Iambs and Trochees

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Sat, 2006-06-24 15:36

Jack Cade

Iambs and Trochees

While hunting for good examples of trochaic pentameter, I found this article:

http://allpoetry.com/Column/1029240

It's opening statement of intent is: "It seems to me that today's writers of poetry do not appreciate the power of meter in poetry, specifically the iamb and the trochee. When experimented with, it generally tends to be just that, an experiment and nothing more. Today's poets don't seem to use the iamb and the trochee for their emotive capabilities and rhythmic potentials."

The article then goes on to explain what trochees and iambs are, and give examples, but utterly fail to demonstrate (or even to mention again) the 'emotive capabilities and rhythmic potentials' which I don't appreciate.

Anyone care to enlighten me? I like the odd rhythmically regular sentence, but I tend to feel there's more emotive power in variation of rhythm. Poems in strictly iambic or trochaic metre principally produce, for me, a mildly comical effect (in that they're often necesarily waffly or pompously worded,) and the kind of poets who successfully employ them are those who use that to maximum humorous effect, usually by matching archaic or overly formal vocabulary with a distinctively banal or silly subject matter. This is a very rich seam, but it's been a long time since I've read verse (classical and modern,) with serious emotive intentions that is anything but hindered by a strict metre. Even in Shakespeare, it's always seemed to me pointless and arbritrary (possibly to him as well, since he broke the rules all over the place.)

So. Any case in favour?

Mon, 2006-06-26 13:07

pepsoid

Where's Stephen Fry when you need (?) him...? :-) * P * :-) ( Read my blog! - www.oddcourgette.blogspot.com )

The All New Pepsoid the Second!

Tue, 2006-06-27 14:16

Jack Cade

He's got better things to do than teach me how to recognise the utterly-divine-and-none-of-your-tripe-young-man.

Tue, 2006-06-27 15:09

pepsoid

Hmm, true... :-) * P * :-) ( Read my blog! - www.oddcourgette.blogspot.com )

The All New Pepsoid the Second!

Tue, 2006-06-27 15:22

pepsoid

Glad you remember what I've said, Barely... I can't remember from minute to minute... :-) * P * :-) ( Read my blog! - www.oddcourgette.blogspot.com )

The All New Pepsoid the Second!

Tue, 2006-06-27 16:20

pepsoid

You are all in my prayers... God help you (!)... :-) * P * :-) ( Read my blog! - www.oddcourgette.blogspot.com )

The All New Pepsoid the Second!

Sun, 2006-07-02 01:47

Midge

Well, the article is rather silly. The 'emotive power of metre', as it were, is in the variation of stress levels and possiby in substitutions. The problem is that no reader nowadays, beyond poetry veterans and professors, are likely to pick up on it (the stress levels) except subconsciously. Which isn't to say the metre variation is therefore unsuccesfful, but rather that it goes unnoticed, especially since everybody still persists with the old STRESSED unstressed idea of scansion, disregarding the more accurate approaches of stress gauging by numbers. Still, from what you pasted of that article, it sounds horrendously stupid.

My blog:

Sun, 2006-07-02 16:39

reckless

This can be one of those subject areas that polarise views, but I think that's the wrong reaction. Personally, i think there's a strong role for metre not just in poetry but in prose too. But a poem is much more than its metre, its effect is an interaction of all its parts, metre being one. Its the effect, the content that matters to me, not so much the form that helps to produce it. I don't personally like an approach that says do away with all conventions, stick to free verse. Everyone does that, and its boring at times, simply because thats what everyone does. You have to plough (ooer, I near as a toucher spelt it 'plow' then....) your own furrow ( or furrough....) and thats what makes a poem interesting to me, the individuality. People can go too far overboard over formal devices, and rip poems to pieces for their alleged failure to conform to rules. I've seen that on a sonnet website; huge anger that anyone could dare to, or be so stupid as to, write a sonnet that violates rules. Thats just as daft as throwing away all the rules. Do what you want, pick and choose, use any device you wish, break rules if you want. I'm all for freedom.

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