POETICA : 11      

‘Most people ignore most poetry because most poetry ignores most people’.

-          Adrian Mitchell         

 Poetry and Prosody

Prosody (n.): 1. the patterns of rhythm and sound used in poetry 2.the theory or study of these patterns or the rules governing them 3. The patterns of stress and intonation in a language; Origin: late 15^th C. from Latin prosodia ‘accent of a syllable’, from Greek prosoidia ‘song sung to music, tone of a syllable’, from pros ‘towards’+ oide ‘song’.[New Oxford Dictionary of English, Ed. 2001]

 

There are still some terms of prosody like – accent, intonation,  rhythm, stress, syllable, tone – in that definition that will need explanation. Stress and accent signify the emphasis we put on certain words as we speak, as when we say – How do you do? Intonation means the rise and the fall in speaking because of the stress we put on particular words ( as in ‘How do you do?) which creates a rise and fall of high and low of sound giving it a particular tone and rhythm. And lastly, syllable.

 

Syllable is defined as ‘any of the units into which a word is divided, containing a vowel sound with usually one or more consonants’ – for example,  the word ‘consonants’ can be broken into three  syllables – con –so- nants. That means, each syllable must contain one (short or long) vowel sound. For example – ‘live’ and ‘leave’ are both single syllables (with their respective ‘short’ and long ‘i’ and ‘ee’ sounds), because when we count syllables, we only count the vowel sound and not the number of ‘vowel letters’ making the ‘vowel sound’ in the syllable. This will be clearer when we count the syllables in a line from a Shakespeare sonnet (no.54) -

 

 1   2      3         4        5       6-7         8-9 (10)  10

O how much more doth beauty beauteous seem  / (beau-ty / beau-te-ous / seem)

 

-which has 8 words, with the first five having single-vowel words (o,o,u,o,o), and the last three words having only 2,3 and 1 syllables respectively, though the number of vowel letters in each syllable is more than one as shown above. (Remember, ‘y’ quite often sounds as a vowel,) So a syllable is divided according to the single vowel sound in it, and not the number of ‘vowel letters’ in it. In this given line, then, the total number of syllables is 11 (5+2+3+1), though when spoken ‘beaut’us’ sounds as only 2 syllables. Thus the total number of syllables, in spoken form, shall only be 10. And alternately ‘stressed’ (s) and ‘unstressed’(u), they create an ‘iambic’ rhythm, with five pairs of syllables or words, hence, pentameter. Each iambic metre is of two words/syllables in a rising rhythm – unstressed/stressed. In the Elizabethan conventional verse line, normal iambic pentameter (non-rhyming) lines came to be known as blank verse which are used in Shakespeare’s plays and in all Elizabethan drama generally. They are generally 5 pairs of ‘u-S’ syllables (pentameter) in the iambic rhythm, though with no line-end-rhymes.

 

In a normal iambic pentameter line there are usually 5 pairs of twin syllables. The 5 pairs (of 2 syllables each) constitute the pentameter line (penta=five, meter=measure). Iambic indicates the alternate accent or stress pattern of the syllables:  unstressed followed by stressed syllable in 5 successive feet or meter. (Such iambic meter creates a rising flow of voice with the second syllables in each foot being stressed.) This pattern can be shown as -   u S / u S / u S / u S / u S – in the following opening line from Shakespeare’s sonnet 54.  

 

o How / much More / doth Beau- / ty Beaut’/ -us Seem /          

 

The underlined Capitalized syllables are accented (stressed) when this line is spoken, with ‘beauteous’ pronounced only as 2 ‘slurred’ syllables. This is what is meant by iambic pentameter which is the staple metre (with occasional variations) used in English poetry of the Elizabethan period (16^th Century CE), creating a pleasant-sounding rise and fall, leading to a rising tempo in the spoken form.

 

The 4 common metres used in English poetry for creating variations in intonation, with a natural mix of metres, according to the natural flow and tempo of speech, are listed below :

 

(1) The most common  2-syllabled iambic ( u S /) metre is usually mixed with variations of the following metres in English verse:

(2) trochee ( 2-syllabled foot) with  reverse pattern :  ‘S u’ (do-ing, not do-ing)

(3) anapaest (3-syllabled foot) similar to iambic : ‘ u u S’ ( in the house)

(4)dactyl (3-syllabled foot) similar to trochee : ‘S u u’ ( house that was )

These are the 4 most common metrical patterns used by English poets. They can best be illustrated in the following lines taken from Shakespeare’s sonnets. For instance, in the opening line of sonnet 17 (first foot trochee, rest 4 iambic):

Who will / be-lieve / my verse / in time  / to come   (pattern : S u / u S /u S / u S / u S)

 But in the same sonnet, in line 10, we find a rather different pattern (first 2 feet iambic, last 2 anapaest):

Be scorned,/ like old/ men of less/ truth than tongue/  (pattern – ‘u S/ u S/ u u S /u u S)

Such a reading would give the line a rising intonation, with 2 iambics (u S) followed by 2 anapaests  (u u S), though the number of feet shall thus be only 4 (tetrameter), which practically means that variations in metre are a part of the game. Also, every line as iambic pentameter (di-DUM/di-DUM/ di-DUM…) will only create a jarring monotonous musical effect, not acceptable in good verse-making. For instance, look at this line from sonnet 26, for a falling intonation in a reverse stress pattern  (anapaest+trochee+trochee+anapaest) –

Lord of my / love, to / whom in / vas-sa-lage /           (pattern – ‘S u u / S u /S u / S u u )

So much about metrical craftsmanship in verse-making, which is only one part of its inherent musicality, besides the use of rhymes. There is, of course, another aspect of poetry in its stanza-patterns (number of lines shown as a group in writing or printing on the page), which we find in the old traditional forms like sonnet, ode, ballad, etc with strict formal features. There are also other verbal devices used in poetry for musicality - devices like, alliteration, assonance, internal rhyme, etc. Examples are:

Alliteration – repetition of consonant sounds at the beginning of words:

        “Five miles meandering with a mazy motion” – Coleridge (‘Kubla Khan’)

Assonance – repetition of similar vowel sounds usually close together:

        “All day the wind breathes low with mellower tone” – Tennyson (‘Lotos-Eaters’)

Consonance – close repetition of identical consonant sounds with differing vowel sounds:

        hearse – horse / group – grope – gripe / middle – muddle / wonder - wander

Internal rhyme – two or more words rhyming within the same line of verse

      “Of the tribe which describe with a jibe the perversion of Justice” – Kipling (‘City of Brass’)

And still another equally important aspect is rhymeless blank verse (regular iambic pentameter lines), without end-rhymes, used in Shakespear’s plays and Elizabethan drama in general. Similarly, in poetry writing today, poets use free verse, metrically more free and mostly rhymeless. In ‘free verse’, it is the line-break (lineation) which is of special importance. Poets today writing verse, free from regular metricality and rhyme, have to decide where to break a line to enhance the poetic meaning of the ongoing lines. As Terry Eagleton says –“ Perhaps because modern life is felt to be somehow dissonant, a good many poets begin to abandon the use of rhyme as we enter the modern age. If you want an effect of perpetual open-endedness, you can leave the line-endings to do the work of pausing rather than full stop them.”

 

All this technical jargon of prosody, of course, was to help the vast amount of poetry-making that goes on the internet today. Before we take up our pen to write poetry we must acquaint ourselves with the regulatory devices of verse making in the older tradition of poetry-making which was considered to be as much inspiration as a disciplined craft. In fact, in the ultimate analysis, a code of discipline and regulation is mandatory for every kind of craft, including poetry. After all, poetry etymologically means ‘making’, and any kind of making is a process with certain rules. Indeed, poetry involves its own distinctive kind of craft to qualify as poetry, which distinguishes it from prose by its formal attributes raising it to a higher level of communication through its pronounced  musicality.

 

In fact, we can say that poetry is to prose what song is to speech. Either is distinguished from the other by its use of craft which uses special regulatory devices. For poetry writing these devices are defined as prosody. In essence, therefore poetry necessarily involves a distinctive kind of craftsmanship. But it also means that for writing good poetry in English (or any language) you have to have a reasonable command over the spoken idiomatic form of the language. Indeed, a special chosen variety of the spoken language is the ‘clay’ out of which we create or ‘make’ poetry.

Modernist or post-modernist poetry has virtually rejected traditional poetry (though not all the essential poetic devices discussed above) in the name of ‘newness’ and ‘proximation’ to the post-Victorian, post-World Wars complex modern consciousness. Good grammar (in fact, more expressive grammar) is still a prerequisite of all literary writing, as are some of the essential elements of poetry-writing explained above. Only old poetic forms (stanza forms – quatrain, octet,sonnet,couplet, etc ) and some devices (line-end rhymes), etc have been increasingly abandoned, and new, startling new devices - like those used by e e cummings in his typical poetry (see POETICA-3) -  are invented (both, perhaps, for novelty’s sake as well as for reflecting a modern complex socio-psychological consciousness).

To end this long note on the importance of prosody in poetry-making, I would like to emphasize once again that poetry-making is also a craft which requires an understanding of its crafted form – the length of the poem, its division into stanzas in keeping with the flow of meaning, the line-breaks to give clarity to the flow of meaning,  an understanding of poetic music through word-play in the poem, the title of the poem as a signpost of the theme, and so forth. For writing good legitimate poetry today we still need to keep these guidelines in view.

And the clincher is : 

Write poetry as a craftsman makes a clay pot!

 © Dr BSM Murty

Potter’s image: Courtsey Google

Please read the POETICA series of notes on poetry-writing by clicking on MORE POSTS