Quote:
Originally Posted by E. Shaun Russell
Since you invoked Whitman...
Something I realized in the process of teaching " When I Heard the Learn'd Astronomer" a couple years ago (and again last month) is that the first half of the poem is completely unmetered, and the lines just go on as long as they need to. But in the second half, meter shows up. Line 5 is almost iambic hexameter, line 6 is iambic hexameter, line 7 can likely be read a few different ways, but I comfortably read it as iambic hexameter...and then line 8 is perfect iambic pentameter. It's elegant, and to me it reflects the "poetry" of looking out at the night sky, in contrast to the heartless scholarship of the drawing room.
I've never loved Whitman, but this poem is a great example of how a typically free verse poet can have his cake and eat it too. And I think it's illustrative for the OP. |
Thanks for this. It sounds like I need to think of meter as a tool, rather than a strict set of rules. The end is the finished poem, not necessarily the way you got there.