The volta is a rhetorical shift or dramatic change in thought and/or emotion. Turns are seen in all types of written poetry. In the last two decades, the volta has become conventionally used as a word for this, stemming supposedly from technique specific mostly to sonnets. Volta is not, in fact, a term used by many earlier critics when they address the idea of a turn in a poem, and they usually are not discussing the sonnet form. It is a common Italian word more often used of the idea of a time or an occasion than a turnabout or swerve.

Terminology The turn in poetry has gone by many names. In "The Poem in Countermotion", the final chapter of How Does a Poem Mean?, John Ciardi speaks thus of the "fulcrum" in relation to the non-sonnet poem "O western wind" (O Western Wind/when wilt thou blow/The small rain down can rain//Christ! my love were in my arms/and I in my bed again): 'The first two lines are a cry of anguish to the western wind (in England, the wind of spring). The lament issues without any statement of cause for the speaker's anguish. The second two lines snap off that generalized lament and utter an angry and specific protest. The poet's tone has undergone an emphatic change.' John Ciardi, How Does a Poem Mean? (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1959). Ciardi does not use the term "volta". In The Poet's Art, M.L. Rosenthal employs two different terms for different kinds of turns: "gentle modulations, or at the furthest extreme, wrenching turns of emphasis or focus or emotional pitch (torques)".M.L. Rosenthal, The Poet's Art (New York: W. W. Norton, 1987). Hank Lazer primarily refers to the turn as a "swerve", asking, "Is there a describable lyricism of swerving? For those poems for which the swerve, the turn, the sudden change in direction are integral, can we begin to articulate a precise appreciation? Is there a describable and individualistic lyricism of swerving?"Hank Lazer, in "Lyricism of the Swerve: The Poetry of Rae Armantrout" (in Lyric & Spirit: Selected Essays 1996-2008 (Richmond, CA: Omnidawn, 2008), pp. 95-126; and American Women Poets in the 21st Century: Where Lyric Meets Language, edited by Claudia Rankine and Juliana Spahr (Middletown, CT: Wesleyan, 2002), pp. 27-51). What Leslie Ullman calls the "center" of a poem largely is the poem's turn.Leslie Ullman, "A 'Dark Star' Passes through It."

Importance

Author and historian Paul Fussell in a book in which he never uses the word 'volta' talks generally of the poetic turn as "indispensable".Paul Fussell, Poetic Meter and Poetic Form, revised edition (New York: McGraw-Hill, Inc., 1979), p. 115. He states further that "the turn is the dramatic and climactic center of the poem, the place where the intellectual or emotional method of release first becomes clear and possible. Surely no sonnet succeeds as a sonnet that does not execute at the turn something analogous to the general kinds of 'release' with which the reader's muscles and nervous system are familiar."Paul Fussell, Poetic Meter and Poetic Form, revised edition (New York: McGraw-Hill, Inc., 1979), pp. 115-116.

According to poet-critic Phillis Levin, "We could say that for the sonnet, the volta is the seat of its soul."Phillis Levin, "Introduction," The Penguin Book of the Sonnet: 500 Years of a Classic Tradition in English (New York: Penguin, 2001), p. xxxix. Additionally, Levin states that "the arrangement of lines into patterns of sound serves a function we could call architectural, for these various acoustical partitions accentuate the element that gives the sonnet its unique force and character: the volta, the 'turn' that introduces into the poem a possibility for transformation, like a moment of grace".Phillis Levin, "Introduction," The Penguin Book of the Sonnet: 500 Years of a Classic Tradition in English (New York: Penguin, 2001), p. xxxix.

Called the volta in sonnets, the turn is a vital part of almost all poems. Poet-critic Ellen Bryant Voigt states, "The sonnet's volta, or 'turn'...has become an inherent expectation for most short lyric poems."Ellen Bryant Voigt, The Art of Syntax: Rhythm of Thought, Rhythm of Song (Minneapolis, MN: Graywolf, 2009). Poet-critic T.S. Eliot (in his essay on Andrew Marvell, where he discusses longer poems than sonnets and does not use the term voltà) calls the turn in general "one of the most important means of poetic effect since Homer."T.S. Eliot, "Andrew Marvell," Selected Essays, 1917-1932 (New York: Harcourt, Brace and Company, 1932). Kim Addonizio refers to the turn as "[t]he leap from one synapse to another, one thought to a further thought, one level of understanding or questioning to being in the presence of the mystery". In "Levels and Opposites: Structure in Poetry", Randall Jarrell says that "a successful poem starts in one position and ends at a very different one, often a contradictory or opposite one; yet there has been no break in the unity of the poem".Randall Jarrell, "Levels and Opposites: Structure in Poetry," The Georgia Review, Vol. 50 no. 4, 1996 Such a transition is executed by the turn.

In Veering: A Theory of Literature, Nicholas Royle states, "Nowhere is [the] haphazard and disruptive strangeness of veering perhaps more evident than in the space of literature. Indeed...in a sense this is what literature is." And one central aspect of Royle's veering is the turn. Royle states, "'Veering' involves contemplating all sorts of turns, funny and otherwise." Additionally, he notes, "To engage with the verb 'to veer' is to find ourselves in Latin, French and other so-called foreign waters. We are already adrift. We must turn and turn about. Besides 'veer' itself and other words linked to the French virer, for example, there are all the words related to the Latin verb vertere ('to turn')...Then there are the inexhaustible riches of the word 'turn' (from the Latin tornare, 'to turn in a lathe', from tornus, 'turner's wheel', from Greek tornos, 'lathe')..."Nicholas Royle, Veering: A Theory of Literature (Edinburgh: Edinburgh UP, 2011).

Types In his essay "Trust the Turn: Focusing the Revision Process in Poetry", Theune suggest that there are a number of poems that can show the turn: "...ironic poems turn from set-up to punch line, emblem poems turn from description to meditation, and retrospective-prospective poems turn from past to present or future".

Poet-critic Ellen Bryant Voigt, in her essay "The Flexible Lyric" suggests that all kinds of poems turn and these poems can be classified according to the ways they turn. Poetic turns can be narrative or dramatic just as a turn might signal a move from premise to conclusion, a turn might also consist of a transition from one emotional state to another.

Ironic The ironic structure is a two-part structure which turns from making an assertion to undercutting that assertion, or pulling the rug out from underneath what (one had thought) had been established in the poem. As discussed by Christopher Bakken in "The Ironic Structure", "The ironic structure—with its building up and knocking down, its dreaming and waking—becomes the perfect instrument for a great Romantic ironist like Lord Byron, whose long poem "Don Juan" exemplifies this complicated problem.

One example of an ironic turn is "Dusk" by Rae Armantrout.

Emblem The emblem structure is a two-part structure that turns from an organized description of an object to a meditation on, a consideration of, the meaning of that object.

One example of an emblem turn is "A Green Crab's Shell" by Mark Doty.

Concessional The concessional structure is a two-part structure that turns from making concessions (that is, admitting the problems or difficulties in the argument one wants to make) to then, in fact, making the argument.

One example of a concessional turn is "Yet Do I Marvel" by Countee Cullen.

Retrospective-prospective The retrospective-prospective structure is a two-part structure that begins with a consideration of past events and then turns to look ahead to the future or else look a present situation differently.

One example of a retrospective-prospective turn is I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud (Daffodils) by William Wordsworth.

Elegy

The elegiac mode has three kinds of structures: one with a turn from grief to consolation; one with a turn from grief to the refusal of consolation; and one from grief to deeper grief.

One example of an elegiac turn (grief to consolation) is "Shell" by Harriet Brown.

Dialectical argument

According to poet John Beer, the dialectical argument structure is essentially a three-part structure. It turns from thesis (one argumentative position) to antithesis (a counterpoint to the thesis) to a synthesis, which combines the two seemingly opposing views.

One example of a poem with a dialectical argument is "Some Days" by Billy Collins.

Descriptive meditating

According to poet Corey Marks, the descriptive-meditative structure is a kind of dramatic monologue that has three parts: it opens with the description of a scene, then (often due to an external trigger) turns to an interior meditation (for example, the expression and/or consideration of memories, concerns, anticipation), and then turns to a re-description of the scene, a scene that now seems different due to the changed mindset of the poem's speaker.

One example of a poem with a descriptive meditating turn is "Tintern Abbey" by William Wordsworth.

Mid-course

According to poet Jerry Harp, a poem that employs a mid-course turn is one that employs a particularly sharp, radical turn.

One example of a poem with a mid-course turn is "Old Man Traveling" by William Wordsworth.

Dolphin turn

According to Peter Sacks in "You Only Guide Me by Surprise": Poetry and the Dolphin's Turn, the dolphin's turn is "a transformative veering from one course to another, a way of being drawn off track to an unexpected destination..."Sacks, Peter, "You Only Guide Me by Surprise": Poetry and the Dolphin's Turn (California: 2007) Sacks adds: "[T]his turn is paradigmatic for the transportation system of poetry itself, both in its technical "versing", and in its thematic and figural changes."Sacks, Peter, "You Only Guide Me by Surprise": Poetry and the Dolphin's Turn (California: 2007) The dolphin is associated with such turning, of course, because it is a creature that itself is always transgressing boundaries, leaping and diving. The dolphin turn "breaks the surface between two elements, perhaps as the poem breaks from silence to sound and back, line after line, leaping and turning through what differentiates poetry from prose: its more frequent encounters with wordlessness, its high quota of turns, both of speech and thought, and of actual lineation, its navigating according to its own frequency even as it finds its course, responsively, by echolocation, by soundings."Sacks, Peter, "You Only Guide Me by Surprise": Poetry and the Dolphin's Turn (California: 2007)

Some examples of the dolphin turn include:

"Homeric Hymn to Pythian Apollo " Rainer Maria Rilke's "Delphine" Osip Mandelstam's "There is no need for speech"

By genre

Haiku Haiku typically involve juxtaposition, or turning, which often occurs through a pivot word—a word that causes the poem to change directions, known in Japanese poetics as the kireji. This is discussed in Lee Gurga's Haiku: A Poet's Guide.Gurga, Lee. Haiku: A Poet's Guide (Modern Haiku Press, Lincoln IL 2003) Betty Drevniok describes the haiku's turn in Aware: A Haiku Primer by explaining that haiku must be written using the principles of comparison, contrast, or association. She says, "This technique provides the pivot on which the reader's thought turns and expands."

Sijo The sijo, a Korean poem of 43 to 45 syllables, traditionally contains a turn in the third line which moves away from the theme developed in the first two lines.

Sonnets