Why Meter Matters
First published in Writer’s Digest
The 20th century
was not particularly kind to metered verse. This was partly because, at the end
of the 19th century, a group of French poets declared the birth of vers libre, or “free verse,” which
sought to shake off the strictures of traditional poetry and pursue the more
natural rhythms of common speech. With precedents like the Psalms of the King
James Bible and Walt Whitman’s 1855 Leaves
of Grass, plus new English-language champions like Ezra Pound and T.S.
Eliot, free verse performed so well that, today, it is absolutely the dominant
form. In 2006, the only way to get metered verse published is through
specialized journals, children’s books, or by being an already-famous poet.
So why bother with meter at
all? Because, in its methodical, technically demanding fashion, it helps us to
better understand and manipulate the rhythms of language. It’s much like a jazz
musician, who can improvise much more readily if he first learns the age-old
chord structures of classical music.
Getting to Know Your Feet
The subatomic particle of
meter is the foot – the two or three syllables that make up the “beat” in a
line of verse.
Iamb: a weak
syllable followed by a strong syllable. “To be
/ or not / to be…” (Shakespeare)
Trochee: a
strong syllable followed by a weak syllable. “Tyger! / Tyger! / burning / bright…” (William Blake)
Dactyl: a
strong syllable followed by two weak syllables. “This is the / forest pri-
/ meval…” (Longfellow)
Anapest: two
weak syllables followed by a strong syllable. “I am lord / of the fowl / and
the brute.” (Robert Frost)
Placekeepers: Occasional
appearances are made by the Spondee
(two strong syllables) and the Pyrrhic
(two weak syllables) - but if you tried to base an entire poem on either one of
these, your head would explode.
Building the House
Now that you’ve got your
feet, let’s get walking. Try a few of the following forms for yourself – but please note: the idea is not to
obsessively follow a chosen footstyle, but to use it as a general structure. As
long as you maintain the integrity of your “beats,” occasional deviations are
not only permissible – they tend to add interest.
Iambic Pentameter
Five iambic feet
(weak-strong) per line
Although it’s easy to credit
Chaucer, Shakespeare and Milton for immortalizing this Godfather of Verse, at
heart it’s the heartbeat (ba-dum, ba-dum) and a prime-number, indivisible
flow of beats that produces a smooth, circular feel (think “Take Five” by Dave
Brubeck). It’s also surprisingly common in everyday speech, as in the phrase,
“I’d like a decaf mocha frappuccino.” Write it in non-rhyming “blank” verse –
as Shakespeare did in his plays – or try out the classic sonnet form: fourteen
lines in two parts, the octave (eight lines) and the sestet (six lines). Then
sing it to the tune of “Danny Boy.”
“But if the while I think on
thee, dear friend…” (Shakespeare)
Common Meter
Alternating lines of iambic
tetrameter (four beats) and iambic trimeter (three beats)
The favored meter of Emily
Dickinson – and yes, you can sing it to the tune of “Gilligan’s Island” (or,
for that matter, “The Beverly Hillbillies”).
“Because I could not stop for
Death,
He kindly stopped for me…”
(Dickinson)
Dactyllic Ballad
The same alternating four-
and three-beat lines as Common Meter, but using the dactyllic foot
(strong-weak-weak), which lends the poem a galloping, waltz-like rhythm.
“Frederick and Daisy are
crazy for me,
but frankly I question their
taste…”
(Vaughn)
Trochaic Octameter
Eight trochaic feet (strong-weak) per line
Try it to the tune of “Hark
the Herald Angels Sing.”
“Once upon a midnight dreary,
while I pondered, weak and weary…” (Edgar Allan Poe)
Limerick
A five-line anapestic poem
(weak-weak-strong) in which lines 1, 2 and 5 have three beats and a rhyme,
while lines 3 and 4 have two beats and a rhyme.
“A man with a chest cold
named Bill
Ingested a nuclear pill.
The doctor said ‘cough,’
The damn thing went off,
And they picked up Bill’s
head in Brazil.”
(Anon.)
Make Up Your Own
Like any good cook, once you
know all the ingredients – footstyle, number of beats per line, number of lines
per stanza – it’s time to start mixing things up, leaning on your innate sense
of rhythm to tell you whether or not something “clicks in.”
Years ago, I wrote a parody
cowboy poem called “And Roy Rogers Sang the Torah.” I didn’t realize until much
later that I had been writing in lines of trochaic heptameter (seven beats of
strong-weak) centered on a fourth pyrrhic foot (weak-weak) that acted as a
pause, or “caesura.”
“North we go a-roaming from
Wyoming to Montana,
all upon a tankful of George
Custer’s diesel gas…”
If someone had actually instructed me to write in that
particular scheme, I’d still be there now, a-staring at the page.
Photo by MJV
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