OK, I’m grabbing the microphone. I was a good English student in high school except for the unit on meter. My test came back bloodier than a ribeye cooked rare. I asked my teacher about one of the lines. I had gotten the stresses incorrect. “But I could say it *this* way,” I said, saying the line out loud in a perfectly sensible way. “Then it wouldn’t be pentameter,” he said, making this face.😑
Not too long ago several many years after that harrowing experience I got interested in improving myself along these lines so to speak. I went down a rabbit hole that was late 19th century poetry journals where I discovered the “fight club” of differing views of how certain lines ought to be parsed. No Marquis of Queensberry was there.
Isn’t that inherent to metricality? My position is how one says it ought to be the guide. That seems to me an admission of subtly different ways a kind of “you say potato, I say potahto.” otherwise it’s my teacher, Mr. Lair saying “no, sir you are wrong.”
I was told once that the lines cited here from Milton were intentionally written not in iambic pentameter, because of the subject matter. They are on man's disobedience, thus the line is itself disobedient to the meter, if that's the right way to put it...
Oh...gosh, no! As a Milton fan, I feel very obliged to counter such a horribly misled take!
Milton's incredibly proficient and expressive employment of meter is designed to maintain a swift dramatic momentum, using three main technques:
- very few tails (aka "feminine endings"). A tail is an extra offbeat overrunning the end of line. So instead of...
di-DUM-di-DUM-di-DUM-di-DUM-di-DUM
...we have...
di-DUM-di-DUM-di-DUM-di-DUM-di-DUM-di
You can see that extra offbeat poking out at the line ending! Tails tend to selectively impede the momentum, and there are remarkably few in Milton's epic.
- Plentiful enjambment (meaning a phrase running over the end of one line and into the next). This creates an exciting fluid flowthrough from one line to the next.
- Contractions. Words can sometimes be contracted or glided together to fit the meter - even more so in Milton's day. Milton employs contractions with frequency, and is often bold in his contractions. As with the lack of tails and the frequency of enjambment, this helps provide an intense, compact energy and momentum.
And it is this last (as well as changes in pronunciation, and in the range of permissible pronunciation) which misleads many modern readers into thinking his meter is frequently irregular: they often fail to recognise the contractions. It's mistakenly thought Shakespeare's later plays are more metrically irregular for the same reason: he became bolder with his contractions.
With all respect to Brad, a more obvious delivery of Paradise Lost's opening line, it seems to me, is to stress the first syllable of "disobedience": "DIsoBEdience" (a mild contraction even on this word, by the by: fully enunciated, it would be five syllables: di-so-be-di-ence. But those last two syllables are glided together to count as one: di-so-be-dyence. Milton starts as he means to go on!) That is how I typically hear it delivered, and that reading makes all the more sense for linking "Disobedience" with "Death" through alliteration two lines later (original capitalisations retained):
More parts to come, and I will also at some point be posting a thorough guide to the principles involved in the expansion and contraction of words and phrases to fit the meter.
Yeah, I see that’s a possible view, but I don’t buy it myself. I don’t think there are other places Milton breaks the rules of meter to match the meaning, so it’s ad hoc to say he does it here.
I find it difficult to believe there are rules at all. I think of the pentameter as "background" and it is a matter of the endless possibilities of art what variations are possible without destroying its background. Consider "Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow ..." What explains it?
Some lines of verse are in iambic pentameter, some are not metric at all, and we can reliably tell which is which. The possibilities are NOT endless, in that it IS possible to try and fail to write in iambic pentameter. Wouldn't it be odd, if there were no rules that distinguished the two categories?
Regarding "Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow," it straightforwardly satisfies the Monosyllable Principle; I don't view it is a particularly problematic line.
Also unsure about the value of the Monosyllable Principle here. Perhaps I don't understand how these principles work. They don't explain *why* a metrical line fits the iambic pentameter without having any iambs in it, or while having eleven syllables.
The Principle is supposed to be part of a definition of iambic pentameter. They can explain why a line is metric in the say way "this is water because it is H2O" can use a definition to explain why something is water. But is your puzzlement how something can be iambic pentameter without having any iambs? The answer there I think is that "iambic pentameter" is a bad name for the meter. Iambic pentameter without iambs shouldn't be more surprising than David Armstrong with weak biceps.
Perfect example! Ice and steam are also H20. Absolutely doesn’t explain why water is water. I am trying to understand what meter is so I am open to the possibility that the metrical feet aren’t definitive. But then the question about what is metrical overrides the question about the distinction between meters.
Ah, yes, totally agree that "what is meter?" is a different and harder question than "what is iambic pentameter?" and an answer to the 2nd might not help with the 1st. Do you think the "five iambs" definition is any better on this front?
My own instinct is that “five iambs” tells you something about the background, the regular rhythm against which the variations show up, something like a time signature in music.
No, I agree that you can try and fail. Perhaps what I meant is that the constraints aren’t determined in advance. I don’t find it odd if there are no rules, as human creativity finds ways.
So we agree there is a distinction between metric and non-metric verse. What do you mean "aren't determined in advance"? Also, I tried to describe the rules in my essay (or what some linguists say are some of the rules)--are you aware of any counterexamples to them? If someone proposes some rules that seem to get the cases right, isn't that evidence that those rules are correct? Even if you start off suspecting that no such rules can be found, shouldn't such a proposal make you reconsider?
If I'm honest, I myself don't understand why Brad thinks fundamentally different principles apply to monosyllables and pollysyllables - other than the greater flexibility in the placement of monosyllables (any monosyllable can slot into either a beat or offbeat position).
Well, yes, obviously, because in a polysyllabic word the stressed syllable or syllables have to align with beat placement (a little like fitting a jigsaw piece in the correct position). The same is not true of a monosyllable (which is more comparable to slotting a brick in a wall. If it's a 1-syllable gap that needs filling, that gap is the same shape regardless of whether it's a beat or an offbeat!)
Is that all you meant? If so, we are indeed in agreement!
“You’re better off reading a lot of Shakespeare, Milton, Wordsworth, etc, to get a taste for what they do and don’t do, and then apply that taste to your own verse, the rules in the textbooks be damned.”
Wholeheartedly agree! The best way to learn is through experience, which means reading/listening.
However…
I very much enjoyed Steele’s book, and found his scheme of stresses graded 1-4 to be helpful. Not as a way of “learning” or perfectly defining meter, but as a simple way of organizing concepts I already sensed intuitively, having been reading and writing metrical poetry for many years.
I didn’t read the book at all as laying down “rules,” but rather compact frameworks of how to understand the basics of English meter. I guess I took it for granted that there are always exceptions and deviations from the general “rules” (more like tendencies).
The thing that bothered me the most about Steele’s book was his dismissive attitude toward non-iambic meter (especially trisyllabic).
Fair enough. I actually think the degrees of stress stuff (which I think is based on now-outdated linguistics) is a bad thing. He uses it, eg, to answer questions like "why is 'With how sad steps, O Moon, thou climb'st the skies!' a line of iambic verse, even though "how sad steps" is three consecutive stresses?" He answers: "sad" is slightly less stressed than "steps." But that is (for me) quite hard to hear, and encourages us to make elusive and fine-grained judgments of stress when writing poetry. The truth about that line is much simpler and easier to grasp: those words are monosyllables, so there is no requirement that they make up iambic feet.
Also (as I said in the essay), the Steele book has the effect of either discouraging "trochaic substitution" where it would be totally fine, or encouraging trochaic substitution when it would be wrong. He certainly presents himself as guiding poets guidance on the use of trochees, but it is bad guidance.
This is terrific. I suspect I "hear" meter "instinctually" because I have aphantasia. Since I have no mental imagery, sound is all there is. Great piece.
Wow. This helps. I'm my writing I want both to scan well in iambic and to capture natural speech. It doesn't take much to tweak our common speech into regular iambic meter, but too strict and it sounds artificial. Like syncopation in a melody, these moments of strange stress make a sentence sing. I use these exceptions intuitively, but now I know why.
OK, I’m grabbing the microphone. I was a good English student in high school except for the unit on meter. My test came back bloodier than a ribeye cooked rare. I asked my teacher about one of the lines. I had gotten the stresses incorrect. “But I could say it *this* way,” I said, saying the line out loud in a perfectly sensible way. “Then it wouldn’t be pentameter,” he said, making this face.😑
Not too long ago several many years after that harrowing experience I got interested in improving myself along these lines so to speak. I went down a rabbit hole that was late 19th century poetry journals where I discovered the “fight club” of differing views of how certain lines ought to be parsed. No Marquis of Queensberry was there.
Yeah I think it’s a bad theory of meter that relies on subtly different ways to pronounce a line.
Isn’t that inherent to metricality? My position is how one says it ought to be the guide. That seems to me an admission of subtly different ways a kind of “you say potato, I say potahto.” otherwise it’s my teacher, Mr. Lair saying “no, sir you are wrong.”
Do you remember the line?
I was told once that the lines cited here from Milton were intentionally written not in iambic pentameter, because of the subject matter. They are on man's disobedience, thus the line is itself disobedient to the meter, if that's the right way to put it...
Oh...gosh, no! As a Milton fan, I feel very obliged to counter such a horribly misled take!
Milton's incredibly proficient and expressive employment of meter is designed to maintain a swift dramatic momentum, using three main technques:
- very few tails (aka "feminine endings"). A tail is an extra offbeat overrunning the end of line. So instead of...
di-DUM-di-DUM-di-DUM-di-DUM-di-DUM
...we have...
di-DUM-di-DUM-di-DUM-di-DUM-di-DUM-di
You can see that extra offbeat poking out at the line ending! Tails tend to selectively impede the momentum, and there are remarkably few in Milton's epic.
- Plentiful enjambment (meaning a phrase running over the end of one line and into the next). This creates an exciting fluid flowthrough from one line to the next.
- Contractions. Words can sometimes be contracted or glided together to fit the meter - even more so in Milton's day. Milton employs contractions with frequency, and is often bold in his contractions. As with the lack of tails and the frequency of enjambment, this helps provide an intense, compact energy and momentum.
And it is this last (as well as changes in pronunciation, and in the range of permissible pronunciation) which misleads many modern readers into thinking his meter is frequently irregular: they often fail to recognise the contractions. It's mistakenly thought Shakespeare's later plays are more metrically irregular for the same reason: he became bolder with his contractions.
With all respect to Brad, a more obvious delivery of Paradise Lost's opening line, it seems to me, is to stress the first syllable of "disobedience": "DIsoBEdience" (a mild contraction even on this word, by the by: fully enunciated, it would be five syllables: di-so-be-di-ence. But those last two syllables are glided together to count as one: di-so-be-dyence. Milton starts as he means to go on!) That is how I typically hear it delivered, and that reading makes all the more sense for linking "Disobedience" with "Death" through alliteration two lines later (original capitalisations retained):
.
OF Mans First Disobedience, and the Fruit
Of that Forbidden Tree, whose mortal tast
Brought Death into the World, and all our woe,
.
Here's a reading in an approximation of what may have been Milton's own accent: https://youtu.be/ngaIG9VH0P4?si=WRgSS88KeQnGXfxw
And for what it's worth, here's my own exploration of variation in iambic pentameter: https://poemshape.substack.com/p/the-multifaceted-pentameter-part?utm_campaign=post-expanded-share&utm_medium=web
More parts to come, and I will also at some point be posting a thorough guide to the principles involved in the expansion and contraction of words and phrases to fit the meter.
Yeah, I see that’s a possible view, but I don’t buy it myself. I don’t think there are other places Milton breaks the rules of meter to match the meaning, so it’s ad hoc to say he does it here.
I find it difficult to believe there are rules at all. I think of the pentameter as "background" and it is a matter of the endless possibilities of art what variations are possible without destroying its background. Consider "Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow ..." What explains it?
Some lines of verse are in iambic pentameter, some are not metric at all, and we can reliably tell which is which. The possibilities are NOT endless, in that it IS possible to try and fail to write in iambic pentameter. Wouldn't it be odd, if there were no rules that distinguished the two categories?
Regarding "Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow," it straightforwardly satisfies the Monosyllable Principle; I don't view it is a particularly problematic line.
Also unsure about the value of the Monosyllable Principle here. Perhaps I don't understand how these principles work. They don't explain *why* a metrical line fits the iambic pentameter without having any iambs in it, or while having eleven syllables.
The Principle is supposed to be part of a definition of iambic pentameter. They can explain why a line is metric in the say way "this is water because it is H2O" can use a definition to explain why something is water. But is your puzzlement how something can be iambic pentameter without having any iambs? The answer there I think is that "iambic pentameter" is a bad name for the meter. Iambic pentameter without iambs shouldn't be more surprising than David Armstrong with weak biceps.
Perfect example! Ice and steam are also H20. Absolutely doesn’t explain why water is water. I am trying to understand what meter is so I am open to the possibility that the metrical feet aren’t definitive. But then the question about what is metrical overrides the question about the distinction between meters.
Ah, yes, totally agree that "what is meter?" is a different and harder question than "what is iambic pentameter?" and an answer to the 2nd might not help with the 1st. Do you think the "five iambs" definition is any better on this front?
My own instinct is that “five iambs” tells you something about the background, the regular rhythm against which the variations show up, something like a time signature in music.
Ice and steam are also water.
assumed in the context that this is liquid
No, I agree that you can try and fail. Perhaps what I meant is that the constraints aren’t determined in advance. I don’t find it odd if there are no rules, as human creativity finds ways.
So we agree there is a distinction between metric and non-metric verse. What do you mean "aren't determined in advance"? Also, I tried to describe the rules in my essay (or what some linguists say are some of the rules)--are you aware of any counterexamples to them? If someone proposes some rules that seem to get the cases right, isn't that evidence that those rules are correct? Even if you start off suspecting that no such rules can be found, shouldn't such a proposal make you reconsider?
There’s something about the rules that strikes me as unhelpful but I can’t put my finger on it.
Assumption: "if we can reliably track a distinction, it is (would be odd if it were not?) rule-governed" (?).
I actually cover that line in my own post on the prosody of iambic pentameter! https://poemshape.substack.com/p/the-multifaceted-pentameter-part?utm_campaign=post-expanded-share&utm_medium=web
If I'm honest, I myself don't understand why Brad thinks fundamentally different principles apply to monosyllables and pollysyllables - other than the greater flexibility in the placement of monosyllables (any monosyllable can slot into either a beat or offbeat position).
So you agree monosyllables are less constrained!
Well, yes, obviously, because in a polysyllabic word the stressed syllable or syllables have to align with beat placement (a little like fitting a jigsaw piece in the correct position). The same is not true of a monosyllable (which is more comparable to slotting a brick in a wall. If it's a 1-syllable gap that needs filling, that gap is the same shape regardless of whether it's a beat or an offbeat!)
Is that all you meant? If so, we are indeed in agreement!
“You’re better off reading a lot of Shakespeare, Milton, Wordsworth, etc, to get a taste for what they do and don’t do, and then apply that taste to your own verse, the rules in the textbooks be damned.”
Wholeheartedly agree! The best way to learn is through experience, which means reading/listening.
However…
I very much enjoyed Steele’s book, and found his scheme of stresses graded 1-4 to be helpful. Not as a way of “learning” or perfectly defining meter, but as a simple way of organizing concepts I already sensed intuitively, having been reading and writing metrical poetry for many years.
I didn’t read the book at all as laying down “rules,” but rather compact frameworks of how to understand the basics of English meter. I guess I took it for granted that there are always exceptions and deviations from the general “rules” (more like tendencies).
The thing that bothered me the most about Steele’s book was his dismissive attitude toward non-iambic meter (especially trisyllabic).
Fair enough. I actually think the degrees of stress stuff (which I think is based on now-outdated linguistics) is a bad thing. He uses it, eg, to answer questions like "why is 'With how sad steps, O Moon, thou climb'st the skies!' a line of iambic verse, even though "how sad steps" is three consecutive stresses?" He answers: "sad" is slightly less stressed than "steps." But that is (for me) quite hard to hear, and encourages us to make elusive and fine-grained judgments of stress when writing poetry. The truth about that line is much simpler and easier to grasp: those words are monosyllables, so there is no requirement that they make up iambic feet.
Also (as I said in the essay), the Steele book has the effect of either discouraging "trochaic substitution" where it would be totally fine, or encouraging trochaic substitution when it would be wrong. He certainly presents himself as guiding poets guidance on the use of trochees, but it is bad guidance.
This is terrific. I suspect I "hear" meter "instinctually" because I have aphantasia. Since I have no mental imagery, sound is all there is. Great piece.
Minding your two left feet too much violates The Rules of the Dance?
Wow. This helps. I'm my writing I want both to scan well in iambic and to capture natural speech. It doesn't take much to tweak our common speech into regular iambic meter, but too strict and it sounds artificial. Like syncopation in a melody, these moments of strange stress make a sentence sing. I use these exceptions intuitively, but now I know why.
do you have a definition of iambic pentameter that fits all the examples in the essay?
"This tyrant, whose sole name blisters our tongues" is not five iambs.
"{THIS TYrant, whose SOLE NAME} {BLISters our TONGUES}"
This will explain in full why I scan it that way! https://poemshape.substack.com/p/the-multifaceted-pentameter-part?utm_source=direct&r=9w4rx&utm_campaign=post-expanded-share&utm_medium=web