The ode less travelled: unlocking the poet within (4 page)

The trochee obeys its own definition and is pronounced to rhyme with
po
ky or
cho
ky.

Thus
was
born
my
Hi
a
wath
a,

Thus
was
born
the
child
of
wond
er;

L
ONGFELLOW:
The Song of Hiawatha

As a
falling
rhythm, a
tick
-tock,
tick
-tock,
tick
-tock, it finishes on an unaccented syllable–an ‘and’ if you’re counting and clapping musically:

The
SPONDEE
is of equal stressed units:
This also obeys its own definition and is pronounced to rhyme with the name
John Dee
. You may feel that it is almost impossible to give
absolutely equal
stress to two successive words or syllables in English and that there will always be some slight difference in weight. Many metrists (Edgar Allan Poe among them) would argue that the spondee doesn’t functionally exist in English verse. Again, we’ll think about the ramifications later, for the time being you might as well know it.

The fourth and final permutation is of
unstressed
units
and is called the
PYRRHIC
foot. Don’t bother to think about the pyrrhic either for the moment, we’ll be looking at it later. All the feet possible in English are gathered in a table at the end of the chapter, with examples to demonstrate their stresses.

The
iamb
is the hero of this chapter, so let us take a closer look at it:

Ten syllables, yes, but a count, or measure, of five feet, five
iambic
feet, culminating (the opposite of the trochaic line) in a
strong
or accented ending. S
AY IT OUT LOUD AGAIN
:

and
one
and
two
and
three
and
four
and
five

He
bangs
the
drum
and
makes
a
dread
ful
noise

It is a measure of five and the prosodic word, from the Greek again, for ‘measure of five’ is
PENTAMETER
. That simple line is an example therefore of
IAMBIC PENTAMETER
.

The Iambic Pentameter

The rising rhythm of the five-beat iambic pentameter has been since the fourteenth century the most widely used metre in English poetry. Chaucer’s
Canterbury Tales
, Spenser’s
Faerie Queen
, Shakespeare’s plays and sonnets, Milton’s
Paradise Lost
, the preponderance of verse by Dryden, Pope, Wordsworth, Keats, Browning, Tennyson, Owen, Yeats and Frost, all written in iambic pentameter. It is the very breath of English verse and has earned the title the
HEROIC LINE
.

Poetry Exercise 1

Try reading the following extracts out loud to yourself, noting the varying pulses, some strong and regularly accented, others gentler and more flowing. Each pair of lines is an example of ‘perfect’ iambic pentameter, having exactly ten syllables, five iambic feet (five stresses on the
even-numbered
beats) to the line. Once you’ve read each pair a few times,
TAKE A PENCIL AND MARK UP EACH FOOT
. Use a
or a / for the
accented
syllables or words and a
or a–for the
un
accented syllables or word. I have double-spaced each pair to make it easier for you to mark them.

I really would
urge
you to take time over these: savour every line. Remember G
OLDEN
R
ULE
O
NE
–reading verse can be like eating chocolate, so much more pleasurable when you allow it slowly to melt inside you, so much less rewarding when you snap off big chunks and bolt them whole, all but untasted.

D
ON’T LET YOUR EYE FALL FURTHER DOWN THE PAGE THAN THIS LINE
until you have taken out your pencil or pen. You may prefer a pencil so that you can rub out your marks and leave this book in pristine condition when you lend it to someone else–naturally the publishers would prefer you to
buy
another copy for your friends–the important thing is to get used to defacing this book in one way or another. Here are the rules of the exercise again:

• Read each pair of lines out loud, noting the ti-
  tum
  rhythms.
  
• Now
  MARK
  the weak/strong (accented/unaccented) syllables and the ‘bar lines’ that separate each foot in this manner:
  

  

• Or you may find it easier with a pencil to do it like this:
  

  

• When you have done this, read each pair of lines
  OUT LOUD
  once more, exaggerating the stresses on each beat.