Read Online The ode less travelled: unlocking the poet within by Stephen Fry - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: Stephen Fry
Tags: Poetry
Ads: Link
available in female
Or male. Hard to decide which sex I’ll pick.
Maybe I’ll wait till gender is redundant.
Towards the middle of a mighty ocean
Squats a forgotten island and its people;
The sea that laps the margins of the atoll
Broadcasts no mindless babble on its waves;
No e-mail pesters the unsullied palm groves
Newspaper stories pass it quietly by.
How long before we go there and destroy it?
I know. Pathetic, isn’t it? I hope you are filled with confidence. Once again, I must emphasise, these are no more poems than practise scales are sonatas. They are purely exercises, as yours should be. Work on solving the problems of prosody, but don’t get hung up about images, poetic sensibility and word choices. The lines and thoughts should make sense, but beyond that doggerel is acceptable.
G ET YOUR PENCIL OUT and mark the metre in each line of my verses. It should be fairly clear when the line starts with a trochee, but pyrrhics can be more subjective. I shall do my marking below: see if you agree with me. P for a pyrrhic substitution, T for a trochaic. H for hendecasyllable (or for hypermetric, I suppose). E is for enjambment.
That’s a pretty clear pyrrhic in the second foot: no need to stress the ‘in’ and I reckon the rest of the line recovers its iambic tread, so five points to me.
Straight iambics, just two points for the hypermetric ending.
Five points for the initial trochee.
Five for the opening trochee (I think you’ll agree that it is ‘ why can’t’, not ‘why can’t ’) plus two for the weak ending.
Iambics: just two for the ending (it’s a bit like scoring for cribbage, this…)
Five for the pyrrhic and two for the ending. 7
High-scoring one here: five for the trochaic switch in the first foot, five for the pyrrhic in the fourth: plus two for the ending and two for the enjambment. The question is: does it still feel iambic with all those bells and whistles? My view is that it would if it were in the midst of more regular iambic lines, but since it is the first line of a stanza it is hard for the ear to know what is going on. A trochaic first foot allied to a weak ending gives an overall trochaic effect, especially when the middle is further vitiated by the slack syllables of the pyrrhic. Also, the end word ‘female’ is almost spondaic. So I shall deduct five for bad style.
A trochaic switch mid line for five points: since it follows a caesura the rest of the line picks up the iambic pulse adequately.
Trochaic of the first with pyrrhic of the fourth again. For some reason I don’t think this one misses its swing so much as the other, so I’ll only deduct three. Then again, perhaps it keeps its swing because it isn’t a real pyrrhic: hard not to give a push to the ‘is’ there, don’t we feel?
I make my score 106. I’m sure you could do better with your sixteen lines. To recap:
16 lines of iambic pentameter
5 points for trochaic and pyrrhic substitutions
2 points for enjambments
2 points for feminine endings
Be tough on yourself when marking. If, in a bid to make a high score, you have lost the underlying rising tread of the iambic pentameter, then deduct points with honesty. Have fun!
III
More Meters
Octameters–hexameters–heptameters–tetrameters–trimeters–dimeters–monometers
Why five feet to a line, why not four or six? Three or seven? Eight even.
Why not indeed. Here’s a list of the most likely possibilities:
1 Beat–Monometer
He bangs
The drum .
2 Beats–Dimeter
His drum ming noise
A wakes the boys .
3 Beats–Trimeter
His drum ming makes a noise ,
And wakes the sleep ing boys .
4 Beats–Tetrameter
He bangs the drum and makes a noise ,
It shakes the roof and wakes the boys .
5 Beats–Pentameter
He bangs the drum and makes a dread ful noise ,
It shakes the roof and wakes the sleep ing boys .
6 Beats–Hexameter
He bangs the drum and makes the most ap pall ing noise ,
It shakes the ver y roof and wakes the sleep ing boys .
7
Or male. Hard to decide which sex I’ll pick.
Maybe I’ll wait till gender is redundant.
Towards the middle of a mighty ocean
Squats a forgotten island and its people;
The sea that laps the margins of the atoll
Broadcasts no mindless babble on its waves;
No e-mail pesters the unsullied palm groves
Newspaper stories pass it quietly by.
How long before we go there and destroy it?
I know. Pathetic, isn’t it? I hope you are filled with confidence. Once again, I must emphasise, these are no more poems than practise scales are sonatas. They are purely exercises, as yours should be. Work on solving the problems of prosody, but don’t get hung up about images, poetic sensibility and word choices. The lines and thoughts should make sense, but beyond that doggerel is acceptable.
G ET YOUR PENCIL OUT and mark the metre in each line of my verses. It should be fairly clear when the line starts with a trochee, but pyrrhics can be more subjective. I shall do my marking below: see if you agree with me. P for a pyrrhic substitution, T for a trochaic. H for hendecasyllable (or for hypermetric, I suppose). E is for enjambment.
That’s a pretty clear pyrrhic in the second foot: no need to stress the ‘in’ and I reckon the rest of the line recovers its iambic tread, so five points to me.
Straight iambics, just two points for the hypermetric ending.
Five points for the initial trochee.
Five for the opening trochee (I think you’ll agree that it is ‘ why can’t’, not ‘why can’t ’) plus two for the weak ending.
Iambics: just two for the ending (it’s a bit like scoring for cribbage, this…)
Five for the pyrrhic and two for the ending. 7
High-scoring one here: five for the trochaic switch in the first foot, five for the pyrrhic in the fourth: plus two for the ending and two for the enjambment. The question is: does it still feel iambic with all those bells and whistles? My view is that it would if it were in the midst of more regular iambic lines, but since it is the first line of a stanza it is hard for the ear to know what is going on. A trochaic first foot allied to a weak ending gives an overall trochaic effect, especially when the middle is further vitiated by the slack syllables of the pyrrhic. Also, the end word ‘female’ is almost spondaic. So I shall deduct five for bad style.
A trochaic switch mid line for five points: since it follows a caesura the rest of the line picks up the iambic pulse adequately.
Trochaic of the first with pyrrhic of the fourth again. For some reason I don’t think this one misses its swing so much as the other, so I’ll only deduct three. Then again, perhaps it keeps its swing because it isn’t a real pyrrhic: hard not to give a push to the ‘is’ there, don’t we feel?
I make my score 106. I’m sure you could do better with your sixteen lines. To recap:
16 lines of iambic pentameter
5 points for trochaic and pyrrhic substitutions
2 points for enjambments
2 points for feminine endings
Be tough on yourself when marking. If, in a bid to make a high score, you have lost the underlying rising tread of the iambic pentameter, then deduct points with honesty. Have fun!
III
More Meters
Octameters–hexameters–heptameters–tetrameters–trimeters–dimeters–monometers
Why five feet to a line, why not four or six? Three or seven? Eight even.
Why not indeed. Here’s a list of the most likely possibilities:
1 Beat–Monometer
He bangs
The drum .
2 Beats–Dimeter
His drum ming noise
A wakes the boys .
3 Beats–Trimeter
His drum ming makes a noise ,
And wakes the sleep ing boys .
4 Beats–Tetrameter
He bangs the drum and makes a noise ,
It shakes the roof and wakes the boys .
5 Beats–Pentameter
He bangs the drum and makes a dread ful noise ,
It shakes the roof and wakes the sleep ing boys .
6 Beats–Hexameter
He bangs the drum and makes the most ap pall ing noise ,
It shakes the ver y roof and wakes the sleep ing boys .
7
Similar Books
