Dialectic poetry

       Dialectic poetry is usually a discourse between two individuals having contradictory views or beliefs. In many cases, this form of poetry allows the poet to give his or her personifications a voice. In this instance the poet has had the opportunity to express the views of both Death and Youth in a way that would not be as nearly as effective had he or she used a third person speaker to characterize both Personifications. Dialectic Poetry is very much like a debate, where the exchange of thoughts and ideas circulate freely coming to a concrete and rigid conclusion where one voice is given authority over the other.

Below is a copy Andrew Marvell's poem 'A Dialogue Between The Soul And The Body' published in 1681

A Dialogue Between the Soul and the Body

By Andrew Marvell (1621-1678)

Soul

O who shall, from this dungeon, raise
A soul enslav’d so many ways?
With bolts of bones, that fetter’d stands
In feet, and manacled in hands;
Here blinded with an eye, and there
Deaf with the drumming of an ear;
A soul hung up, as ‘twere, in chains
Of nerves, and arteries, and veins;
Tortur’d, besides each other part,
In a vain head, and double heart.

Body

O who shall me deliver whole
From bonds of this tyrannic soul?
Which, stretch’d upright, impales me so
That mine own precipice I go:
And warms and moves this needless frame,
(A fever could but do the same)
And, wanting where its spite to try,
Has made me live to let me die.
A body that could never rest,
Since this ill spirit it possest.

Soul

What magic could me thus confine
Within another’s grief to pine?
Where whatsoever it complain,
I feel, that cannot feel, the pain;
And all my care itself employs;
That to preserve which me destroys;
Constrain’d not only to endure
Diseases, but, what’s worse, the cure;
And ready off the port to gain,
And shipwreck’d into health again.

Body

But physic yet could never reach
The maladies thou me dost teach
Whom first the cramp of hope does tear,
And then the palsy shakes of fear;
The pestilence of love does heat,
Or hatred’s hidden ulcer eat;
Joy’s cheerful madness does perplex,
Or sorrow’s other madness vex;
Which knowledge forces me to know,
And memory will not forego.
What but a soul could have the wit
To build me up for sin so fit?
So architects do square and hew
Green trees that in the forest grew.

Source for this version of Marvell's poem: http://biblescripture.net/Marvell.html

A short Biography of Andrew Marshall by Anniina Jokinen can be found at this site: http://www.luminarium.org/sevenlit/marvell/marvbio.htm

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For more examples of Dialectic poetry you can also visit these sites:

http://www.nls.uk/broadsides/broadside.cfm/id/14822/transcript/1

http://www.rc.umd.edu/editions/warpoetry/1799/1799_8.html