Download Rhythm in Free Verse: Presentation Notes

Rhythm in Free Verse
by Carl Bettis (http://www.carlbettis.com)
Notes for a presentation for the Columbia Chapter of the Missouri Writers' Guild's Write Direction conference,
October 19, 2013 in Columbia, Missouri.
Writing free verse is like playing tennis with the net down. -- Robert Frost
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Introduction
Definitions of Terms
Free verse working definition
How can we consciously use rhythm in free verse?
• Metrical section
• Rhythmic Repetition
• Masculine / Feminine Endings
• Pacing
• Some Lineation Strategies
• Groupings of Lines
Rhythm and Content
Conclusion
Introduction
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Free verse often defined as verse without meter or rhyme.
Free verse is freedom to use all resources of formal verse, including rhythm.
Free verse = Calvinball: you can use a net and third base and a hockey stick and a catapult.
Definitions of Terms
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Accentual verse: Verse measured by the number of accented syllables per line; the unaccented syllables
are not counted.
Syllabic verse: Verse measured by the number of syllables per line; accent is not considered.
Accentual-syllablic verse: Verse measured by the number and type of rhythmic units, or feet (see
below) per line.
Foot: A grouping of accented and unaccented syllables in a specific pattern. The basic units of English
prosody have two or three syllables per foot, typically with only one syllable being accented.
Iambic foot (iamb): A group of two syllables, an unaccented followed by an accented: da-DUM.
Trochaic foot (trochee): The reverse of the iamb, an accented syllable followed by an unaccented
syllable: DUM-da.
Anapestic foot (anapest): Two unaccented syllables followed by an accented syllable: da-da-DUM.
Dactylic foot (dactyl): The reverse of the anapest, one accented syllable followed by two unaccented
syllables: DUM-da-da.
Pyrrhic foot (pyhrric): Two unaccented syllables: da-da.
Spondaic foot (spondee): Two accented syllables: DUM-DUM.
Dimeter: Two feet per line.
Trimeter: Three feet per line.
Tetrameter: Four feet per line.
Pentameter: Five feet per line.
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Hexameter: Six feet per line.
Masculine ending: A line that ends with an accented syllable.
Feminine ending: A line that ends with an unaccented syllable.
Rising rhythm: A rhythmic unit that begins with an unaccented syllable and ends with an accented
syllable. The iamb and anapest are rising rhythms.
Falling rhythm: A rhythmic unit that begins with an accented syllable and ends with an unaccented
syllable. The trochee and dactyl are falling rhythms.
End-stopped line: A line that comes to a grammatical stop or strong pause at the end of the line,
corresponding with the end of a phrase or clause; often marked by punctuation.
Enjambed line (enjambment): A line that does not come to a stop or strong pause at the end, but runs
headlong into the following line.
Stanza: A grouping of a fixed number of lines, such as a couplet (two lines), a triplet (three lines), and
so on.
Strophe: A verse paragraph, similar to a stanza, but of no fixed length.
There are more exotic named meters and lines, but these are the standard building blocks. Iambic pentameter,
for example, consists of five iambs per line: da-DUM da-DUM da-DUM da-DUM da-DUM. Terms like
"iambic pentameter" indicate the prevailing rhythm of the whole; parts may vary.
Free verse working definition
Free verse can be defined as "verse without a sustained rhythm."
• Notice I said "sustained," not "regular" or "predictable."
• Irregular odes of Cowley, Wordsworth not predictable, but iambic throughout.
There was a time when meadow, grove, and stream,
The earth, and every common sight,
To me did seem
Apparelled in celestial light,
The glory and the freshness of a dream.
It is not now as it hath been of yore;
Turn wheresoe'er I may,
By night or day,
The things which I have seen I now can see no more.
--William Wordsworth, "Ode: Intimations of Immortality"
The lines above range from 2 feet to 6 feet, but all are iambic.
How can we consciously use rhythm in free verse?
Metrical section
• partial line to several lines
• risks seeming accidental
Sighs, short and infrequent, were exhaled,
And each man fixed his eyes before his feet.
Flowed up the hill and down King William Street,
To where Saint Mary Woolnoth kept the hours
With a dead sound on the final stroke of nine.
--T.S. Eliot, The Waste Land
Eliot includes iambic pentameter in a free verse poem here. 2nd, 3rd and 4th of lines quoted are completely
regular. This + rhyme make it clear not accident.
Rhythmic Repetition
• Whitman often used repeated rhythms at beginning and/or ending of lines:
Out of the cradle endlessly rocking,
Out of the mocking-bird's throat, the musical shuttle,
Out of the Ninth-month midnight,
Over the sterile sands, and the fields beyond, where the child, leaving his bed, wander'd alone, bare-headed, barefoot,
Down from the shower'd halo,
Up from the mystic play of shadows, twining and twisting as if they were alive...
--Walt Whitman, "Out of the Cradle Endlessly Rocking"
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Each line begins with dactyl followed by trochee (DUM-da-da DUM-da), all but one end with trochee
(DUM-da).
structure and freedom
Not limited to endpoints of lines. E.g. from 4 consecutive lines of Eliot's "Gerontion"
... at the HOT GATES ...
... in the WARM RAIN ...
Nor KNEE DEEP in the SALT MARSH ...
Masculine / Feminine Endings
Simple way to structure is to pattern masc/fem endings. For example:
• Alternate masc. w/ fem. endings.
• Have a section with all or mostly masc., or all/mostly fem.
• If characters speak in poem, have one speak in mostly masc./fem.
Pacing
Affected by:
• Density of stress (how many stressed versus unstressed syllables in the whole?)
• Enjambment versus end-stopped lines
• Phrasing within the line
• Groupings of lines (stanzas and strophes)
• Line length
• All else equal, long lines speed up pace, short lines slow down.
• Example short lines:
The floor
of the temple
is bright
with the rain,
the porch and lintel,
each pillar,
plain
in its sheet of metal...
--H.D., "Trance"
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Example long lines:
1-2-3 was the number he played but today the number came 3-2-1;
bought his Carbide at 30 and it went to 29; had the favorite at Bowie but the track was slow...
--Kenneth Fearing, "Dirge"
Some Lineation Strategies
• Breath prosody: 1 line equals 1 breath.
• Practiced by some Beat poets, e.g. Allen Ginsberg.
• Varies by poet.
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• Sedentary smoker versus athlete: maybe body of poem should reflect body of poet.
Phrasal prosody: 1 line equals 1 phrase.
• In practice often means 2 or 3 accented syllables per line.
• Risks monotony in long passages.
Intuitive: poet breaks the line where it "feels right."
• Often turns out to be phrasal.
• Advantage: the poet can make a new decision for every line.
• Disadvantage: the poet must make a new decision for every line.
Visual and other prosodies.
• The shape of the poem on the page.
• Grammatical prosodies, e.g. line break after every verb.
• Not really rhythmic strategies.
Groupings of Lines
• stanzas
• couplets, triplets and quatrains common
• couplet example:
A poem should be equal to:
Not true
For all the history of grief
An empty doorway and a maple leaf
For love
The leaning grasses and two lights above the sea-A poem should not mean
But be
--Archibald MacLeish, "Ars Poetica"
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triplet example:
there is no before and no after,
there is one finite moment
that no infinite joy can disperse
or thought of past happiness
tempt from or dissipate;
now I know the best and the worst;
the seasons revolve around
a pause in the infinite rhythm
of the heart and of heaven.
--H.D., Helen in Egypt
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(Reminds of terza rima, Dante.)
• Can add some feeling of formality and restraint.
• Can aid in composition, imposing a subtle rhythm.
• Can be end-stopped or enjambed, like lines.
• Like lines, short stanzas tend to slow, long ones to quicken.
strophes
• Variable-length verse paragraphs.
• Can follow the rhythm of thought; more organic than stanzas.
• Like lines or stanzas, short tends to slow, long to speed.
Rhythm and Content
Components of a poem:
• Narrative: plot, what happens.
• Lyrical: emotion, mood.
• Dramatic: character. Every poem has at least one character, the narrator.
• Thematic: meaning, moral, topic.
Other components exist, e.g. tone. This is just one way of looking at poems. Components rarely are given equal
weight within a single poem.
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Narrative
• Pacing makes a real difference here.
• As fiction writers know, you can build suspense by slowing down.
• Short lines
• End-stopped
• Stress-heavy
• Lots of pauses
• Monosyllabic words vs polysyllabic
• Advice from very unfree-verse poet Alexander Pope:
When Ajax strives some rock's vast weight to throw,
The line too labours, and the verse moves slow;
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Not so, when swift Camilla scours the plain,
Flies o'er the unbending corn, and skims along the main.
--Alexander Pope, Essay on Criticism
Lyrical
• Flat rhythm, w/ even timing and little stress, can give flat/depressed effect.
• Falling rhythms tend towards elegiac or melancholy tone.
• Rising rhythms tend towards cheerful tone.
• But beware the unintended comic effects dactyls and anapests can have in English.
• In this example of iambic pentameter, the "outrageous," "rough" rhythms of 2nd and 4th lines
reinforce the mood:
For else my feeble vessel crazd, and crackt
Through thy strong buffets and outrageous blows,
Cannot endure, but needs it must be wrackt
On the rough rocks, or on the sandy shallows.
--Edmund Spenser, The Faerie Queen
(Notice he rhymes a masculine line ending with a feminine one: blows / shallows.)
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Dramatic
• Rhythm helps characterize speaker(s)
• E.g. Browning's stress-crammed Rabbi Ben Ezra: "Irks care the crop-full bird? Frets doubt the
maw-crammed beast?"
• In long poem could give main characters each a distinctive rhythmic "tag" or "motif."
Thematic
• In Spenser, most musical rhythms are for dangerous seduction, as in description of Bower of
Bliss:
The joyous Birds, shrouded in chearful Shade,
Their Notes unto the Voice attempred sweet;
Th' angelical soft trembling Voices made
To th' Instruments divine Respondence meet:
The silver sounding Instruments did meet
With the base Murmur of the Water's fall:
The Water's fall with difference discreet,
Now soft, now loud, unto the Wind did call:
The gentle warbling Wind low answered to all.
--Edmund Spenser, The Faerie Queen
Conclusion
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Best way to learn: read good free verse and formal verse poets.
Take poems, yours or a favorite's, and experiment with changing the rhythm:
• Break the lines differently.
• Reword so there are more accented syllables.
• Reword so there are fewer accented syllables.
• If formal, free up the rhythm; if free verse, regularize the rhythm.
• Break into stanzas or strophes.
• Etc.
Good poets to study (some free verse, some not):
• Elizabeth Bishop
• Robert Browning
• John Donne
• Hilda Doolittle (H.D.)
• John Keats
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Marianne Moore
Ezra Pound, if you can forget his politics
William Shakespeare
Wallace Stevens
Walt Whitman
William Carlos Williams
William Wordsworth (the odes)
William Butler Yeats
Copyright (c) 2013 by Carl Bettis. This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 United States
License. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/us/deed.en_US.