Geekin' out on poetry (and Romanticism)—my study thread

Foot (prosody)

The Wikipedia page on Foot (prosody) has some nice graphs showing the most commonly-used feet, with somewhere a link to a very comprehensive list showing all of them(?), even those that are mostly just curiosities. I guess prosody is the collective term I was looking for above, when I asked what you call all these different terms like Anapest, Iamb and Dactyl etc.

Very helpful. Soon I'll know this stuff, though in a year I probably won't remember some of the names. A few I'm sure I will. But the most interesting part for me so far has been a little entry at the very bottom of the page—the last link listed under External Links—

• Prosody Tutorial by H.T. Kirby-Smith

It leads to an incredibly ridiculous-looking series of eye-searing pages in various fluorescent shades of vile yellow and poinsonous purple, with flashing, spinning widgets and all manner of Myspace or Geocities looking stuff. So far though there's some solid information (and after the first couple of pages I have't seen any more of the eye-hurting stuff)(yet). If you click on through to see the other pages, there's apparently a course teaching these terms and techniques. I'm currently exploring that strange site.

Enjambment

Here's a little verse demonstrating my frustration at being super-stuck in what's known as End-Stop(-page?)(-ping?). To quote the entry about it from the weird little site I mentioned just above: "End-stopped lines are those that conclude with a definite pause, at least with a comma, in poems where the effect of the meter depends on maintaining the integrity of the individual line. The expectation of end-stopped lines was most pronounced in the eighteenth century."

I em-blue-ified the part about my little problem above.

I actually tried several times, or wanted to, but I found since I had to concentrate on meter as well as saying something that makes sense, and being just-insulting-enough without being too insulting, it was too much to also combat my end-stopping tendencies. I felt like I was already juggling chainsaws on a high wire. I plan to devote some time to it very soon. Perhaps even tonight.

But first, here's the entry on Enjambment (examples in link):

"Enjambment (also called "run-on lines," and, by Gerard Manley Hopkins, "rove over") is the practice of carrying the rhythm of one poetic line forward into the next line without any pause at the end of the line. The word itself suggests "straddling" or "hopping over." For some poets and in some poems--such as Milton in Paradise Lost or Shelley in "Ode to the West Wind"--enjambment may occur in the majority of the lines, at least in certain passages. In other cases it may be a rare occurrence. In modern free verse, calculated enjambments constantly remind the reader that regular meter is being resolutely evaded. The opposite of the enjambed line is the end-stopped line. Enjambment serves many purposes; in a speech in a Shakespeare play, a character may speak at first in stately end-stopped lines and then lose his temper and lapse into enjambed ones. In a poem by William Carlos Williams, enjambment can convey the inexorable power of nature in the progress of a season."​

The plan to mend this cursed end-stop that's got me all blocked up

Quoted from above:

"End-stopped lines are those that conclude with a definite pause, at least with a comma, in poems where the effect of the meter depends on maintaining the integrity of the individual line."

The part I bolded is the main source of my trouble. I've been using a very sing-songy type of meter, very similar to a limerick, with cute little internal rhymes and a very strong, obvious meter to it, and just like a limerick, it definitely is meant to stop hard at the end of each line. Its strongly rhythmical quality depends on it.

I need to dwell for a while on those samples (in the Enjambment entry) by Milton, Shelley, and Williams, as well as immerse myself deeply in Tennyson's Idylls of the King. Then I need to pen a lot of lines.

Whoah! This is awesome!!

Copypasta from above: "I've learned now that the opposite of an Anapest is called a Dactyl—three syllables to a foot, accent on the first. Not a very helpful name though. Couldn't it be an anti-pest, or something? Antipasto maybe? A little consistency in naming would be nice."

Well glory be!! I've now learned that another name for an anapest is an antidactylus!

That's almost an "Ask and ye shall recieve" moment, except that I know the more common name by far is Anapest (at least I think it is). If I call it Antidactylus most people wouldn't know what it means.

Hah! How bizare, that I'd ever say these things. A few days ago I hardly knew any of these words. And most people on this dirtball will never know any of them.

Ridiculosum indeed...

Let the metric analyses begin

I've decided to analyze the meter in a few poems to help me understand how they get such good smooth enjambment (flow-through) from line to line.

Paradise Lost by Milton:

Forthwith / upright / he rears / from off / the pool
His migh / ty stat / ure; on / each hand / the flames
Driven / backward / slope their / pointing /spires, and, rolled
In bill / ows, leave / i' th' midst / a hor / rid vale.

Most of it looks like Iambic Pentameter (blank verse actually, since it doesn't ryhme), except for the first part of line 3, and also the end of it. I'm not even looking up what that one is, it's one of those trick feet.

What's the name for the backwards Iamb? Two syllables, emphasis on the first one? Trochee.
Driven / backward / slope their / pointing—all trochees. That's it—everything else in this stanza is iambic penta. Except for whatever that one is at the end of line 3—three syllables, first and third stressed. Ok, screw it, I looked it up on the Wiki page. It's called a cretic or an amphimacer. Here's what I found about it:

A cretic (/ˈkriːtɪk/; also Cretic, amphimacer /æmˈfɪməsər/ and sometimes paeon diagyios)[1] is a metrical foot containing three syllables: long, short, long ( ¯ ˘ ¯ ). In Greek poetry, the cretic was usually a form of paeonic or aeolic verse. However, any line mixing iambs and trochees could employ a cretic foot as a transition.* In other words, a poetic line might have two iambs and two trochees, with a cretic foot in between.

Words which include a cretic (e.g. Latin cīvitās and its various inflections) cannot be used in works composed in dactylic hexameter or dactylic pentameter.

In Latin, cretics were used for composition both in comedy and tragedy. They are fairly frequent in Plautus but rarer in Terence. (See Metres of Roman comedy.)

For Romance language poetry, the cretic has been a common form in folk poetry, whether in proverbs or tags. Additionally, some English poets have responded to the naturally iambic nature of English and the need for a trochaic initial substitution to employ a cretic foot. That is, it is commonplace for English poetry to employ a trochee in the first position of an otherwise iambic line, and some poets have consciously worked with cretic lines and fully cretic measures. English Renaissance songs employed cretic dimeter fairly frequently (e.g. "Shall I die? Shall I fly?" attributed to William Shakespeare). Because the cretic, in stress-based prosody, is natural for a comparison or antithesis, it is well suited to advertising slogans and adages.

Source
​

* Emphasis mine, because this is exactly what's happening here. The cretic (pronounced "Critic" apparently?) is used specifically I believe so the poem can switch smoothly back into iambic. Without the clever use of the cretic, the stresses would have no longer lined up where they belong; the next line would have been bass-ackwards iambic penta—aka trochee. Which I believe rhymes with low-key. Or Loki.

Meandering

Plus of course, it goes without saying, they also use long meandering Victorian-style sentences that can run on for several verses or several dozen.

And though I said above it doesn't rhyme,* Milton inserts several near-rhymes, not always at the ends of lines. This makes it all feel extremely sophisticated and subtle.

* Just noticed this part's written in iambic (so was that, up until the last syllable). It's weird how fast you can grow to recognize things like this.

Ode to the West Wind by Shelley

O wild / West Wind, / thou breath / of Aut / umn's be ing, ( / of aut umn's / be ing?)
Thou, from / whose un / seen pres / ence the / leaves dead (the / leaves dead?) (whose un / seen pres ence / the leaves dead?)
Are driv / en, like ghosts / from an / en chan / ter flee ing,

Again it seems to be mostly iambic pentameter, but there's a complex rhyme scheme here, and I'm not quite sure how to parse some of the lines at their ends.

Iamb (dun dun)
Trochee (dun dun) aka the anti-Iamb
Cretic (dun dun dun)
Anapaest (dun dun dun)
Amphibrach (dun dun dun)

About the Amphibrach (new kid on the block, that I haven't really looked into yet):

An amphibrach (/ˈæmfɪbræk/)[1] is a metrical foot used in Latin and Greek prosody. It consists of a long syllable between two short syllables.[2] The word comes from the Greekἀμφίβραχυς, amphíbrakhys, "short on both sides".

In English accentual-syllabic poetry, an amphibrach is a stressed syllable surrounded by two unstressed syllables. It is rarely used as the overall meter of a poem, usually appearing only in a small amount of humorous poetry, children's poetry, and experimental poems. The individual amphibrachic foot often appears as a variant within, for instance, anapaesticmeter.

It is the main foot used in the construction of the limerick, as in "There once was / a girlfrom / Nantucket." It was also used by the Victorians for narrative poetry, e.g. Samuel Woodworth's poem "The Old Oaken Bucket" (1817) beginning "How dear to / my heart are / the scenes of / my childhood."[3] W. H. Auden's poem "O where are you going?" (1931) is a more recent and slightly less metrically-regular example. The amphibrach is also often used in ballads and light verse, such as the hypermetrical lines of Sir John Betjeman's poem "Meditation on the A30" (1966).

Amphibrachs are a staple meter of Russian poetry. A common variation in an amphibrachic line, in both Russian and English, is to end the line with an iamb, as Thomas Hardy does in "The Ruined Maid" (1901): "Oh did n't / you know I'd / been ru in'd / said she".[4]

Some books by Dr. Seuss contain many lines written in amphibrachs, such as these from If I Ran the Circus (1956):

All ready / to put up / the tents for / my circus.
I think I / will call it / the Circus / McGurkus.
And NOW comes / an act of / Enormous / Enormance!
No former / performer's / performed this / performance!
Source​

It seems like an Amphibrach can do the same job as a Cretic—create a smooth transition between Iambs and Dactyls. It also occurs to me the poem Red rover red rover is built from Amphibrachs.

I think it'll be a while before I can really figure out what's going on with those line ends. And maybe I don't need to specifically figure everything out.

Flow tricks

There are other factors besides prosody helping the enjambment flow through these lines.

Here's Milton again:

Forthwith upright he rears from off the pool
His mighty stature; on each hand the flames
Driven backward slope their pointing spires, and, rolled
In billows, leave i' th' midst a horrid vale.​

"He rears from off the pool / his mighty stature." There's no reason to pause in between pool and his. In fact you know it's meant to be continuous. Imagine a somewhat different setup—
"He rears from off the pool and (something something)."

I know, that would break the sentence, it's just a hypothetical. It isn't about him rearing, it's about him rearing his mighty stature up from off the pool. But the and makes it clear what follows is a clause or a phrase, and those quite often come with a built-in pause (often shown by a comma or an em-dash) at each end. Even without the punctuational clue, we often pause because we can feel it's a clause.

But when the next word is his, even though it's capitalized (only because it's the first word of a line), we understand this is contiguous with what was just said. There's nothing to make it feel like a separate clause requiring a pause.

Next enjambment—
"On each hand the flames / driven backward slope." This time I do feel a bit of a pause there, between flames and driven, because driven begins a clause. You could bracket "Driven backward" with commas or em-dashes.

Next—
"Their pointing spires, and, rolled / in billows, leave..." Here there's no reason on earth to pause. To break it down, you've got "The flames (comma) driven backward (comma) slope their pointing spires, and (comma) rolled / in billows, leave... "

You would not pause right after rolled in this sentence, because it's the first word of a clause. You pause at the beginning and end of a clause, but not in the middle of one. So that forces a smooth transition, and actually facilitates it.

Playing with Blank Verse (unrhymed Iambic Pentameter)—first scribblin's

After reading some of Milton's Paradise Lost. The idea was just to put down a series of iambs that flow, and hopefully make some kind of pseudo-sense. After developing some facility for this part of it, I can start to work up ideas for what to write about.

O, that to which we swear undying love
With all our will—our minds alive! And all
Our passions wild! and while we 'pare ourselves
For battle, naught shall rise unto our sense
But strife and might of fearsome mein, and though
We deign to ply our hand inside the grand
Design, we find we haven't got the time
Nor full the mind to rise up to this plan​

I found after a while I had screwed up the rhythm somehow and was writing trochees—the anti-iambs. What that meant was I had accidentally inserted an extra syllable somewhere that threw things off. I found it and fixed it (a two-syllable word where I had put a three without realizing it). Wish I had preserved the original to demonstrate, but I fixed it and nothing remains of it now. Oh, I remember one problem—I ended the first line with Fealty rather than Love. Sounded good, but it was an extra syllable. But there were one or two more I don't remember now.

I thought it might sound good to include some rhymes but not at line-ends, just scattered throughout. But really it trivializes it. Especially if they're full rhymes. A few slant rhymes would work much better I think, as long as you don't overdo it. I'm thinking a part of the charm of blank verse is that it doesn't rhyme, and it builds a sophisticated rhythm that sounds very different from limericks and other simple sing-songy verses.

Here's a good resource I've been using: Table of poetic terms

It's part of that weird web page I found at the bottom of the Wiki page on Foot (Prosody). A quick and handy way to check what these terms mean.

A couple of important ones that really help in writing verse include Headless line and Anacrucis—


Headless Line:

"Usually an iambic line that is missing its initial syllable, but which retains the beats or accented syllables. (This is the opposite of anacrusis, which is the addition of a syllable at the start of a line.)"
​

Anacrucis:

"The addition of an extra syllable at the start of a line that introduces a variation to the fundamental meter. It is the opposite of the headless line, and is a form of metrical augmentation."
​

I could swear there used to be a rock band called Anna Cruces (or some variation, not sure how it was spelled). I remember hearing the name on St. Louis rock radio back in the day. I'll bet their songwriter was having fun with terminology he learned while studying poetry.

I was doing both of these little tricks intuitively on the Dub Yeff - Lyric Duels thread. I guess all of us were. We're all extremely familair with poetry, especially in the form of song lyrics. We were also intuitively swapping out different forms of meter to spice things up and vary the rhythms now and then. These are the kind of things you do from sheer intuition in the beginning, and then when you start to study prosody (meter) you start to believe you must adhere to absolute strict meter, unless you trust your intuition or have studied far enough to know about these little tricks.

Ralph Waldo Emerson—Goodbye

GOOD-BYE, proud world! I’m going home:
Thou art not my friend, and I’m not thine.
Long through thy weary crowds I roam;
A river-ark on the ocean brine,
Long I’ve been tossed like the driven foam;
But now, proud world! I’m going home.

GOOD-BYE, / proud world! / I’m go / ing home:
Thou art not / my friend, / and I’m / not thine.
Long through / thy wea / ry crowds / I roam;
A ri / ver-ark / on the o / cean brine,
Long I’ve / been tossed / like the dri / ven foam;
But now, / proud world! / I’m go / ing home.

Iamb (dun dun)
Trochee (dun dun)
Anapest (dun dun dun)

Rhyme scheme is ABABAA

It alternates—odd numbered lines are Iambic Tetrameter, evens mostly are but have one foot of Anapest, which makes even lines a syllable longer (9). In this first stanza the anapests are offset each time, making a diagonal line. Strong stop at each line-end. Line 5 starts with an anapest, a reversed iamb. These little variations in rhythm make it sound nice, less mechanical or predictable. To me this sounds about halfway between the silliness of a limerick and the stately sophistication of Shakespearean blank verse. The subject matter is pretty somber (in a way, but not really morose), but not as profoundly serious as Milton or Shakespeare, and the meter also seems midway between, not really lilting and silly, but not deep and ponderous.

Immediatley on seeing the first line I wondered if this is the source for the "Goodbye cruel world" thing. That's always associated with suicide in comedies, and this seems to be a poem about impending death.

So far I'm just finding these poems online, sometimes in HTML, sometimes as a PDF. Easy to cut and paste here.

I am a parcel of vain strivings tied—Thoreau

I am a parcel of vain strivings tied
By a chance bond together,
Dangling this way and that, their links
Were made so loose and wide,
Methinks,
For milder weather.

I am a par / cel of vain / stri vings tied
By a chance / bond to / geth er, (/bond to geth / er?)
Dang ling this / way and that, / their links
Were made so / loose and wide,
Methinks,
For mil / der weath er.

Iamb (dun dun)
Trochee (dun dun)
Anapest (dun dun dun)
Spondee (dun dun)—two unstressed syllables
Amphibrach (dun dun dun)

Rhyme scheme ABCACB

This one is very different from what I've seen so far. I believe we have an Anacrucis on the beginning—an extra head—adding a syllable to the Anapests most of it seems to be composed of. I'm very unsure of the end of the second line. I guess there must be a monosyllable (actually there isn't one listed on the Wiki page), but that seems strange. Probably it's a disyllable with neither one stressed (?) (Spondee), followed by an iamb. But like I say, it really isn't that important to know these names. More important by far to understand the way syllables and feet work rhythmically. But I'll look into both of those possibilities and see what it say.

And finally, the last foot is that one used in Limericks and in the Dr. Seuss poem. Three syllables, middle one stressed (There once was / a man from / Nan tuck et). Gotta look up what it's called. Ok, it's Amphibrach. Which makes me think of amphibians and brachiosauruses, but I think it's closer-related to Ambidextrous, because apparently in Greek it means "Short on both sides." A long (stressed) syllable in the middle, with a short one on each side. You got it? Alright then!

Up until the last two lines it felt midway between (between the extremes of something silly like a limerick and something serious like blank verse). But once you hit those lines, it leans hard toward almost limerick status, which makes it feel light and fun.

I'm having a hard time trying to figure out how that last poem would be said—the verbal rhythms that make it work. I think you need to find something like a melody for your voice (internal or external) to make it work.

I have no problem with the first three lines, except that you need to add a 'silent' syllable into the second line to make it work. Right between chance and bond it seems to me. I find myself stretching out the word chance to twice it's normal length to make it all work.

But then by the time you reach the last pair of lines something weird happens. The whole rhythm shifts somehow. There's a esnse in which that floating word Methinks is part of the previous line, but you also have to make it part of the next line or it all falls apart. I don't know if I'm explaining this right.

I got caught up in tryuing over and over to find ways to say it, and suddenly i got a little snippet of a song in my head. Turns out it's the song from the Lucky Charms commericlas. Those last two lines automatically fall inot the rymth of the last line of the song—you can hear it here in this awful CGI monstrosity of a comerical that totally destroyed any character or personality for the Leprechaun:



Just those last seven notes at the end—the part that would be "They're magically delicious." The earlier part would be "(Something) Lucky Charms—." Get that tune in your head and then say the last two lines of the poem, it totally works. The pattern of stressed and unstressed syllables fits perfectly.

In fact, now the last several lines (re-mixed a bit) work to that tune:

Were made so
Loose and wide—
Methinks for milder weather!​

I haven't got any solutions here, just questions. I many never know how the poem is supposed to sound (unless I look up some readings of it maybe?). But it all begins by asking the questions.

Trying it a few more times, I now think it's the end of the third line that needs tp be separated off sound-wise to make it work. If you do that it sounds like this:

Their links were made so loose
And wide, methinks​

Those two lines together work like the pair of shorter lines toward the end of a limerick. Same rhythm and same rhyme scheme. Oh, I should add, you need to pronounce 'Were made so loose" fast, so it sort of compresses down into a single syllable. Or maybe I can demonstrate it more clearly like this:

Their links
were made so
loose and wide,
methinks​

But then the word Methinks also needs to function as the beginning of the last line. Yeah, that seems to get across what I'm struggling to say (and, through articulating, to understand).

Methinks for milder weather
​

This is a thing I've noticed in a lot of songs. There's no way I could eaploain it in writing, without having the songs to play, and I think a lot of people just wouldn't get what I'm trying to point out. But there's a thing at the end of a line (of music—or sometimes it's lyrics) That when you hear it, it seems to be the end of the previous line, but then it's the beginning of the next. Jimmy Page did it a lot in Led Zeppelin songs.

Again, not answers, but I'm working my way through the problem.

Here:



Ok, listening to this, I now understand. There are complex sub-rhythms or sub-melodies playing off each other. I was striving to figure out how to say that, but now it becomes fairly clear.