TAK-ing the MEAS-ure of PO-e-try

By Randy Koch

As I press the second and third fingers of my right hand against the inside of my left wrist, I count my pulse -- one, two, three, four -- up to 35 in 30 seconds. At that rate, my heart beats about 70 times per minute, 4,200 times per hour, 100,800 times per day, nearly 37 million times per year, and over 1.7 billion times in the 47 years I've been alive. A muscle the size of two fists in the center of an adult's chest, the heart is the source of our physical life, valves opening and closing -- lub-DUB, lub-DUB, lub-DUB -- the internal drum that thumps away and pushes blood through our bodies. It's a likely reason that drumbeats in Sousa marches, Native American ceremonies, rock 'n' roll, African rhythms, and pep band performances at NCAA basketball games stir us. We hear our own bodies in the drumming, feel our pulse in the music, and recognize that the source of the sound is inside us. We hear and feel its rhythm when we walk or breathe or during sex. It is as fundamental to our lives and living as anything around us.

The two-part rhythm -- that lub-DUB, lub-DUB, lub-DUB of our heart -- is a physiological result of its structure, of the two sides that pull and push the blood through our bodies. It's that same dual nature of our eyes, ears, nose, lungs, kidneys, arms, legs, and feet that make the sound inherently alluring and familiar, as if music speaks our bodies' language even when our minds can't intellectualize or verbalize it. As we walk or run along Shiloh, pump our legs in spin class at the Body Factory, or climb the stairs to the fourth floor of Killam Library, we recreate the simple, two-part rhythm of our heartbeat, just as it's recreated in metrical verse -- from the playful sound of Dr. Seuss and Shel Silverstein to the hip-hop and word-play of slam and performance poets like Komplex to the formal meters of Emily Dickinson, Robert Frost, Pablo Neruda, and Richard Wilbur.

We all know, of course, that a speedometer measures speed (not the inappropriateness of certain men's swimwear), a barometer gauges atmospheric pressure (not the number of bars in town), and a spectrometer measures wavelength (not the presence of ghosts in old houses). In short, “meter” means “measure.” The same holds true for poetry though the source of poetic meter is the same as for the heartbeat: the pattern of changing emphasis or stress on sounds -- lub-DUB, lub-DUB, lub-DUB -- as we move across the lines of a poem. Three types of poetic meter are most common: (1) syllabic, which is a regular pattern in the number of syllables per line; (2) accentual, which is a regular pattern in the number of beats, or stressed syllables, per line; and (3) accentual-syllabic, which is a regular pattern in the number of syllables and stressed syllables per line. People are sometimes intimidated by the language of accentual-syllabic meter, and even though they've heard of “iambic pentameter,” they often have no idea what it is. So let's start by listening to words and distinguishing between stressed and unstressed syllables.

Think of “stressed” syllables as those that are wired from too much caffeine and long hours at the office; they need to blow off some steam and relax. They go to a bar and after one or two drinks start to get a little loud. They're considerably noisier and more forceful than unstressed syllables -- those mellow dudes who read in the park or quietly do yoga in their living room. As a result, the stressed syllables usually aren't difficult to recognize; if you don't trust your ear, however, using a dictionary and knowing a little grammar can help. First, consider words of more than one syllable. Take “debutante” for instance, which consists of three syllables: deb-u-tante. To determine which syllable or syllables are stressed, or emphasized more when pronounced, we can test the word by listening to it and moving the stress from syllable to syllable. For example, is it DEB-u-tante, deb-U-tante, or deb-u-TANTE? Clearly the second one is wrong since we can hear that the stress doesn't fall on the middle syllable. If, however, we aren't sure whether the first or last syllable is stressed, we can always look in the dictionary, which shows us the accepted pronunciation: deb´ yoo tänt. Note the accent mark (´), or ictus, on the first syllable, which indicates that this is the STRESSED syllable. We can scan any word of two syllables or more by using this method.

Single-syllable words, on the other hand, are a different story, and this is where some knowledge of grammar can help. Some, depending of course on the logic and context of the sentence, are rarely stressed. These include small connecting words such as articles (a, an, the), helping and linking verbs (is, are, was, were, seems, am, etc.), prepositions (in, on, of, to, at, etc.), coordinating conjunctions (for, and, nor, but, or, yet, so), and pronouns (his, her, he, she, they, I, you, etc.). However, other single-syllable words -- particularly nouns, action verbs, and adjectives -- are usually stressed. Keep in mind, however that context also affects which word or syllable we stress. Consider this example:

Al threw a wrench at Dad's Camaro.

Under normal circumstances and following the guidelines above for single-syllable words, we'd scan -- or mark STRESSED and unstressed syllables -- like this:

AL THREW a WRENCH at DAD'S ca-MAR-o.

If, however, there's some question about how many wrenches Al threw, we could conceivably scan the line this way, the emphasis falling on the article “a”:

al threw A wrench at dad's ca-MAR-o.

Similarly, if someone is trying to clarify Al's intentions and how he didn't throw the wrench under or over the car, the speaker might reasonably say the line like this:

al threw a wrench AT dad's ca-MAR-o.

Remember: there are few absolutes when scanning metrical poetry, and we always have to consider context when trying to decide how the poem's persona would realistically speak the lines of the poem.

Once the lines are scanned, we can examine them for patterns. When accented and unaccented syllables fall into a pattern in a line of poetry, the pattern takes a name. For example, the most common pattern is the iamb or the iambic foot, which consists of an unstressed syllable followed by a stressed syllable and most closely replicates the sound of a heart beat: da-DUM. While the syllables must be consecutive, they need not be in the same word. However, they may be, as in con-FESS, re-GRET, de-LAY, con-TENT, be-WARE, ju-LY, mas-SAGE, and mo-RALE. When several iambs are arranged in a line, they develop that most familiar and natural of rhythms:

Some LINES re-PEAT the SOUND we HEAR

when LIST-'ning TO our HEART.

In fact, once the regular pattern is established early in the line, even the one-syllable preposition “to” near the end seems to be stressed even though -- given the guidelines above -- we wouldn't expect it to be.

The inverse of the iambic foot is the trochaic foot, or trochee, which also consists of two syllables; however, the first is now stressed and the second unstressed (DUM-da) as in TEX-as, WIND-y, PO-et, CON-tent, A-pril, GIMP-y, COF-fee, MOR-al, and JES-se. When used regularly over a line of verse, the result is a slightly less natural rhythm, one that feels like it should be iambic but which ends with the voice falling on an unaccented syllable. Here's an example:

LINES that RUN the OP-po-SITE will AL-so FEEL i-AM-bic.

Again, notice that once the trochaic rhythm is established, even the unaccented last syllable of “opposite” seems to be emphasized more than the syllable on either side of it.

The dactylic foot, unlike either the iamb or trochee, consists of three syllables instead of two arranged in a DUM-da-da pattern. Again, the three syllables need not all appear in the same word, but so that you can hear what this longer foot sounds like, consider these words which fall into this pattern: CAL-i-bre, MIS-an-thrope, PO-e-try, AR-gu-ment, NAR-ra-tive, MIS-er-y, IG-nor-ant, and SKEL-e-ton. Notice how the three syllables create a sort of three-part sound, much like when we imitate the sound of a galloping horse by slapping our hands first against each other and then against our thighs, one right after the other:

TIM-o-thy SPEED-i-ly WORKED on a-LIC-i-a's MER-cur-y

or

BETH-a-ny's PO-e-try GAL-lops like RUN-a-way THOR-ough-breds.

The pace is clearly quicker than that generated by either an iamb or a trochee because a dactyl contains more unaccented than accented syllables.

The anapest, or anapestic foot, is the opposite of the dactyl in that it starts with two unaccented syllables and ends with one accented syllable (da-da-DUM), as in un-pre-PARED, mil-lion-AIRE, in the WOODS, mis-be-HAVE, pre-con-CEIVED, com-pre-HEND, and un-a-WARE. As with the dactylic line, the anapestic line gallops across the unaccented syllables:

un-a-WARE that the PLAY had re-SUMED once a-GAIN,

des-i-REE non-cha-LANT-ly re-TURNED to her SEAT.

The rhythm is similar in pace to that of the dactyl, but the inversion of its syllables makes it less a gallop and more the rhythm of jumping rope.

As you probably noticed in the above examples, lines comprised of only one kind of meter can become repetitive, monotonous, and sing-songy, particularly if they're sustained over several lines and stanzas of a poem. This is one reason poets often make substitutions, or replace an expected foot with a foot of a different pattern. For example, one might substitute a foot in any of the above metrical patterns with a spondaic foot, which as a meter is very difficult to sustain by itself. A spondee consists of two consecutive stressed syllables (DUM-DUM), which slows it down. Notice how stresses piled up in consecutive syllables make this line drag:

THIS THICK LINE PLODS like PHIL in MUD-CAKED BOOTS.

The single-syllable nouns (line, Phil, boots), adjectives (thick, mud-caked), and action verb (plods) all receive an approximately equal amount of emphasis and require more time to pronounce than unaccented syllables, making the meter of the line relevant to the meaning. This, too, is the logic of substitutions; they should not be random but a welcome relief to the pattern and appropriate in the context of the line so that form reflects meaning.

A substitution is also sometimes made with a pyrrhic foot, which consists of two unaccented syllables (da-da). While consecutive stressed syllables slow a line, consecutive unstressed syllables speed it up. Notice how the preceding paragraph's example consisting of eight stressed syllables out of a total of ten reads much more slowly than this example, where only seven out of 21 syllables are stressed:

LIGHT-ly stressed SYLL-a-bles un-ex-PECT-ed-ly

CON-gre-gat-ing ac-CEL-e-rate the PACE of this LINE.

The tongue skips quickly over the unstressed syllables, and the sound and pace of the line are dramatically different from that of a line consisting mostly of spondees.

These are the most common accentual-syllabic meters you'll find in poetry, but “iambic,” “trochaic,” “anapestic,” “dactylic,” “spondaic,” and “pyrrhic” only identify the composition of a single foot. To indicate the number of feet that make up each line in formal verse, additional terms are used. First, remember that there are two syllables in each iambic (da-DUM) and trochaic (DUM-da) foot while dactylic (da-da-DUM) and anapestic (DUM-da-da) feet each contain three syllables. Line length is then labeled according to the number of feet of a given meter present in a line. For example, a one-foot line is monometer; if over the course of the poem its primary meter is iambic, the poem is written in iambic monometer, each line consisting of only one unaccented and one accented syllable. A two-foot line is called dimeter; if its primary meter is dactylic, each line will contain two da-da-DUM feet, or a total of six syllables per line. A three-foot line is trimeter and a four-foot line tetrameter. A five-foot, or pentameter, line is the norm for sonnets, whether Shakespearean or Petrarchan. Lines consisting of six feet are called hexameter, and if in iambic meter are known as Alexandrines. Rare are the seven-foot heptameter and eight-foot octameter lines, both because a typical printed page can't hold them and because their length requires more than a single breath to read.

While the vocabulary of meter might seem foreign and complex, its origins are as common as life itself. It's no small coincidence that Shakespeare, Neruda, Browning, and many others wrote love poems in iambic pentameter -- each ten-syllable line filled with the capacity of a human breath and mimicking the sound of a human heart.

(Randy Koch teaches English at Texas A&M International University and is director of the Writing Center at TAMIU.)