Hi Robert, nice to meet you! I happen to know a lot about poetic meter: in bouts of ADHD hyperfocus I studied it obsessively (I even know a little about its historical development), and I have a very practised, attenuated ear. I've also written many posts on meter (first on Wordpress, then Quora, and I've contributed to many discussions on particular poems here on Substack).
I have...a *lot* to say in response to your post! Hard to know where to start!
One thing I'd like to clarify, so I can tell to what extent we're on the same page: being as specific as possible, how would you define the difference between an accentual meter and an accentual-syllabic meter?
I'll share a few of my old posts that are directly relevant to some of your comments, and some of the passages you've shared.
The lines you quote from Richard ii and Tamburlaine are headless: they omit the opening offbeat. Elizabethan/Jacobean dramatists employed the occasional headless line for expressive effect. I took a deep dive into exploring headless lines & meters in this post - in which I *also* discuss the absolutely pervasive assumption that metrical templates rise or fall (they do not! It is only at the very beginning and end of a line that a metrical template has a bearing on rising or falling patterns): https://qr.ae/pGeXBo
Speaking of Tudor dramatic verse in regards to your line, "My lot is here in Corinth, among", where you omitted the word "now", creating a natural pause after "Corinth" - yep, Shakespeare would have recognised this metrical technique too! You omitted a beat (in this instance, the 4th beat in a pentameter line). This is a technique he employed *very* sparsely, but to great effect: I provided examples in this post (in the section on "Missing Syllables". By the by, I have since abandoned the Greek terminology I used for many of the variations I describe in this blog, in favour of descriptive English terms, e.g. I now call a "choriamb" a "swing"): https://wp.me/p6PiU4-T
Here's a wonderful example of a phantom beat from the pen of Sylvia Plath: https://qr.ae/pAYyrV
Milton became just a little more experimental with his meter in the second half of Paradise Lost, but the main reason modern readers can find his lines hard to scan is because he was so bold with his contractions. The same is true of late Shakespeare, and I explored the contemporary principles of expansion and contraction in this post: https://wp.me/p6PiU4-pR
As it happens, I once provided a scansion of the opening sentence of Paradise Lost in response to a Quora question (note that I only marked beat placements; for simplicity, I ignored heavy offbeats and light beats, even though such variation plays a huge role in expressive effect): https://qr.ae/pAYygC
Within that scansion I *italicised* beat displacements, and the technical principles of beat displacement within iambic meter are incredibly important to understand when discussing or analysing meter. I cover those principles here (I think of this as my bread and butter post when it comes to communicating the technical principles of iambic meter): https://qr.ae/pGeXLZ
It's also important to distinguish between tight traditional metrical variation (which I covered in the above post), less orthodox variation (such as omitting syllables, which I covered in the first Wordpress post I linked), and loose variation. I compared two Robert Frost sonnets at the end of this post, both of which employ anapests - one very sparingly, the other liberally: https://qr.ae/pY0nT0
I briefly discuss the rhythmic properties of the 5-beat pentameter at the end of this post (as well as some other useful tips & links for beginners): https://qr.ae/pvC4Jn
Oh, gosh, that's a lot! I hope this hasn't been presumptuous of me, and that at least some of what I've shared is of interest to you! It's a fun topic, and I enjoy discussing it!
Hi Keir, thanks for your comments. That is definitely a lot to take in. And thanks for your links. I read a few of them, and you've certainly dug into the topic, and know your stuff.
I would say, traditionally, accentual meter is when you measure the line according to the number of accents (what accent is is a whole other discussion) and accentual-syllabic meter is when you measure the lines according to the number of accents and syllables. But I also think you could also characterize both types of meter as approximations or rationales for keeping time. One looser, the other stricter.
A question for you now: You mention the offbeats being omitted in those lines of Shakespeare and Marlowe. What do you make of the pauses after "Stay" and "Beauty"? Do you read them as a metrical part of the lines?
And you also mention in one of your posts that iambic poems make use of anapests. What do you think is going on there? How is it possible that such substitutions can be made without 'ruining' the rhythm?
These are interesting questions, and I shall find time to respond to them tomorrow! I don't know if you read the post in which I compare two Robert Frost sonnets, but if you read that as well as the section on "Anapests" in my post on the principles of expanding and contracting words to fit the meter, it'll make it easier to answer your last question! (And, of course, certainly not all iambic poems do make use of anapests. You will not, for instance, find a single full blown anapest in Shakespeare's sonnets or narrative poems!)
It does not surprise me, by the way, that the opening stanza of Sonnet 29 threw you - but it is very scannable once you know the principles. The opening line has two displaced beats, and line 3, a contraction:
WHEN in disGRACE | with FOR | tune and MEN'S EYES,
i ALL alONE beWEEP my OUTcast STATE,
and TROUble DEAF heav'n WITH my BOOTless CRIES,
In line 1, the opening beat is recoiled, producing a swinging "DUM-di-di-DUM" (which I call simply a "swing"), and the 4th beat is pumped forward, producing "di-di-DUM-DUM" (which I call a "pump").
Contraction of words with a medial V was commonplace, and such a contraction is required of "heaven" in line 3 (the V would either have been pronounced very quickly and lightly, or replaced with a nasal plosive. You can take your pick!)
It's very much the timing *of* the syllables rather than timing being in some way more important *than* the syllables. For instance, too long a pause after "When..." at the opening will destroy the rhythmic swing, and rob the whole line of momentum (that's the kind of mistake I frequently hear from Shakespearean actors, and it immediately jars to my ear. There is no comma after "When" in the original Quarto, by the way).
I like the name 'swing.' In music I think it's called a 'push' when you move the note forward before the downbeat. I think it's also possible to read the opening as iambic. "when IN." I also like to read the third line with an emphasis on "HEAVen" rather than "DEAF," and treat "trouble" as one syllable.
It works both ways, I think, depending on what you want to contract, and where you want to put the prosodic stress.
I think this is where Omond has a point, because, for him, the reason that different readings might work implies that there's a more fundamental principle at work in meter. The variety is possible because of the underlying uniformity of these isochronous periods, which the words fit themselves to.
Absolutely some metered lines can be delivered in more than one way - within certain parameters. As you say, there is certainly no metrical reason you can't stress "in" instead of "When" in the opening line (there is no other example in Shakespeare, however, of "trouble" being scannable as a monosyllable, so I think we can safely discount that one! The closest he comes is the combination of "trouble" and a word opening on a vowel counting as two syllables: "trouble us" or "trouble him". Technically, "him" opens on a consonant, but H was often dropped).
But what are those certain parameters? If we're able to contract 'heaven,' then 'trouble' doesn't seem like it can be 'safely discounted.' They both have that schwa at the end, which you mentioned in one of your posts is frequently elided. And I didn't mean to say that we actually pronounce the words as one syllable, I meant to say that we act as if they are pronounced as one. I think that either could be compressed so as to easily fit. But then what's that thing they're fitted into? What is the rule trying trying to accommodate for?
Oh, as you mention prosodic stress, I wrote a post on that too! It is a peculiar advantage of metered verse that meter can be exploited to direct the reader to place emphasis on a word they might not have expected: https://qr.ae/pAYgPl
(And touching on what we were just discussing, the key line can also be delivered in one of two ways, as it has an *optional* beat displacement)
By the way, you made a pentameter of one of Frost's tetrameters! "but I have MILES to GO beFORE i SLEEP" should be "and MILES to GO beFORE i SLEEP"! The "But" came a line earlier: "But I have promises to keep".
"I admit I was once confused by the way that rhythm in a poem could continue even when the feet that made it up were replaced. I lay the blame partly on my tone deaf childhood. I was terrible at music. I couldn’t keep a beat to save my life, and I still have trouble distinguishing notes. I have whatever the opposite of perfect pitch is.4 So, when I was in high school, I could hear the lexical stress in words, but not always the rhythm of the lines my teachers would read aloud, unless they exaggerated the accent. “the WOODS are LOVEly DARK and DEEP / but I have MILES to GO beFORE i SLEEP.” But when their voices fell back into something like the normal cadence of speech, the sense of the rhythm would fade."
This is me. I also struggle with scanning poetry. When I took poetry classes in college I had my best friend scan my poems for me when we needed to do that for homework. I can talk about the effect of different scansion techniques once the line is scanned, but I still struggle to do the scanning unless the line is very regular iambic pentameter.
This is probably not unrelated to my gravitating towards writing free-verse. This and my early and passionate love for T.S. Eliot.
I do like and appreciate formal, metrical verse. I just don't necessarily think that way when I write. Though I do have a sense of the sound and rhythm of the lines I write. I'm just never sure whether they sound the same way to the reader that they do to me. I've always found the whole thing a bit mystifying.
That said while I find the *idea* of Ormond's approach as you describe it freeing, I'm not quite sure I can really get the idea of syllables filling up time either. That doesn't seem much less mystifying. Maybe because I still find musical time mystifying.
Mostly I stick to loose syllabics. Sometimes lines want to be 9 or 11 instead of 10 and I let them. But I'd be hard pressed to justify why. And maybe I only think it works while people who have a better sense of rhythm are left scratching their heads and wondering what's wrong with me.
We're both early lovers of T.S. Eliot. It's amazing the sort of staying power he has in the imagination, even after a hundred years.
It is mystifying, why some lines work and others don't. Sometimes it doesn't seem like it matters at all, but then, if you look at it a certain way, suddenly a preposition or a comma makes all the difference. That to me is part of the fun of writing: getting it to sound the way you want it to, even when how you want it to sound isn't exactly clear in the first place!
"even when how you want it to sound isn't exactly clear in the first place!" Exactly. I'm not sure what I'm aiming for, but I know it when it sounds right. Recently I looked at an older poem of mine and I could see that there were a few lines that were just wrong and I had to change a word or a bit of punctuation and then suddenly they were fine. I often don't know what the punctuation is until a lot of time has passed. So mostly my early drafts have no punctuation or very little. Then when I'm editing later, after the initial feeling of composition has gone stale, my editing brain can see what my composing brain can't. And I have no idea why my brain does that.
One of these days I'm going to get around to writing some essays about the Four Quartets. I think maybe as I'm getting to the age Eliot was when he wrote them I might have something to say about them. When I was younger all I could do was be in awe.
Four Quartets are like something from a different age. They sound as old and wise as the Upanishads. I’d put them and the Duino Elegies up there as the greatest literary achievements of the 20th century.
I have those two kinds of brains, too. I do have to punctuate first drafts, to get a sense of how I was originally hearing it, but often I’m mishearing it, and when I fix it later, suddenly it comes into focus. There’s something dialogic about it.
Really great exploration, Robert, and you highlight several great ways in which meter leads to synchronicity between time and meaning.
What I'd mention, though, is that there's another relationship between poetry and time that I think gets lost today (and in my opinion, to our detriment):
Modern poetry is mostly a form of personal expression, with the book being the most common communication medium. However, for the vast majority of its history, poetry was, among other things, part of various rituals in which physical participation and oration were the format. During important events, it was through poetry, storytelling, music, dance, and interaction with the land, the participants themselves—not just their words—shifted from regular time into a kind of mythic time. This kind of time was very different. It was cyclical, and attendees participated in eternal cycles in concert with their ancestors and their successors, the land on which they lived and the celestial bodies above. This was how they aligned temporally with sacred harmonies and spiritual dimensions.
We don't like to mention this kind of thing anymore, I think because we consider it embarrassing, silly, irrational and not very Christian-like. But even after Christianization, this approach to spiritual practice through ritual, location, and various art forms continued across many cultures. (Heck, I'd make the case that today, some Orthodox and African American congregations still employ these components in their regular services, just in different ways.)
It used to be through poetry and other sibling art forms that mythic time could be entered into through ritual. I'm not sure it has been to our benefit to rid ourselves of that.
Thanks for the input James. I think I know what you mean. In Greek there are two different words for time, Kronos and Kairos. To my understanding, kronos is chronological time, a succession of equal moments, but Kairos is the special moment, the crucial moment. It's a perception of time such that time feels longer, more important, more profound These terms carry over into Christianity, too.
Certainly when we read a good poem, or listen to a good song, when we're engaged or in flow, we perceive time differently. And we can do this individually or in communities. Church is that communal, ritual feeling of time, no?
Yep, that’s it! Kronos and Kairos is a pretty good model.
I'd also say that getting engrossed in a story or song, or Church services is a bit like this, but it has fewer components than it used to. For example, albums we love are awesome of course, but far better are concerts, in which physical community is also brought in with the music. There are still some things lacking even in concerts, though, because "Hello St. Louis!" is just about all you can expect in terms of connection to the land, and the religious component's often nonexistent. Sure, concerts or even getting into a novel are still in keeping with ritual traditions and mythic time, but because we've separated poetry from other art forms along with experiencing nature, spiritual practice, etc., both the amplitude and the bandwidth coming from our modern practices is often a lot lower.
You're talking to someone who's been to Burning Man a couple of times, and lots of music festivals, haha, so I know that feeling. I've started several drafts in the past about what that sort of primitive, communal feeling is like, when everyone is in it together after three or four days, on the same frequency, but never nailed the writing. It's a trip.
Hahah I’d love to read that! Maybe try poetry instead? Just an idea, but it might work better in some strange way. Either way, sign me up.
(It’s weird to me how separate everything is now. You either get full-on Dionysian shenanigans like at Burning Man, or you hit the textbooks at university. Not to harp on it but I wonder whether these stark separations are good for us. Might be good for the classroom and community gatherings to loosen up once again, just as it might be for music festivals to try to lead fans somewhere specific and meaningful rather than just a good time.)
It's probably good that they're separate, since they have different aims. If you're trying to 'lead' fans somewhere, for example, then you're undermining the nature of the Dionysian, which is an expression of the irrational. The way you might join them is with something like a religious substructure that admits of both. That way you don't sacrifice one for the other, because both are understood to be part of that structure, and essential.
Another terrific essay. I learn so much from you, and for that I am grateful. There's much to consider here. Several readings--at least--are necessary. For now, I just want to comment on the revision to your poem, the removal of "now," that you mention at the end. I agree that the revised line is better--much better, in my opinion--than the original. "Now," of course, is an adverb. As someone who writes in meter--and in a sense, plots his poems--do you find there are certain types of words--parts of speech, I guess the term is--that are commonly used to "pad the meter," to sort of fill in the chinks? I ask because as a reader I sometimes find myself wanting to eliminate certain words as being superfluous, and these words tend to be of a certain type (adverbs and conjunctives primarily). Your discarded "now" is a perfect example of the kind of word that seems to me mere expedient.
Thank you Peter. Yeah definitely. I think the more you write in meter, the more you have an ear for those kinds of 'pad words.' Adverbs, articles, prepositions. Words that tend not to take a stress relative to 'more important' words. Although I put 'more important' in quotes, because those little words are actually important, and have influence over the line. In free verse maybe they seem more like padding, whereas in meter they're part of maintaining and working with the underlying rhythm. Sometimes you can lose them and not lose the rhythm, but sometimes you take them out and the whole thing is knocked off balance. You can overedit the poem, thinking you're making it tighter, but then you lose the rhythm, and the voice, that fit the subject so well.
Of course you don't have to work in meter to get a sense of them either. You work in such a compressed form that you have to be aware of them keenly too. Is your first instinct always to cut things like that as a way of keeping the poem compressed?
"Knocked off balance" I know how that feels, Madysyn. Yes, my first instinct is always to cut things like that as a way of keeping the poem compressed. You'll hear from me about Meter later!
The other main difference between poetry and prosperity is the idea of narrative plot so that the purpose of reading is to get to the end of the sentence, the paragraph, the page, the chapter and eventually the book. The poem on the other hand is to dwell on each line, rhyme, stanza, verse. We do get to the end of the poem bit that is not the sole objective. Thanks very much for your article and it's philosophy of time. David Evans.
Delightfully lucid. The examples you quote beautifully Illustrate your metrical theories. When I encountered meter in high school it seemed completely made up because I could only hear it when the teacher was overemphasizing the words to stress. In college I gained a tiny bit of clarity and finally grabbed hold of the heartbeat rhythm of iambic pentameter. In grad school I could hear various feet and identify them hesitantly. I wonder if my halting progress is just the natural progression of learning to hear this language, or if the fact that it was always oversimplified actually confounded me more since the exception often obscured the rule. I am tempted to direct my students to your article and see if encountering it with such explicit detail could fast forward their own progression. I need to read this again and really let it sink in. Thank you!
Thank you Abigail. It sounds like we had similar experiences. A lot of my students are always surprised when I first draw their attention to how stress affects meaning. Lexical stress, like DEsert vs. deSSERT, and prosodic stress (I repeat the line "I never said say we should kill them" over and over again, putting stress on a different word each time and this blows some of their minds). Partly it's because language is the water in which we swim, and we're not always conscious of how it works. You don't even have to be conscious of it to use it. You just imitate what's effective.
But partly it's the other reason you bring up. We oversimplify meter when we teach it, which is fine, because you have to start somewhere, but that way of teaching can't account for variations and discrepancies. The smarter kids pick on that very quickly.
Enjoyed this! I had to proctor standardized tests on Tuesday, and as usual, I memorized some poem as I walk around monitor students. This year's was Frost's "The Need of Being Versed in Country Things." I was amazed (as usual) at the deceptive simplicity of his diction, but also (to your point) at the way his meter "breaks" but sustains the rhythm—like a drummer adjusting how many hits in a measure (I think someone else mentioned that in the comments). A roll here, a down beat, a paradiddle line, etc. Good stuff.
Thank you Tullius. Frost is, for me, the ideal of the marriage between the metrical and the patterns of common speech. In his best poems it feels as though he's just talking to you, yet the plainness is so meticulously constructed. It's where all his irony comes from.
The first line in "Country Things" is like that. "The house had gone to bring again". Perfectly metrical and idiomatic. It's so deceptively plainspoken that you could easily miss the fact that he's talking about a house burning to the ground.
Hi Robert, since your last article on Omond, I’ve actually read his book, and found the book helpful and clarifying in all the ways you seem to have also. So that’s cool. I found the notion of each period having a heavy beat as the bell ringing the time helpful. It isn’t the feet that does it so much as the timing. I was going to write an article on this, but it seems you’ve beaten me to it.
I think this approach opens up the right kind of flexibility.
Thanks for your comment Isaiah. That is pretty cool, to hear that someone else got some use out of it. I think you're exactly right. It isn't the feet so much as the timing. That sums it up nicely. Apologies for beating you to it, but if you ever have something to add, I'd love to read it.
You've struck a very nice balance between freedom and responsibility here. I feel like almost every writer on prosody leans too far in one direction or the other.
”It’s not the syllables themselves that make the meter. Rather, it’s better to think of syllables as filling up the time a poem is set to. Poetic Meter, like a time signature in music, conditions us to certain periods of time and not necessarily to syllabic quantity or accent."
Your clarity here is impressive. I think the crucial, often-missed point is that every metrical line has to both tell you what time it is ”set to” and do something more. Metrical poets are a bit like Phil Collins, I think, in that they have to sing and play the drums at the same time.
Thank you Sean. That's a great simile. I totally agree. What I like about Omond is the practicality of the theory. It's not overly rigid, the way most meter is taught. And it identifies that interplay that you mention, that you have to simultaneously set the rhythm with the words and do something more. That's what's so satisfying about verse when you do nail it. You've walked a tightrope between disorder and order, and it sounds good.
Thank you Barsley. Sitwell seemed very aware of the musical qualities of verse, especially jazz, which does use a lot of syncopation. I'll try and find a good example from her.
If you can find a copy of her "Notes on Reading my Poetry" - which afaik is only available in the Penguin selection - then do read it. It's simultaneously brilliant and bonkers.
I appreciate this. For me, poetry is about rhythm and meter. In music I always found the key to playing something "new" was to find a new way to "swing" not finding new notes. Rhythm, time, tempo, and space are fare more variable than the notes available. My own poems start out that same way...a rhythm or beat in my head, and then I fill that beat with words. It may not be very good, but it's what draws me to poetry.
That's probably why I dislike most "modern" poetry; unless it has a rhythm it just doesn't work for me...
Thank you Ernie. I feel similarly. Of course you can get rhythm from normal prose cadences. Frost calls them the sound of sense. Sometimes I hear that in my head first. Other times it's a definite musical rhythm, which words can fall into, like you describe. The difference between them is often nebulous, though. Something to explore in a further essay.
No mention of rap, where the time (segmented with a fat bass drum thump) is strict and metronomic? And weak syllables matter way less then the relationship between strong syllables and perfect time? And the strong syllables go on and off the beat to increase and decrease the energy--as they do in pop and folk and rock, only more intricately?
Anyway, seems like an strange omission. For what IS in the essay, I am grateful. Thank you!
Hi Robert, nice to meet you! I happen to know a lot about poetic meter: in bouts of ADHD hyperfocus I studied it obsessively (I even know a little about its historical development), and I have a very practised, attenuated ear. I've also written many posts on meter (first on Wordpress, then Quora, and I've contributed to many discussions on particular poems here on Substack).
I have...a *lot* to say in response to your post! Hard to know where to start!
One thing I'd like to clarify, so I can tell to what extent we're on the same page: being as specific as possible, how would you define the difference between an accentual meter and an accentual-syllabic meter?
I'll share a few of my old posts that are directly relevant to some of your comments, and some of the passages you've shared.
The lines you quote from Richard ii and Tamburlaine are headless: they omit the opening offbeat. Elizabethan/Jacobean dramatists employed the occasional headless line for expressive effect. I took a deep dive into exploring headless lines & meters in this post - in which I *also* discuss the absolutely pervasive assumption that metrical templates rise or fall (they do not! It is only at the very beginning and end of a line that a metrical template has a bearing on rising or falling patterns): https://qr.ae/pGeXBo
Speaking of Tudor dramatic verse in regards to your line, "My lot is here in Corinth, among", where you omitted the word "now", creating a natural pause after "Corinth" - yep, Shakespeare would have recognised this metrical technique too! You omitted a beat (in this instance, the 4th beat in a pentameter line). This is a technique he employed *very* sparsely, but to great effect: I provided examples in this post (in the section on "Missing Syllables". By the by, I have since abandoned the Greek terminology I used for many of the variations I describe in this blog, in favour of descriptive English terms, e.g. I now call a "choriamb" a "swing"): https://wp.me/p6PiU4-T
Here's a wonderful example of a phantom beat from the pen of Sylvia Plath: https://qr.ae/pAYyrV
Milton became just a little more experimental with his meter in the second half of Paradise Lost, but the main reason modern readers can find his lines hard to scan is because he was so bold with his contractions. The same is true of late Shakespeare, and I explored the contemporary principles of expansion and contraction in this post: https://wp.me/p6PiU4-pR
As it happens, I once provided a scansion of the opening sentence of Paradise Lost in response to a Quora question (note that I only marked beat placements; for simplicity, I ignored heavy offbeats and light beats, even though such variation plays a huge role in expressive effect): https://qr.ae/pAYygC
Within that scansion I *italicised* beat displacements, and the technical principles of beat displacement within iambic meter are incredibly important to understand when discussing or analysing meter. I cover those principles here (I think of this as my bread and butter post when it comes to communicating the technical principles of iambic meter): https://qr.ae/pGeXLZ
It's also important to distinguish between tight traditional metrical variation (which I covered in the above post), less orthodox variation (such as omitting syllables, which I covered in the first Wordpress post I linked), and loose variation. I compared two Robert Frost sonnets at the end of this post, both of which employ anapests - one very sparingly, the other liberally: https://qr.ae/pY0nT0
I briefly discuss the rhythmic properties of the 5-beat pentameter at the end of this post (as well as some other useful tips & links for beginners): https://qr.ae/pvC4Jn
And, finally, here I provide a photographic example of my own approach to scansion: an approach I find nuanced, tight, logical and consistent, and far more intuitive than simply chopping up the line into individual "feet": https://substack.com/profile/16615725-keir/note/c-101889426?utm_source=notes-share-action&r=9w4rx
Oh, gosh, that's a lot! I hope this hasn't been presumptuous of me, and that at least some of what I've shared is of interest to you! It's a fun topic, and I enjoy discussing it!
Hi Keir, thanks for your comments. That is definitely a lot to take in. And thanks for your links. I read a few of them, and you've certainly dug into the topic, and know your stuff.
I would say, traditionally, accentual meter is when you measure the line according to the number of accents (what accent is is a whole other discussion) and accentual-syllabic meter is when you measure the lines according to the number of accents and syllables. But I also think you could also characterize both types of meter as approximations or rationales for keeping time. One looser, the other stricter.
A question for you now: You mention the offbeats being omitted in those lines of Shakespeare and Marlowe. What do you make of the pauses after "Stay" and "Beauty"? Do you read them as a metrical part of the lines?
And you also mention in one of your posts that iambic poems make use of anapests. What do you think is going on there? How is it possible that such substitutions can be made without 'ruining' the rhythm?
These are interesting questions, and I shall find time to respond to them tomorrow! I don't know if you read the post in which I compare two Robert Frost sonnets, but if you read that as well as the section on "Anapests" in my post on the principles of expanding and contracting words to fit the meter, it'll make it easier to answer your last question! (And, of course, certainly not all iambic poems do make use of anapests. You will not, for instance, find a single full blown anapest in Shakespeare's sonnets or narrative poems!)
It does not surprise me, by the way, that the opening stanza of Sonnet 29 threw you - but it is very scannable once you know the principles. The opening line has two displaced beats, and line 3, a contraction:
WHEN in disGRACE | with FOR | tune and MEN'S EYES,
i ALL alONE beWEEP my OUTcast STATE,
and TROUble DEAF heav'n WITH my BOOTless CRIES,
In line 1, the opening beat is recoiled, producing a swinging "DUM-di-di-DUM" (which I call simply a "swing"), and the 4th beat is pumped forward, producing "di-di-DUM-DUM" (which I call a "pump").
Contraction of words with a medial V was commonplace, and such a contraction is required of "heaven" in line 3 (the V would either have been pronounced very quickly and lightly, or replaced with a nasal plosive. You can take your pick!)
It's very much the timing *of* the syllables rather than timing being in some way more important *than* the syllables. For instance, too long a pause after "When..." at the opening will destroy the rhythmic swing, and rob the whole line of momentum (that's the kind of mistake I frequently hear from Shakespearean actors, and it immediately jars to my ear. There is no comma after "When" in the original Quarto, by the way).
I like the name 'swing.' In music I think it's called a 'push' when you move the note forward before the downbeat. I think it's also possible to read the opening as iambic. "when IN." I also like to read the third line with an emphasis on "HEAVen" rather than "DEAF," and treat "trouble" as one syllable.
It works both ways, I think, depending on what you want to contract, and where you want to put the prosodic stress.
I think this is where Omond has a point, because, for him, the reason that different readings might work implies that there's a more fundamental principle at work in meter. The variety is possible because of the underlying uniformity of these isochronous periods, which the words fit themselves to.
Absolutely some metered lines can be delivered in more than one way - within certain parameters. As you say, there is certainly no metrical reason you can't stress "in" instead of "When" in the opening line (there is no other example in Shakespeare, however, of "trouble" being scannable as a monosyllable, so I think we can safely discount that one! The closest he comes is the combination of "trouble" and a word opening on a vowel counting as two syllables: "trouble us" or "trouble him". Technically, "him" opens on a consonant, but H was often dropped).
But what are those certain parameters? If we're able to contract 'heaven,' then 'trouble' doesn't seem like it can be 'safely discounted.' They both have that schwa at the end, which you mentioned in one of your posts is frequently elided. And I didn't mean to say that we actually pronounce the words as one syllable, I meant to say that we act as if they are pronounced as one. I think that either could be compressed so as to easily fit. But then what's that thing they're fitted into? What is the rule trying trying to accommodate for?
Oh, as you mention prosodic stress, I wrote a post on that too! It is a peculiar advantage of metered verse that meter can be exploited to direct the reader to place emphasis on a word they might not have expected: https://qr.ae/pAYgPl
(And touching on what we were just discussing, the key line can also be delivered in one of two ways, as it has an *optional* beat displacement)
By the way, you made a pentameter of one of Frost's tetrameters! "but I have MILES to GO beFORE i SLEEP" should be "and MILES to GO beFORE i SLEEP"! The "But" came a line earlier: "But I have promises to keep".
And thank you for catching that. I misremembered it. I've gone back and changed it!
"I admit I was once confused by the way that rhythm in a poem could continue even when the feet that made it up were replaced. I lay the blame partly on my tone deaf childhood. I was terrible at music. I couldn’t keep a beat to save my life, and I still have trouble distinguishing notes. I have whatever the opposite of perfect pitch is.4 So, when I was in high school, I could hear the lexical stress in words, but not always the rhythm of the lines my teachers would read aloud, unless they exaggerated the accent. “the WOODS are LOVEly DARK and DEEP / but I have MILES to GO beFORE i SLEEP.” But when their voices fell back into something like the normal cadence of speech, the sense of the rhythm would fade."
This is me. I also struggle with scanning poetry. When I took poetry classes in college I had my best friend scan my poems for me when we needed to do that for homework. I can talk about the effect of different scansion techniques once the line is scanned, but I still struggle to do the scanning unless the line is very regular iambic pentameter.
This is probably not unrelated to my gravitating towards writing free-verse. This and my early and passionate love for T.S. Eliot.
I do like and appreciate formal, metrical verse. I just don't necessarily think that way when I write. Though I do have a sense of the sound and rhythm of the lines I write. I'm just never sure whether they sound the same way to the reader that they do to me. I've always found the whole thing a bit mystifying.
That said while I find the *idea* of Ormond's approach as you describe it freeing, I'm not quite sure I can really get the idea of syllables filling up time either. That doesn't seem much less mystifying. Maybe because I still find musical time mystifying.
Mostly I stick to loose syllabics. Sometimes lines want to be 9 or 11 instead of 10 and I let them. But I'd be hard pressed to justify why. And maybe I only think it works while people who have a better sense of rhythm are left scratching their heads and wondering what's wrong with me.
We're both early lovers of T.S. Eliot. It's amazing the sort of staying power he has in the imagination, even after a hundred years.
It is mystifying, why some lines work and others don't. Sometimes it doesn't seem like it matters at all, but then, if you look at it a certain way, suddenly a preposition or a comma makes all the difference. That to me is part of the fun of writing: getting it to sound the way you want it to, even when how you want it to sound isn't exactly clear in the first place!
"even when how you want it to sound isn't exactly clear in the first place!" Exactly. I'm not sure what I'm aiming for, but I know it when it sounds right. Recently I looked at an older poem of mine and I could see that there were a few lines that were just wrong and I had to change a word or a bit of punctuation and then suddenly they were fine. I often don't know what the punctuation is until a lot of time has passed. So mostly my early drafts have no punctuation or very little. Then when I'm editing later, after the initial feeling of composition has gone stale, my editing brain can see what my composing brain can't. And I have no idea why my brain does that.
One of these days I'm going to get around to writing some essays about the Four Quartets. I think maybe as I'm getting to the age Eliot was when he wrote them I might have something to say about them. When I was younger all I could do was be in awe.
Four Quartets are like something from a different age. They sound as old and wise as the Upanishads. I’d put them and the Duino Elegies up there as the greatest literary achievements of the 20th century.
I have those two kinds of brains, too. I do have to punctuate first drafts, to get a sense of how I was originally hearing it, but often I’m mishearing it, and when I fix it later, suddenly it comes into focus. There’s something dialogic about it.
Hi again, Melanie! For what it's worth, the numerous links I provide here cover my own take on meter. Robert's asked me some questions, so I guess you can follow our conversation! https://open.substack.com/pub/robertcharboneau/p/how-poetry-figures-time?r=9w4rx&utm_campaign=comment-list-share-cta&utm_medium=web&comments=true&commentId=109933931
Really great exploration, Robert, and you highlight several great ways in which meter leads to synchronicity between time and meaning.
What I'd mention, though, is that there's another relationship between poetry and time that I think gets lost today (and in my opinion, to our detriment):
Modern poetry is mostly a form of personal expression, with the book being the most common communication medium. However, for the vast majority of its history, poetry was, among other things, part of various rituals in which physical participation and oration were the format. During important events, it was through poetry, storytelling, music, dance, and interaction with the land, the participants themselves—not just their words—shifted from regular time into a kind of mythic time. This kind of time was very different. It was cyclical, and attendees participated in eternal cycles in concert with their ancestors and their successors, the land on which they lived and the celestial bodies above. This was how they aligned temporally with sacred harmonies and spiritual dimensions.
We don't like to mention this kind of thing anymore, I think because we consider it embarrassing, silly, irrational and not very Christian-like. But even after Christianization, this approach to spiritual practice through ritual, location, and various art forms continued across many cultures. (Heck, I'd make the case that today, some Orthodox and African American congregations still employ these components in their regular services, just in different ways.)
It used to be through poetry and other sibling art forms that mythic time could be entered into through ritual. I'm not sure it has been to our benefit to rid ourselves of that.
Thanks for the input James. I think I know what you mean. In Greek there are two different words for time, Kronos and Kairos. To my understanding, kronos is chronological time, a succession of equal moments, but Kairos is the special moment, the crucial moment. It's a perception of time such that time feels longer, more important, more profound These terms carry over into Christianity, too.
Certainly when we read a good poem, or listen to a good song, when we're engaged or in flow, we perceive time differently. And we can do this individually or in communities. Church is that communal, ritual feeling of time, no?
Yep, that’s it! Kronos and Kairos is a pretty good model.
I'd also say that getting engrossed in a story or song, or Church services is a bit like this, but it has fewer components than it used to. For example, albums we love are awesome of course, but far better are concerts, in which physical community is also brought in with the music. There are still some things lacking even in concerts, though, because "Hello St. Louis!" is just about all you can expect in terms of connection to the land, and the religious component's often nonexistent. Sure, concerts or even getting into a novel are still in keeping with ritual traditions and mythic time, but because we've separated poetry from other art forms along with experiencing nature, spiritual practice, etc., both the amplitude and the bandwidth coming from our modern practices is often a lot lower.
You're talking to someone who's been to Burning Man a couple of times, and lots of music festivals, haha, so I know that feeling. I've started several drafts in the past about what that sort of primitive, communal feeling is like, when everyone is in it together after three or four days, on the same frequency, but never nailed the writing. It's a trip.
Hahah I’d love to read that! Maybe try poetry instead? Just an idea, but it might work better in some strange way. Either way, sign me up.
(It’s weird to me how separate everything is now. You either get full-on Dionysian shenanigans like at Burning Man, or you hit the textbooks at university. Not to harp on it but I wonder whether these stark separations are good for us. Might be good for the classroom and community gatherings to loosen up once again, just as it might be for music festivals to try to lead fans somewhere specific and meaningful rather than just a good time.)
It's probably good that they're separate, since they have different aims. If you're trying to 'lead' fans somewhere, for example, then you're undermining the nature of the Dionysian, which is an expression of the irrational. The way you might join them is with something like a religious substructure that admits of both. That way you don't sacrifice one for the other, because both are understood to be part of that structure, and essential.
Another terrific essay. I learn so much from you, and for that I am grateful. There's much to consider here. Several readings--at least--are necessary. For now, I just want to comment on the revision to your poem, the removal of "now," that you mention at the end. I agree that the revised line is better--much better, in my opinion--than the original. "Now," of course, is an adverb. As someone who writes in meter--and in a sense, plots his poems--do you find there are certain types of words--parts of speech, I guess the term is--that are commonly used to "pad the meter," to sort of fill in the chinks? I ask because as a reader I sometimes find myself wanting to eliminate certain words as being superfluous, and these words tend to be of a certain type (adverbs and conjunctives primarily). Your discarded "now" is a perfect example of the kind of word that seems to me mere expedient.
Thank you Peter. Yeah definitely. I think the more you write in meter, the more you have an ear for those kinds of 'pad words.' Adverbs, articles, prepositions. Words that tend not to take a stress relative to 'more important' words. Although I put 'more important' in quotes, because those little words are actually important, and have influence over the line. In free verse maybe they seem more like padding, whereas in meter they're part of maintaining and working with the underlying rhythm. Sometimes you can lose them and not lose the rhythm, but sometimes you take them out and the whole thing is knocked off balance. You can overedit the poem, thinking you're making it tighter, but then you lose the rhythm, and the voice, that fit the subject so well.
Of course you don't have to work in meter to get a sense of them either. You work in such a compressed form that you have to be aware of them keenly too. Is your first instinct always to cut things like that as a way of keeping the poem compressed?
"Knocked off balance" I know how that feels, Madysyn. Yes, my first instinct is always to cut things like that as a way of keeping the poem compressed. You'll hear from me about Meter later!
The other main difference between poetry and prosperity is the idea of narrative plot so that the purpose of reading is to get to the end of the sentence, the paragraph, the page, the chapter and eventually the book. The poem on the other hand is to dwell on each line, rhyme, stanza, verse. We do get to the end of the poem bit that is not the sole objective. Thanks very much for your article and it's philosophy of time. David Evans.
Thank you David. Yes, I think poetry is meant to be reread and recalled and dwelt on in a different way than a novel
Superb essay, Robert! It clarifies so much, thank you.
Thank you A.D. That's great to hear!
Delightfully lucid. The examples you quote beautifully Illustrate your metrical theories. When I encountered meter in high school it seemed completely made up because I could only hear it when the teacher was overemphasizing the words to stress. In college I gained a tiny bit of clarity and finally grabbed hold of the heartbeat rhythm of iambic pentameter. In grad school I could hear various feet and identify them hesitantly. I wonder if my halting progress is just the natural progression of learning to hear this language, or if the fact that it was always oversimplified actually confounded me more since the exception often obscured the rule. I am tempted to direct my students to your article and see if encountering it with such explicit detail could fast forward their own progression. I need to read this again and really let it sink in. Thank you!
Thank you Abigail. It sounds like we had similar experiences. A lot of my students are always surprised when I first draw their attention to how stress affects meaning. Lexical stress, like DEsert vs. deSSERT, and prosodic stress (I repeat the line "I never said say we should kill them" over and over again, putting stress on a different word each time and this blows some of their minds). Partly it's because language is the water in which we swim, and we're not always conscious of how it works. You don't even have to be conscious of it to use it. You just imitate what's effective.
But partly it's the other reason you bring up. We oversimplify meter when we teach it, which is fine, because you have to start somewhere, but that way of teaching can't account for variations and discrepancies. The smarter kids pick on that very quickly.
Enjoyed this! I had to proctor standardized tests on Tuesday, and as usual, I memorized some poem as I walk around monitor students. This year's was Frost's "The Need of Being Versed in Country Things." I was amazed (as usual) at the deceptive simplicity of his diction, but also (to your point) at the way his meter "breaks" but sustains the rhythm—like a drummer adjusting how many hits in a measure (I think someone else mentioned that in the comments). A roll here, a down beat, a paradiddle line, etc. Good stuff.
Thank you Tullius. Frost is, for me, the ideal of the marriage between the metrical and the patterns of common speech. In his best poems it feels as though he's just talking to you, yet the plainness is so meticulously constructed. It's where all his irony comes from.
The first line in "Country Things" is like that. "The house had gone to bring again". Perfectly metrical and idiomatic. It's so deceptively plainspoken that you could easily miss the fact that he's talking about a house burning to the ground.
Hi Robert, since your last article on Omond, I’ve actually read his book, and found the book helpful and clarifying in all the ways you seem to have also. So that’s cool. I found the notion of each period having a heavy beat as the bell ringing the time helpful. It isn’t the feet that does it so much as the timing. I was going to write an article on this, but it seems you’ve beaten me to it.
I think this approach opens up the right kind of flexibility.
Thanks Robert.
Thanks for your comment Isaiah. That is pretty cool, to hear that someone else got some use out of it. I think you're exactly right. It isn't the feet so much as the timing. That sums it up nicely. Apologies for beating you to it, but if you ever have something to add, I'd love to read it.
You've struck a very nice balance between freedom and responsibility here. I feel like almost every writer on prosody leans too far in one direction or the other.
”It’s not the syllables themselves that make the meter. Rather, it’s better to think of syllables as filling up the time a poem is set to. Poetic Meter, like a time signature in music, conditions us to certain periods of time and not necessarily to syllabic quantity or accent."
Your clarity here is impressive. I think the crucial, often-missed point is that every metrical line has to both tell you what time it is ”set to” and do something more. Metrical poets are a bit like Phil Collins, I think, in that they have to sing and play the drums at the same time.
Thank you Sean. That's a great simile. I totally agree. What I like about Omond is the practicality of the theory. It's not overly rigid, the way most meter is taught. And it identifies that interplay that you mention, that you have to simultaneously set the rhythm with the words and do something more. That's what's so satisfying about verse when you do nail it. You've walked a tightrope between disorder and order, and it sounds good.
This is invaluable. I think Edith Sitwell talks a lot about "writing with a syncopated beat" and this makes sense of that
Thank you Barsley. Sitwell seemed very aware of the musical qualities of verse, especially jazz, which does use a lot of syncopation. I'll try and find a good example from her.
If you can find a copy of her "Notes on Reading my Poetry" - which afaik is only available in the Penguin selection - then do read it. It's simultaneously brilliant and bonkers.
I’ll look for that, thanks.
I appreciate this. For me, poetry is about rhythm and meter. In music I always found the key to playing something "new" was to find a new way to "swing" not finding new notes. Rhythm, time, tempo, and space are fare more variable than the notes available. My own poems start out that same way...a rhythm or beat in my head, and then I fill that beat with words. It may not be very good, but it's what draws me to poetry.
That's probably why I dislike most "modern" poetry; unless it has a rhythm it just doesn't work for me...
Thank you Ernie. I feel similarly. Of course you can get rhythm from normal prose cadences. Frost calls them the sound of sense. Sometimes I hear that in my head first. Other times it's a definite musical rhythm, which words can fall into, like you describe. The difference between them is often nebulous, though. Something to explore in a further essay.
This is very very helpful. Thank you.
No mention of rap, where the time (segmented with a fat bass drum thump) is strict and metronomic? And weak syllables matter way less then the relationship between strong syllables and perfect time? And the strong syllables go on and off the beat to increase and decrease the energy--as they do in pop and folk and rock, only more intricately?
Anyway, seems like an strange omission. For what IS in the essay, I am grateful. Thank you!
There’s a lot of great stuff to write about that, and you’re certainly welcome to write about it if it interests you.