Poetic Meter: A Primer

Unknown Artist’s John Donne.

I’ve recently made a hobby of writing metered poetry, and have been imposing its questionable fruit upon my readership. As a consequence, I’ve been DM’d a fair number of “sonnets” which (I’m sorry to say) are lacking in coherent meter. This suggests to me that many people do not understand how meter works in English, and generally do not know how to scan a poem. Not to be scolding, but this is a shame. If you read European poetry from before the 20th century and are unable to scan (being only sensitive to rhymes and semantic content) you are missing out on its essential register. Half of the most striking lines of English poetry are contorted in their phrasing, and don’t aim to be “natural speech” (obviously). This isn’t because “natural speech” isn’t sufficiently deep to be poetic; this is because poets have (historically) committed themselves to the task of solving particular metrical puzzles.

Ordinary conversation in the 16th century is very similar to modern speech. Londoners in the 1590s did not say sentences like “Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May.” Shakespeare fashioned this line to satisfy iambic pentameter (i.e. five pairs of syllables, the first unstressed and the second stressed). Now, why was it important to these poets that iambic pentameter be satisfied? It does seem arbitrary (why iambs? why five of them?). The basic story is that serious Greek and Latin poets wrote in dactylic hexameter with quantitative meter (a system based on the distinction between long and short syllables, rather than on stress). Finding a serious meter in English was an indispensable step in making the language respectable enough to write poetry in. Initially, Edmund Spenser and others attempted to ape The Ancients by writing quantitative meter in English, but this proved both difficult and highly artificial. Quantitative meter doesn’t work in English without adopting arbitrary conventions governing when vowels count as being long or short. So the English poets resorted to natural stress meter, wherein a stressed syllable is “long” and an unstressed syllable is “short.” Moreover, since English stress frequently alternates between syllables, our poets eventually converged on iambic pentameter. Most modern European languages went through a similar process: the French chose the alexandrine (twelve syllables, with a strong pause in the middle, indifferent to stress); the Italians chose the endecasillabo (eleven syllable lines, ending typically on a stressed tenth syllable and an unstressed eleventh syllable); and the Germans never really converged on one principal verse form (Goethe, Lessing, and Schiller wrote a lot of iambic pentameter, which is somewhat out of deference to Shakespeare).

---

Okay let’s scan a bit. First note the following jargon:

• Iamb - an unstressed syllable followed by a stressed syllable (e.g. “for SHAME”)

• Trochee - a stressed syllable followed by a unstressed syllable (e.g. “SUM-mer’s”)

• Spondee - two stressed syllables (e.g. “FACE CARD”)

• Pyrrhic - two unstressed syllables (e.g. “in a”)

Milton’s Paradise Lost has this perfect line of iambic pentameter:

And justify the ways of God to men.

Which scans thus:

and JUS- | ti- FY | the WAYS | of GOD | to MEN

Milton was fantastically strict about his meter. PoemShape claims (contrary to lazy academics) that Milton never once ended a line in a trochee.

Another section from Paradise Lost:

O shame to men! Devil with devil damned
Firm concord holds; men only disagree
Of creatures rational, though under hope
Of heav'nly grace and God proclaiming peace,

This is a bit less perfect:

o SHAME  |  to MEN  |  DEV-il  |  with DEV-  |  il DAMNED
FIRM CON-  |  cord HOLDS  |  men ON-  |  ly DIS-  |  a-GREE
of CREA-  |  tures RA-  |  tion-al  |  though UN-  |  der HOPE
of HEAV'n-  |  ly GRACE  |  and GOD  |  pro-CLAIM-  |  ing PEACE

It contains a few trochees, spondees, and pyrrhics. Additionally, I frankly can’t figure out how to pronounce the monosyllabic contraction “heav’n”. This illustrates the point that iambic pentameter does not call for 100% compliance — you just need to be iambic enough. Still, there are limits. You can’t, for instance, do a line like “Rhyme and meter force you to be ON IT” which contains zero iambs.

Metrical convention can be toyed with to great thematic effect. Take for instance my favorite of Shakespeare’s sonnets:

A woman’s face with nature’s own hand painted
Hast thou, the master-mistress of my passion;
A woman’s gentle heart, but not acquainted
With shifting change as is false women’s fashion;
An eye more bright than theirs, less false in rolling,
Gilding the object whereupon it gazeth;
A man in hue, all hues in his controlling,
Which steals men’s eyes and women’s souls amazeth.
And for a woman wert thou first created,
Till nature as she wrought thee fell a-doting,
And by addition me of thee defeated
By adding one thing to my purpose nothing.
      But since she pricked thee out for women's pleasure,
      Mine be thy love and thy love’s use their treasure.

Each line is hypermetrical: iambic pentameter plus an additional unstressed syllable at the end. Rhyming on the penultimate syllables in this way is called a “feminine rhyme,” which is an inspired structure to deploy in support of the gender-bending eroticism of the poem.

a WO-  |  man's FACE  |  with NA-  |  ture's OWN  |  hand PAIN-  |  ted
hast THOU  |  the MAS-  |  ter-MIS-  |  tress OF  |  my PAS-  |  sion
a WO-  |  man's GEN-  |  tle HEART  |  but NOT  |  ac-QUAIN-  |  ted
with SHIFT-  |  ing CHANGE  |  as IS  |  false WO-  |  men's FASH-  |  ion
an EYE  |  more BRIGHT  |  than THEIRS  |  less FALSE  |  in ROLL-  |  ing
GIL-ding  |  the OB-  |  ject WHERE-  |  up-ON  |  it GA-  |  zeth
a MAN  |  in HUE  |  all HUES  |  in HIS  |  con-TROL-  |  ling
which STEALS  |  men's EYES  |  and WO-  |  men's SOULS  |  a-MAZ-  |  eth
and FOR  |  a WO-  |  man WERT  |  thou FIRST  |  cre-A-  |  ted
till NA-  |  ture AS  |  she WROUGHT  |  thee FELL  |  a-DOT-  |  ing
and BY  |  ad-DI-  |  tion ME  |  of THEE  |  de-FEA-  |  ted
by ADD-  |  ing ONE  |  thing TO  |  my PUR-  |  pose NOTH-  |  ing
but SINCE  |  she PRICKED  |  thee OUT  |  for WO-  |  men's PLEA-  |  sure
MINE be  |  thy LOVE  |  and THY  |  love's USE  |  their TREAS-  |  ure

Metrically perfect. There are maybe two trochees (“Gilding”, “Mine be”), but it seems that the overall rhythm is so strong that both naturally promote to iambs.

---

Poets give themselves structures to adhere to. Shakespeare’s iambic pentameter sonnet form (ABABCDCDEFEFGG) is well known, and comparatively straightforward. John Donne would regularly become more exotic. Consider the opening stanza of his “Song”:

          Goe, and catche a falling starre,
                    Get with child a mandrake roote,
          Tell me, where all past yeares are,
                    Or who cleft the Divels foot,
          Teach me to hear Mermaides singing,
                    Or to keep off envies stinging,
                              And finde
                              What winde
          Serves to advance an honest mind.

Lines 1,2,3,4, and 9 are three trochees plus a final stress; lines 5 and 6 are four trochees; lines 7 and 8 are iambs. The trochaic meter gives the lines a feeling of falling (of magic), and the reversal into iambs accompanies a sharp thematic about-face.

GOE and  |  CATCHE a  |  FALL-ing  |  STARRE
GET with  |  CHILD a  |  MAN-drake  |  ROOTE
TELL me  |  WHERE all  |  PAST yeares  |  ARE
or who  |  CLEFT the  |  DI-vels  |  FOOT
TEACH me  |  to HEAR  |  MER-maides  |  SING-ing
or to  |  KEEP OFF  |  EN-vies  |  STING-ing
                                    and FINDE
                                    what WINDE
SERVES to  |  ad-VANCE  |  an HON-  |  est MIND

---

Varying meter is useful dramatically. Consider the Prologue in Heaven from Goethe’s Faust Part 1: the archangels speak four-foot lines in the style of Lutheran hymns; Mephistopheles speaks iambic pentameter (which makes him come off wittier, more natural, and free); God speaks both, since he can speak to anyone.

---

Sometimes poets try on exotic meter. There are a few famous experiments in dactylic poetry (a stress followed by two unstresses). Usually this is to emulate the Greeks, but sometimes not. For example, Lord Tennyson’s Charge of the Light Brigade:

Half a league, half a league,
Half a league onward,
All in the valley of Death
   Rode the six hundred.
“Forward, the Light Brigade!
Charge for the guns!” he said.
Into the valley of Death
   Rode the six hundred.

HALF a league, HALF a league! Tennyson isn’t trying to be Greek; the dactyls pull ahead like a horse at full gallop.

Tennyson himself thought this poem was bit too undignified for a Poet Laureate to pen.

It’s hard to be thrilled about this poem, considered as a historical object. It is, ultimately, a poem about bravery subordinated to incompetence. A fair case could be made that this poem greatly exacerbated the incompetent slaughter of WWI.

---

Modernity has liberated us from meter, but sometimes we return to it. Wallace Stevens experiments in blank verse in Sunday Morning:

Complacencies of the peignoir, and late
Coffee and oranges in a sunny chair,
And the green freedom of a cockatoo
Upon a rug mingle to dissipate
The holy hush of ancient sacrifice.
She dreams a little, and she feels the dark
Encroachment of that old catastrophe,
As a calm darkens among water-lights.
The pungent oranges and bright, green wings
Seem things in some procession of the dead,
Winding across wide water, without sound.
The day is like wide water, without sound,
Stilled for the passing of her dreaming feet
Over the seas, to silent Palestine,
Dominion of the blood and sepulchre.

I’ll omit the scan. This is broadly iambic, all pentameter.

Maybe it’s easier to talk about religious feeling in blank verse than in free verse.

---

It has been said that the way we see poetry today (as an opportunity to talk about our most personal feelings) is an invention of the Romantics, and, historically, poetical skill was seen as being most appropriately applied to crafting epics and myths. It’s hard to feel this to be true after coming off of reading Shakespeare, Donne, and Ovid’s Amores. In any case, poetry was once seen as a highly technical art, and now it no longer is. This is a bit of a shame, as poetry seems to me closer in affinity to the shape rotator than to the wordcel. But really, poetry is the property of that highly elusive creature: the word rotator.

---

Now is a nice time to learn scansion. Claude is quite good at it (but not perfect yet, so you do still have to think).