A.E. Stallings has graciously agreed to join us as the first returning Lariat (Lariata?). Too often, people here engage in self-exculpation for their metrical clangers by saying "Well, Alicia does it." Or worse, "Murphy does it." It is my position that you must learn to obey the rules of meter before you enjoy the liberty of bending them. And that is what Alicia and I do.
Frost told us there were two meters, Iambic, and Loose Iambic. I take the latter to mean Accentual Verse, where the syllable counts vary from line to line, but the accents are consistent and the rhythms are varied but driving. Accentual Verse is far more ancient in English than our present Accentual-Syllabic verse. Start with Beowulf, look at Middle English, and sit at your Grandmother's knee listening to Mother Goose. Warning: it takes a fine ear to distinguish fair from foul.
I'll begin the discussion by posting three poems in dimeter, in all of which there is variance in syllable count. All are eight line poems, rhymed abab, cdcd.
The Wound
I climbed to the crest,
Fog-festooned,
Where the sun lay west
Like a crimson wound:
Like that wound of mine
Of which none knew,
For I'd given no sign
It had pierced me through.
--Hardy
The Dust of Snow
The way a crow
Shook down on me
The dust of snow
From a hemlock tree
Has given my heart
A change of mood
And changed some part
Of a day I had rued.
--Frost
The Expulsion
Six weeks of drought--
the corn undone
and wheat burned out
by the brazen sun--
over that land
an angel stands
with an iron brand
singeing his hands.
--Murphy
All these poems are a single sentence, and all rely on anapestic substitution to vary rhythm and give the poet breathing space from the strict 4 syllable requirements of accentual-syllabic verse. Let us begin with these, and then move on to longer lines. And let us full-throatedly welcome Alicia back to our board!
PS. I've typed these three little poems without recourse to text, and I apologize for any mistakes.
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