The Metre Strikes Back

Welcome back sonneteers!

Today we must further examine the complexities and beauty of one of classic art forms, the I quick lesson in metre.

Metre is the rhythm of words and the flow of words in short. Essential it is the ordering of stressed (emphasized) and unstressed (not emphasized) syllables in a line.

So sometime a long time ago, someone came up with names and categories for all these different metres. Here are a few:
The Iamb - Unstressed + Stressed
The Trochee - Stressed + Unstressed
The Spondee - Stressed + Stressed
Anapest - Unstressed + Unstressed + Stressed

Let me show you what this looks like. The word "inside" is a an Iamb by itself. The stress lies on the second syllable. "Bayou" is a Trochee because the stress is on the first syllable. Finally, "football" is a Spondee because the stress is on both syllables, and "anapest" is an example of an Anapest because the stress is on the third syllable after two unstressed syllables.

Crash course in metre and the different types? Check.
Now when you hear a number after something like Iambic, it is telling you how many Iambs there are per line. The famous Iambic Pentameter is 5 Iambs, 10 syllables, unstressed and stressed. There are also tetrameters and all the other numbers for poems.

Iambic Pentameter is infamous. In rhetoric, many powerful lines in speeches and in essays actually become iambic pentameter for emphasis and flow. There are times when the metre can be analyzed to make a very specific point. Let me show you from the poem "Ulysses" by Alfred, Lord Tennyson. This is the very end of the poem:

"Tho' much is taken, much abides; and tho'
We are not now that strength which in old days
Moved earth and heaven, that which we are, we are;
One equal temper of heroic hearts,
Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will
To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield."

The narrator is speaking of something being broken and not working correctly. Much it taken. However, there is a swell, a build of hope. We find that in the line "We are not now that strength which in old days moved earth and heaven,"  the iambic is broken. We find trochees and spondees in this. The author is telling us that they rhythm of life is broken. The flow is off. But we build back when we get to "that which we are, we are; One equal temper of heroic hearts," strong Iambic Pentameter returns. There is hope. We will rebuild and remain and know strength. However when he mentions again, being "made weak" that is a spondee. Stressed Stressed. We are made weak and so is our metre.

But, ah, then that final. That beautiful beautiful line:
"To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield."
Flawless Iambic Pentameter. Everything is in line. Everything is flowing again. If anyone asks you what Iambic Pentameter sounds like, show them this line.

So that was the I Do, time for the You Do. Mark Jarman has a series of sonnets called Unholy Sonnets. I don't know why but he does. But we want to take a look at his metre. This is a sonnet and he adheres to the Iambic Pentameter (although if you go back to last week you will find Billy does not until the last line). The question is, what does this poem make you feel? (It is beautiful) Also, what role is the metre playing in its meaning?


Unholy Sonnet
by Mark Jarman

There is a law outside the daily racket,
The vertigo of distracting personal woes,
And one outside of that, and beyond those,
The one that fits the cosmos like a jacket.
And when I think of that--that big abstraction--
I feel like a retiree in Palm Springs.
The serene, tearless clarity of things
Settles me down into sublime inaction.

But I am not a retiree in Palm Springs.
The girls of anxious gravity, my sin,
Tug at my heart and pockets, and I spin,
Bracing myself against a storm of things
That pelt and paw me and caress and claw--
The law inside the law inside the law

Scan (detect the metre) of that last line.

The law
Inside
The Law
Inside
The Law

Flawless Iambs. Rigorous Law. Structure. Interesting right?

Until next time goodbye goodbye goodbye.