[Solan]

I have a lot of questions pertaining to meter. I will start by asking how the meter of the different lines fit in with each other. Let me quote from my contribution to http://www.ablemuse.com/erato/ubbhtm...ML/000007.html :

I am software master tick-tock
fiddling with a database lock.

If I had read it out loud, I would have read it like this:

I am SOFTware MASter TICK-tock
FIDDling WITH a DAtaBASE lock.

I assume I have done L1 right according to English pronunciation. L2, on its own, would have been read

FIDDling with a DAtabase LOCK.

The difference in meter is glaring. My question is if the meter of L1 imparts - or can be assumed to impart - its meter on L2 the way I stated I would read it. If not in this poem, would such an effect be permissible or even possible in any poem?

= = = =

My second question concerns the mixing of meters on different lines. I have no example here, but say you want the poem to be a dialogue between two or more voices. One voice is brash, and would probably have his lines in a meter like

DA dum DA dum DA dum DA dum

Another voice may be gentler, and go with the iambic pentameter (which is the only meter I know by name yet)

da DAH da DAH da DAH da DAH da DAH

... and maybe a third voice along some playful meter, like the child of the family.

la la BOM la la BOM la la BOM

What rules or rules-of-thumb apply to mixing such meters?

--

Svein Olav http://nonserviam.com/solan/

[This message has been edited by Solan (edited August 01, 2001).]

[peter richards]

Solan,
I haven't answered the question about your own poem - let's hope someone does.

To the second question then: I think if you're looking for a rule of thumb, then that rule will probably say that your meter should be consistent at all times. The example you have given may be a reason to bend such a rule. Such reasons are as manifold as the stars in the Milky Way and, similarly, depend a great deal on ambient (light) conditions for the extent to which they are apparent. That was a metaphor.

DA dum DA dum DA dum DA dum is trochaic tetrameter. From pentameter on up, the prefixes (penta- hexa- dodeca-) are the same as plane geometry. (I could be wrong about that.)

If you stick around for a long, long time, you may witness some truly arcane discussion of metric variation. The moderators here certainly impress me. I think it's best to start with basics, though. The more complicated stuff may be more easily understood if it is encountered as part of a revision and critique process, rather than isolated prescriptive rules.

Peter



[This message has been edited by peter richards (edited June 28, 2001).]

[Carol Taylor]

Solan, until the Lariat arrives I'll jump in with a quick point or two. You said:

"If I had read it out loud, I would have read it like this:

I am SOFTware MASter TICK-tock
FIDDling WITH a DAtaBASE lock."

I wouldn't. I would read it like this, making a spondee out of tick-tock, with about the same amount of stress on tock as on tick:

I am SOFT/ware MAS/ter TICK-TOCK/
FIDDling/ with a DAT/abase LOCK/.

What you have (to my ear) is anapestic trimeter with a reversed first foot in the second line. The second foot of the first line is an iamb, which is a conventional substitution. But with the lines coming early in the poem (or being taken out of context), I've had little opportunity to determine what the meter is supposed to be, so will read it as I'd read the same lines in prose. If you want this to be tetrameter, you would do well to start off with words whose stress matches that beat. Begin simple and get fancier as you develop an ear for the rhythm.

Regarding changing meter from line to line, some variation (substitution) in feet within lines is desirable to keep from having a rigid, sing-song sound. And for dramatic effect, sometimes line length and meter will change. But before you can deviate successfully you have to establish a pattern, and that means you have to do the same thing more than once. This is why they call it metrical poetry instead of free verse or prose.

As you get farther into meter you'll notice a curious thing. Often the same line can be scanned in more than one way, depending on where you start counting off. For example, the following line could be scanned either as iambic tetrameter with a headless first foot:

DUM/ da DUM/ da DUM/ da DUM/

or as trochaic tetrameter with a cropped fourth foot:

DUM da/ DUM da/ DUM da/ DUM

In this case, you'd read them both the same, but that's not always the case. You want to set up the reader for what is coming next. Once a pattern is established, a reader can reasonably be expected to withstand a little substitution and still keep the beat. I have heard a rule of thumb to the effect that there is a maximum desirable percentage of substitution, but I don't remember the percentage, and anyway it was only somebody's opinion, as are most rules of thumb.

Carol

[Nigel Holt]

Hi Solan,

I asked exactly the same question myself recently, and AE Stallings kindly gave a full and extremely useful answer on these boards. If you do a search for the thread - Questions the books don't answer - you'll find her explanation. Recommended.

Best wishes and welcome,

Nigel

[Solan]

I will wait a bit before summing up a reply; thanks to those who have replied so far.

Nigel: What search words would you use? "meter" would give too many hits. You wouldn't just happen to have the URL for that discussion available by any chance?


------------------
--

Svein Olav
http://nonserviam.com/solan/

[Nigel Holt]

Solan,

Go to General Talk on this forum, and then choose at the top of the page view topics in the last 60 days. When the page reloads you will see the thread "Questions the books don't answer" - everything is there.

Also I have attached a little program I got free on the net, which is an introduction to prosody I found very useful - please anyone who wants it make a copy - I forget the address from where I got it. It is allowed to distribute it non-commercially. It is a DOS program.

Best


Nigel

[Carol Taylor]

Solan, Tim Steele himself is going to be the next guest Poet Lariat, so you'll have a chance to get direct answers to your questions from the man who wrote the book on meter.

Carol

[Alan Sullivan]

Hello, Solan. I would urge you to take Tim Murphy's suggestion on an adjacent thread and visit Dr. Steele's personal site so you have some idea what you're getting into before you question him.

In your example I think Carol may have missed reading the word "fiddling" as three syllables, which I believe is your intent when you ask a reader to stress "with." But I agree with her that you cannot demote the end-stress in either line. After all, you are rhyming here, and rhyme always accentuates stress. This is one of the reasons why it is inadvisable to rhyme syllables that are normally unstressed with those that normally bear stress (e.g. "crying" with "sing").

Metrical analysis gives us tools to describe and understand rhythm in language. English is a language that relies primarily on stress for its rhythm. But unless there is some reasonably constant rhythm, analytical tools will not give us meaningful results. Your example is arhythmic. No one type of metrical foot predominates to establish a rhythm. Perhaps with a few more lines, a discernable pattern would emerge. Perhaps not.

One line cannot impose a metrical pattern on the next, if that pattern clashes with the ordinary pronunciation of words in the second line. You could precede your "database" line with six metrically identical lines, but you still could not strip "lock" of its stress.

Alternating meters for different characters speaking in sequence might be a workable strategy. I would advise you to try writing whole poems consistently in various meters before you attempt such fancy tricks.

Alan Sullivan

[Carol Taylor]

To clarify my point about establishing the meter early and then expecting the reader to make some adjustment to accommodate it, I don't disagree with what Alan said. You can't push stress onto the wrong syllable. But there are times when a line can be read two ways. For example,

I am software master tick-tock

This first line could have been read as either tetrameter or trimeter, depending on whether "I" were given its own beat. Because of the rhyme on tock/lock, I demoted the "I" and read the line as trimeter. If "I" were stressed, you'd have tetrameter, but then you'd need the second line to rhyme with TICK-tock, not TOCK.

Carol

[Alan Sullivan]

Yes, the first line is ambiguous, though I would pick trochaic tetrameter as the more likely candidate. If the next line starts with a dactyl followed by trochees, as the author would wish, then the trochee would indeed be the dominant foot, and initial stress the rhythmic principle. But Solan is asking readers to go against the grain of the language in that second line, and it just won't happen. Meter cannot be arbitrarily designated; it is inherent in English pronunciation.

A.S.