess in verse.
Additional Notes
Verse that is overly long, redundant, or contains more words than are strictly necessary to convey the idea; the opposite of economy of language; a descriptive term used for poems where brevity might be preferable.
Also Known As
Surplus verse Redundant poetry Extraneous line Superfluous stanza Abligurition verse
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