Month: July 2018

A Beginner’s Guide to Reading (and writing) Metre

Phew! Metre. Or Meter, for the dear readers from the former colony. Such a laden term, which reminds you of hours spent huddled over a god-forsaken poem during rainy school days, trying to determine whether Hamlet’s ‘To Be or Not to Be’ speech is trochaic or iambic and what on earth the teacher meant by pentameter or tetrameter and…

Yes. I get it. Metre is difficult – or at least, it appears to be difficult at first. But, Greek terminology aside, it is actually one of the most straight-forward aspects which you can learn about poetry, once you understand the way it works. I found, throughout my years at school, that it is generally taught in a very poor fashion. Not to disregard my teachers – they were all wonderful, for sure – but the general approach is often to provide you with the Greek term and what it means, and then to try and make you figure out for yourself what metre a certain poem has… not ideal, if you ask me.

But, if you start from the beginning (a very good place to start!) and look at the simple language blocks which make up the way of how we speak, you can see what the whole fuss is about – hopefully without falling into despair.

I must note, however, that prosody (that’s just a fancy term we use to describe the practice of analysing patterns of rhythm and sound in poetry) is never an exact science. Depending on your regional accent or dialect, some people tend to pronounce things differently, which can lead to a variety of ways of scanning the metre of a poem. Nevertheless, the differences are usually only minute and based on individual cases, and do not detract from the basic simple nature of prosody.

Why should I care?

Why indeed? Of course, everyone is perfectly capable of understanding a poem without understanding metre. You can even write plenty of good (even very good!) essays without a single reference to a poem’s rhythm or metre. But, while you might subconsciously enjoy the metre of a poem, understanding its metrical structure can enable you to become aware of the music behind the craft. It can allow you to feel and hear the work which went into its creation, and thus it allows you to enjoy it more. And, if you are a practising poet, you will find that understanding metre gives you much more room to improve your own writing since you begin to understand how rhythm works in speech. So even without writing in traditional metrical forms, it will let you feel and understand the process, and give you the tools to write better poems. In order to break the rules, after all, you need to know the rules – otherwise, you’re doing the equivalent to a five-year-old drawing a picture of his or her parents…

Syllables, and why they matter

Without wanting to sound patronising, the logical place to start with metre is with individual words. And words are made up of syllables – starting with simple monosyllables (words which have one syllable) such as car, hat, cat, up to insanely long words containing twelve syllables, such as floccinaucinihilipilification (best not to mention that word to anyone – it does exist, however; feel free to google it if you dare).

In natural speech, we emphasise certain syllables in any given word more than others. This act is known as stressing a syllable. In some words, only one syllable contains a stress; in others, multiple ones can be stressed. To give a few examples (the stressed syllables are marked in bold):

Motorcar

Aeroplane

Transferred

Chinese

Europe

Scansion

Prosody

As you can see, certain words of the same length in syllables contain varying degrees of stress. Monosyllabic strong words (nouns, verbs or adjectives) are usually stressed, such as ‘can’, ‘fan’, ‘dumb’, ‘wrong’, ‘strong’. Monosyllabic weak words (articles, pronouns) are usually unstressed, such as ‘me’, ‘you’, ‘the’, ‘a’. However, if you form them in a sentence, they might be stressed.

The only source you require to determine the stress of a word is to speak it – and listen to yourself. There is no magic involved, and it is quite straight-forward, provided you have grown up in an English-speaking country or else received a formal education in English.

Of course, this is not to say that there aren’t ambiguities, and, as mentioned above, there are regional differences. Take the word ‘fire’ for instance – where I am from, it is monosyllabic, but there are many, many regions in the world where it is a disyllabic (two syllables) word, and the ‘fi’ would be stressed, whereas ‘re’ would not be stressed.

At this point you’re probably asking, ‘so what?’ Don’t worry – I was just about to get to that!

What metre essentially is

Metre is nothing more or less than the arrangement of syllables into a pre-defined pattern to create a certain effect. You know which syllable to stress in any given word – and if you order them in a certain pattern, say, stressed-unstressed-stressed-unstressed-stressed-unstressed, you have written a line in a perfect metre.

This can, of course, be immensely difficult since it involves toying with varying ways in which you can order your syllables. Thank goodness, throughout the centuries of English poetry, several specific patterns have established themselves as the most effective ones.

The dominant patterns in English metre

This is where the Greek terminology comes in. You certainly don’t need to use the Greek terms when scanning by yourself, but if you ever write an essay on poetry in which you decide to discuss the metre, it is essential that you use it. There are four main types of metrical patterns (or what we call a metrical foot – yes, you’re allowed to laugh at that term):

Iamb (Eye-am-b)

This is the most commonly used one in English. It is an unstressed syllable followed by a stressed one. Iambic lines are the closest we have to a regular metre which sounds like natural speech – hence its popularity. This also gives the metre a wide flexibility; it can be used for comedic, melancholic, contemplative, heroic, dramatic verse and more. The word means ‘one-step’; it’s best to imagine that you’re taking one step ahead, thus going from the unstressed standstill to one stressed step ahead.  Here some examples of words which are, by their very nature, iambic:

Exist

Away

Belong

Cathay

Advance

Trochee (Trou-kee)

The trochee is less common than the iamb, and is the reversal of the latter, i.e. a stressed syllable followed by an unstressed one. Because of its similarity with the iamb, it is also quite popular, but by starting out on a stress it often sounds more aggressive and strong. For this reason, it is the perfect metre for, say, the Hags’ speeches in Shakespeare.  The word means ‘wheel’, which means you can remember it as a twist or turn on iamb. Words which are by nature trochaic include:

Demon

Heaven

Homely

Footprint

Former

Dactyl (Dac-til)

The dactyl is the first of the three-syllable feet, and it contains a stressed syllable followed by two unstressed ones. It is a lot less common than the iamb and trochee because it is difficult to find a lot of different words which would be able to sustain a dactyl throughout an entire poem in English; in many cases, it forces the reader to sustain it artificially. It has a very musical quality to it because the two stresses after the stress create a form of motion; in music, therefore, it is more common than in regular poetry. One example (which I’ve nicked from Stephen Fry’s The Ode Less Travelled) is the song ‘I want to be in America’ from West Side Story. Note that ‘want’ would ordinarily be stressed, but the music enforces the stress. The word means finger; it is best to remember dactyl by looking at your index finger: the longest part of it is closest to the hand, followed by to shorter parts, so long-short-short or stress-unstress-unstress. Words which are naturally dactylic include:

Formerly

Graciously

Murmuring

Whispering

Longfellow

Anapaest (A-na-pest)

The anapaest is the final of the ‘big-four’ to know about and by far the least common. It contains two unstressed syllables followed by a stressed one. By being the reversal of the dactyl, it can feel delayed, maybe even cumbersome. The word means ‘struck back’. It might be helpful to remember it by imagining it as the one where the stress is delayed by the most, hence ‘struck back’. There aren’t many pure anapaests in the English language, although the word anapaest itself is a strong example.

This part can be difficult to understand, of course. If you’re struggling, it might be best to write down the four terms and to look for other examples of words which are naturally of that stress. Feel free to send me a message if you require additional assistance.

Other types of feet

Other types of feet

There are, of course, other variations, but scholars disagree strongly over their use, and whether they are even part of the English language. Two further examples include the Pyrrhus; the pyrrhic metre contains two unstressed syllables. Then there is the spondee, which contains two stressed syllables. In trisyllabic words, there is furthermore the amphibrach, which contains an unstressed syllable, followed by a stressed one, and finally an unstressed one at the end; an example might be ‘placebo’.  Stressed-unstressed-stressed can be called cretic; examples, again, are rare but might include Wetherspoon. Generally, it is probably not necessary to know these metres; certainly not if you are studying poetry on your own, or even at school. The basic knowledge of the other four, however, should be a given if you wish to understand metre.

 

 

How metrical feet form a metrical pattern

So! We now have our metrical feet, and we know that the syllables need to be arranged in a particular pattern to create a certain effect. Thus, we know that

Stress-unstress-stress-unstress-stress-unstress

Follows a trochaic pattern, and we know that

Unstress-stress-unstress-stress-unstress-stress

Follows an iambic pattern. Please note that the words’ positions within the line dictate whether the line is an iamb, trochee, dactyl or anapaest, NOT the ‘internal’ metrical foot of a word. For example, to take a few random words from above, ‘Demon’ and ‘heaven’ are both trochaic. But if I arrange them thus:

There are no demons lingering in Heaven

The line is iambic, even though there are no ‘internally’ iambic words in the line! This is because the line starts out iambic, with taTUM, and continues to do so throughout the line. As such, you hear an iambic pattern, regardless of the individual words which might, by their very nature, contain a different metrical foot.

Now, to complete the use of terminology, the number of metrical feet in any given line dictates the title we give it. Unfortunately, again, we use Greek words for it, consisting of Greek number + meter. Thus, a line with one metrical foot is a monometer, with two, dimeter, with three, trimeter, tetrameter, pentameter, hexameter etc. So, to take my example from above again, it has five iambic feet within the line – and thus it is an iambic pentameter.

Here another few simplistic examples of iambic pentameters:

I couldn’t think of anything to write;

Instead, I jotted down some useless lines.

Or, to write some trochaic tetrameters:

Coming home is always pretty;

Mum would cook while I’d be lazy.

So, as you can see, it is, in essence, quite a simple process, although it might be difficult to wrap your head around it. Coincidently, the best way to learn to read metre is to write it yourself. C’mon – it ain’t that hard. If you stick with it and just write, say, ten lines in iambs of varying lengths, you’ll soon have the process internalised and will be able to spot an iamb from a mile away.

Consistency in metrical patterns

You might be wondering – and rightly so! – why there are plenty of lines by renowned poets which, while conceding to the rules, nevertheless contain several irregularities within their lines. This is because it would both be very stifling if you could never, ever break the rules and because it would just sound dull – like a constant drum-beat without any variation. To solve this problem, poets throughout the centuries have come up with lots of different ways for a line to sound regular still, and yet keep it interesting – such as substituting the first foot in an iambic line with a trochee, making the line start stressed and sound quicker through the following two unstressed syllables. One example might be:

Come to the garden of my dreams

This is meant to be an introductory article, so I won’t go into detail right here; for now, just be aware that a line not adhering strictly to the rules does not mean that the poet is incapable or otherwise breaking the rules, but that he or she is usually using accepted irregularities.

This also means that there is a large difference between rhythm and metre. Metre is the strict outline of the beats, as discussed above, whereas rhythm is the actual stresses you hear when reading a line, which includes the irregularities. In my garden-laden example, the line is clearly an iambic tetrameter, but the rhythm you would hear would be:

TUM ta ta TUM ta TUM ta TUM

So: never confuse rhythm and metre! The rhythm can be in line with the metre, but it doesn’t have to. Lines not written in metre still contain a rhythm – such as the rhythm you have when you use natural speech.

It might also be useful to think in musical terms. There, too, you have a metre and a rhythm. The equivalent to the poetic metre would be the tact, such as 4/4, where, when listening to the metronome, you hear four regular beats. The actual rhythm of the music, on the other hand, works within the tact (or, in poetry, within the metre), but in such a way that you can still hear the beat of the metronome.

Exception: Free Verse

Free verse is the big exception to the use of metre in poetry, of course. Not all poems are written with a strict metre in mind, and free verse, as the name implies, does not adhere to strict metrical rules at all (and usually not to rhyming patterns, either). I’ll write about free verse at another time; but for now, it is important to note that not all poems are written in metre.

Conclusion

As you have seen, the whole issue of prosody is not too difficult to understand. With a bit of perseverance and patience, anyone can understand and hear metre, and thus help you enjoy poetry to a greater extent – and even begin crafting your own lines in iambic pentameter! That is not to say that it is completely easy – it does require taking time to study the craft.

If you enjoyed this post, please feel free to share it on your preferred social media platform using the tender buttons below, and please don’t hesitate to ask a question or provide feedback in the comments. If anything is unclear, I’ll be happy to write another blog post dedicated towards some of the more difficult aspects. Tada!

A Reading of W.B. Yeats’s ‘He Wishes for the Cloths of Heaven’

He wishes for the Cloths of Heaven

Had I the heavens’ embroidered cloths,

Enwrought with golden and silver light,

The blue and the dim and the dark cloths

Of night and light and the half-light,

I would spread the cloths under your feet:

But I, being poor, have only my dreams;

I have spread my dreams under your feet;

Tread softly because you tread on my dreams.*

 

Those of you who write your own poetry probably know the feeling: when you stumble upon a poem which strikes you as so perfect, so beautiful in its simplicity, and so mind-bogglingly eye-opening that you become envious of the poet who dared to create such a piece of paradise on earth.

I got this feeling for the first time when reading Yeats’s ‘He wishes for the Cloths of Heaven’ (originally ‘Aedh wishes for the Cloths of Heaven’). Although it isn’t generally considered one of his best work – not that that says much, considering Yeats is often thought to be one of the giants of poetry – it is almost certainly one of his most well-known and much-beloved poems.

And how could this not be the case? The language is straight-forward and simple; the diction is modern and can be read easily by anyone, even if you haven’t studied literature at school or university; the prosody is a simple, but loose iambic tetrameter; the resonances of the repetitions at the line endings carry the poem onwards; and the message is so ordinary, yet gorgeous, that one can’t help but love it as it is.

The poem starts out with a desire most, if not all of us, have dreamt of at some point of our lives: to be rich, to have access to all the beautiful things humans have come up with throughout the ages:

 

Had I the heaven’s embroidered cloths,

Enwrought with golden and silver light,

The blue and the dim and the dark cloths

Of night and light and the half-light

 

These are the aspects of humanity which reach god-like potential; they are beautiful to behold and so wonderful that one might mistake them for heavenly cloths. In this sublime state, they contain all aspects of human existence – they are the cloths of ‘night and light and the half-light’; that is, they are the cloths of enlightened daytime, melancholic night-time, as well as the mysterious time in-between, the golden twilight. The repetitions of ‘cloths’ and ‘light’ gives us a sense of the urgency of the desire; the speaker is yearning for the possession of these things. But as we discover afterward, our speaker is not selfishly dreaming of possessing riches for him or herself, but, on the contrary, to provide a nameless lover with them:

 

I would spread the cloths under your feet:

 

The only reason the speaker wishes to possess the riches is so that he can ‘spread the cloths’ under the feet of the lover; not merely to provide them as a gift, but literally to allow the lover to walk upon the spoils of the speaker’s endeavours – in other words, to give the lover the feeling that he/she is walking upon something so wonderful that it reminds him/her of heaven. But, alas, the speaker doesn’t have these riches:

 

But I, being poor, have only my dreams;

I have spread my dreams under your feet;

 

The speaker concedes that he/she can only dream of this possibility, only dream of being able to lift the lover to a heaven-like state. And yet, the speaker has spread his/her dreams under the feet of the lover, as though the dreams possess the same qualities as the cloths. Rather than giving the lover the spoils of riches, the speaker has given him/her the same desires, the same dreams, the same wishes that allowed the speaker to conjure up these images in the first place. This spreading of the desire for riches – for heavenly transcendence – is, however, a particularly delicate act, putting the speaker at risk, as we see can see in the final line:

 

Tread softly because you tread on my dreams.

 

Having revealed his/her deepest desires, the speaker is in a profoundly vulnerable position. The speaker is at the mercy of the lover because the lover now knows the deepest driving-force in the speaker’s life – the reason the speaker lives for, so to speak. This is a vote of confidence in the lover, but also demonstrates the deep longing the speaker has for him/her.

It is astonishing how much Yeats manages to put into these eight lines. He gives us love and melancholy, poverty and riches, wishes and dreams, the pain of unfulfilled desire, and the vulnerability of confessions. It is a poem which not only convinced me of Yeats’s genius when first reading it but was actually one of the poems which awoke in me my love for poetry. An astonishing accomplishment, even by Yeats’s standard.

 

A lovely recording of the great Sir Anthony Hopkins reading the poem:

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*from W.B. Yeats, Yeats’s Poems, ed. by A. Norman Jeffares (New York: Palgrave, 1996), p. 108.

The Sacrifice – Short Story

We have reached the mountains and let the servants go and do as they please, while my son and I will go in the other direction, searching for our specific destination. We reach it in time; a lonely hillside with a single rock pointing upwards is to represent the altar. A slight scent from the moistened grass is pervading the air. It is roughly an hour from dusk, and we are to commence the ritual as soon as possible after nightfall. I send my son forth to search for some dry wood. He is only a child, but very bright for his age, for which I am very proud, and he is rather strong, so I am sure he will be able to handle it. While he is gone, I pray and prepare the ritual as well as my old back allows me to do. Perhaps it would have been wiser to take one of the servants with us. But the instructions are clear enough: I am to go to the mountain with my son, and there perform the service to the best of my ability. I sigh and consent. After all, it is His will. I spread herbs around the altar, look to the sky and search for a sign from the Lord, but there is no reaction. Merely the sound of the blackbirds, singing in joy despite the impending sacrifice, is breaking the silence of the hilltop.

Just before dusk, my son returns, and he has brought with him as much material as he is able to carry. ‘Will that do, father?’, he asks of me. ‘You did well’, I reply, and together we spread the wood over and around the rock until it looks like a pyre. Soon my son grows weary. His short stature does not allow him to do great amounts of manual labour at a time. ‘Where is the ram that we are to sacrifice?’, he asks in his innocence, probably fearing that it would be up to him to go and find one. ‘God will send us one in time’, I reply and continue to pile the wood. At last, the sun sets and it grows increasingly darker. At last, it is time to commence the sacrifice. ‘Shouldn’t he have sent it by now?’, my son asks once again, and glances around, but other than several birds and small rabbits roaming the mountaintop, nothing can be found. ‘I’m sorry, son’, I say and hit him over the head with my staff. As he lies there, groaning, I cannot help but think what a nasty request from the Lord this sacrifice represents. But who am I to judge Him, who has created everything on heaven and earth? There surely must be a higher motive, which I am merely incapable of grasping. I turn my son on his stomach and start to bind his arms and legs. Before I am finished, however, he wakes up, with blood running from his head. It is obvious I am not as strong as I once was; I wish he hadn’t woken up. He starts squirming. ‘Hush!’, I tell him, ‘it is His will.’ But he does not stop the screeching. He starts to struggle. I find it exceedingly exhausting holding on to him. I grip his hair; I push his head and with a loud thud it hits the dirt on the ground. At the same time, I tie his legs together. It seems to me that the Lord would not approve of the constant squirming, so I stuff a small stick into the boy’s mouth and tie it up. At last, he is somewhat silent, other than a faint, silent groaning. The blood from his wound starts to thicken, and the stench from it burns into my nostrils. The child starts crying. Tears drip from his brown eyes, while he looks at me with wide, terrified eyes. I pick him up and place him on the altar. ‘Stop crying’, I bid him, ‘you’ll moisten the wood and it won’t burn as well. Besides, I’m sure the Lord, our God, does not approve of your noise. Are you not glad you’ll soon be in heaven with the Creator?’ But my beseeching is to no avail. The boy continues to cry and to struggle against all odds. At one point he even nearly manages to get loose from his bonds. I strike him as firmly as possible in his stomach to make him hold still, and I reinforce the ropes. Finally, he is completely silent, and not moving anymore. It is, at long last, time to proceed with the offering.

I take my hand and stroke my son’s blonde locks. He has closed his eyes. ‘It will be alright’, I whisper quietly in his ear, ‘there is nothing I can do about it. He has requested it. We will meet again in the next life.’ With those words being spoken, I grasp the knife and moisten it slightly. I do not want the boy to suffer more than he has to. Just one cut, and then the deed would be done. Again, I grip the boy’s hair and pull it back, exposing his throat. I rest the knife on his soft skin. I am just about to slit his throat, when…

The following morning, we pick up the servants where we had left them, and proceed to return home. Praised be the Lord for His glory and mercy! But my son is very silent, for some inconceivable reason, as we tread the long paths through the mountain, reach the plains, and finally arrive at the village. I cannot imagine what possibly could be the matter with the child. After all, has anyone done him any real harm? He is alive, is he not? Can he not see the great justice of the Lord? Perhaps he is just trapped in deep thought, contemplating His greatness. If not, he might need some more beating. But never mind that for now; we have finally reached our hut, and my son must – and will – overcome his sudden fit of silence.

A Spectre Visits Regent’s Park Open Air Theatre – 23.06.2018

The Turn of the Screw

Award-winning director Timothy Sheader returned once again to Regent’s Park, offering his take on Benjamin Britten’s haunting The Turn of the Screw. Based on Henry James’s novella of the same title, the opera tells the story of mysterious encounters at a secluded mansion, and of a – possibly insane – young governess growing desperate in her desire to protect her charges from uncanny visits from beyond the grave.

Dark memories casting their shadow over the family, coupled with the persevering isolation of the broken mansion, leads to a sense of uneasiness, of despair, as showcased in this production, which transported the enthusiastic audience into a world of eeriness. To improve this effect, Sheader’s foresight ensured that the performance would take place in the twilight hours of the evening, between light and dark, enabling the uncanny shadows to put the audience on the edge of their seats. In the same mindset, he represented the mansion as a ruined glass fragment of a building – reflecting the fractured and broken lives of the opera’s characters.

Conductor Toby Purser and the members of the ENO orchestra brought their skills to the fold. With perfect timing and precision, they highlighted the uncomfortable nature of Britten’s glorious music, at times dark and frightening, at others strange and unnatural. William Morgan starred as Peter Quint, incorporating the sinister nature of his character, and Rhian Lois as the governess captured the audience in her growing desperation as the opera unfolds. Special kudos go to Sholto McMillan as Miles and Ellie Bradbury as Flora who, despite their tender age, were marvellous at depicting the complex nature of their characters both as naïve children and victims of broken innocence.

Sheader’s chilling production of The Turn of the Screw in Regent’s Park Open Air Theatre was a memorable event. The audience experienced an atmospheric evening of sinister ambitions, rising tensions, and madness… a tremendous success, through and through.

Click here for more information about the event

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