#3: Rhythm, and Why It's Important
by Metara
This document will attempt to explain the basics of scansion (poetic rhythm).
Firstly we must learn some strange new words. The terms of poetry are not always taught in school any more because meter is not often taught even in advanced English Literature classes. Certainly I myself was never made to "scan" a poem until I got to university, and then only in brief, and that is a shame. It used to be a far bigger part of the study of literature.
Here we go:
Eek! We'll take them one at a time.
All English spoken or written can be broken down into rhythmic patterns called FEET. Each FOOT has two or three beats (syllables), which are either stressed or unstressed.
Here's an example:
i WAN | dered LONE | ly AS | a CLOUDEach division in the line is a foot. Read the line aloud and you'll see that it naturally falls into a rhythm where some syllables are stressed and some aren't. The ones that end up stressed are the ones written in capitals.
Going back to the line above, which is by Wordsworth (from his famously annoying thing about daffodils)
i WAN | dered LONE | ly AS | a CLOUDYou will notice that each foot has the same rhythm: unstressed-stressed, or da-DUM. This is what is known as an IAMB. Da-DUM.
The IAMB is a special friend to people writing in English; you'll find out why shortly.
A TROCHEE is an IAMB run backwards: DUM-da. The most famous example of trochees is William Blake's "The Tyger", which begins with three trochees:
TY-ger | TY-ger | BUR-ning | BRIGHT...Read it out and you might find that it feels different to the IAMB: more ponderous, more thoughtful. Where the IAMB is a galloping horse, the TROCHEE is a heartbeat.
That's quite useful. Remember it. IAMBs have the power to hurry the line along; TROCHEES slow it down.
You're probably getting the idea by now, but a SPONDEE is a bit of a wild card. It's two stressed syllables: DUM, DUM. It's not a popular thing in English so we'll pretty much ignore it; just be aware that it exists.
A DACTYL has three beats and goes DUM-da-da, like a waltz.
The ANAPAEST is a backwards DACTYL: da-da-DUM.
He CLASPED | the CRAG | with CROOK | ed hands CLOSE to the | SUN in | LONEly | LANDSWhat do we have here? Well:
da-DUM | da-DUM | da-DUM | da-DUM IAMB IAMB IAMB IAMB DUM-da-da | DUM-da | DUM-da | DUM... DACTYL TROCHEE TROCHEE ?Read it out (no, seriously, read it aloud, the one with the DUMs and das). Forget the words and concentrate on the RHYTHM. Poetry is an aural medium, meaning it's meant to be heard and listened to.
You will find that the first line is smooth, swinging back and forth, carrying you on towards the end. When you hit the second, though, something strange happens: the dactyl brings you up short and then the pair of trochees, reversing the balance of the line, act like speed bumps so that when you reach the end you're slow and thoughtful.
Tennyson was a master. When you look at the meter AND the meaning together you find that the rhythm perfectly fits the words. Swift and fierce while describing the claws of the eagle, the meter then slows to something languid and sorrowful as you reach "lonely lands".
Sometimes not all the syllables are counted; in poetry, a syllable might be left out to fix the meter or get the right number of syllables in a line (a cliched poetic example is when "over" becomes "o'er"). In speech, variant pronounciation might cause some syllables to be omitted: the word "res-tau-rant" actually has three syllables, but many people SAY "rest-raunt".
ELISION is the technical term for missing bits out.
Well, if you managed to follow all that, it's likely you're now sitting there wondering "so how does this help me? I don't do this poetry stuff".
You knew it was coming :P
You might well have heard of this, but have no idea what it is. Well, you know the first word now, it's something to do with IAMBs, and the second one is to do with FEET. Specifically, how many feet there are in a line.
PENTA-METER means the meter has FIVE FEET. (HEXA-METER would mean six, TETRA-METER would mean four, etc).
Put them together and you find that IAMBIC PENTAMETER means: FIVE IAMBS IN A LINE.
Iambic pentameter is special in English. Shakespeare wrote in it, if that means anything :P The special thing about all iambic poetry is that it is the closest thing to the rhythms of natural speech, or at least English as it used to be spoken.
Awáy,| and móck| the tíme| with faír|est shów; False fáce| must híde| whát the| false heárt| doth knów. i THINK | i'll HAVE | a-NOTH- | er CUP | of TEA.
There, you're a poet and you didn't know it. Speech is song, writing is poetry.
If you understand the rhythms behind language, you can better avoid "ugly" prose. One of the more common culprits is spondees: I said these guys weren't popular in English. Two stressed syllables together are uneasy bedfellows.
If you ever read something in a book and think "That is beautiful" or "That is poetic" or even "That seems to sing", take a look at the rhythms that are going on inside it.
To be most effective the rhythm will work with the words in the way that the Tennyson extract does. Sadly we are not all Tennysons and must do our inadequate best :P
Coming out of the best old Anglo-Saxon literary tradition, I am very into rhythms and often pick a particular word just for the particularly beautiful way it will fit into the phrase. In English we have more leeway than any other language, because we have so many different words. Rhythm is what makes prose sing: it is how a good writer gets that magical effect of language coming now swift, now slow, now gentle, now fierce.
ELOZE: Zora's Ghost Chapter 53
Man, I remember doing this passage... hours I spent angsting about whether to use BLACK or SHADOWY or SABLE or RAVEN-DARK, and where exactly to use each. I terrorize my editor, I really do.
The deciding factor was - actually - rhythm.
Ve shall scan, ja.
DARK | FLIT-ted | PAST, ? trochee ?Starting off very slowly, with stressed single syllables. The "FLIT-ted" is a sudden wingbeat in the long drawn-out phrase, bringing to mind a swift, half-seen movement, suggesting the sound of fluttering.
BLADE a | GLEAM of | LIGHT a- | GAINST the | DULL | SAble | OF his | CLOAK, trochee trochee trochee trochee ? trochee trochee ?Long stream of trochees: it flows, but not swiftly as iambs would; instead, it is a graceful, slow, dangerous sound. The stressed single syllables help to slow it down further, providing pauses.
Note: If I'd used BLACK here instead of SABLE, I'd end up with a dactyl in BLACK-of-his, which is too fast and flappy.
and be-CAME | a | anapaest ?woop! Style change, signified by the strange and uncommon anapaest. If it was a game of hopscotch this'd be where you skip and start standing on the other foot. This time the stray syllable is unstressed and swift, which has the effect of hurrying you on...
FLURry of | BLACK cloth and | STEEL. dactyl dactyl ?And dactyls for the whirling finish! The DUM-da-da waltz rhythm of the dactyl nicely portrayed, I thought, the character's dance-like grace (for which he is elsewhere known). The final stressed syllable stops it all dead with a good hard steely THUD.
Note: And if I'd used SA-ble here instead of BLACK, it would have stopped that swiftness of flow and I'd end up with a pair of slightly out-of-place iambs SA-ble CLOTH-and. Try it out and you'll see the difference.
So in summary, read your work aloud and see how it sounds. You might be surprised.
I finish with a quote from a modern poet, who, like many modern poets, didn't rhyme much - but who did know something about rhythm:
A word after a word after a word is power.
-Margaret Atwood
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