Metrical Terms II
Bill Long 5/5/08
Beginning with The Trochee
The reverse of an iamb is called a trochee. Instead of a dee DUM, we have a DEE dum. It isn't as popular a movement in American poetry, but perhaps its most famous instantiation is in Longfellow's Hiawatha. The first ten lines run:
"By the shores of Gitchee Gumme,
By the shining Big-Sea-Water,
Stood the wigwam of Nokomis,
Daughter of the Moon, Nokomis.
Dark behind it rose the forest,
Rose the black and gloomy pine-trees.
Rose the first with cones upon them;
Bright before it beat the water,
Beat the clear and sunny water,
Beat the shining Big-Sea-Water."
The first time I recall hearing some of these lines was from an unusual source: the Smothers Brothers. They were committed to bringing humor to some of America's folk-songs and tales, and they had composed a brief song beginning with these words. Here we have a stress on the first, third, fifth and seventh beats of the line. Since there are only eight beats in the whole, we have a tetrameter. Since the tetrameter is defined by trochees, we have a trochaic tetrameter. It really sounds much worse than it is, doesn't it? If I only realized that about poetry in the first instance, I would have been a lot better off..
But one can get a little fancy with the lines and basic types, and what you have left may be something interesting. For example, this article talks about a trochaic pattern that ends after only seven rather than eight syllables. Shakespeare uses this, for example, in Midsummer Night's Dream, where Puck says:
"Through the forest have I gone.
But Athenian found I none,
On whose eyes I might approve
This flower's force in stirring love,
Night and silence.--Who is here?
Weeds of Athens he doth wear:
This is he, my master said,
Despised the Athenian maid;....
The rhythm would be: THROUGH the FOR est HAVE i GONE. But, we only have a seven syllables. In technical language, we have a septenarius or, in more typical metric language, a trochaic tetrameter catalectic. The word catalectic means "maimed" or "left off" and tells us that a final foot has been truncated. Often authors put together acatalectic and catalectic lines, hoping that the rhythmic upset will make the reader pause and focus on the content of what is being said. And example of catalectic following acatalectic is here:
"Tell me not, In mournful numbers,
Life is but an empty dream."
The lines are trochaic tetrameter, with emphasis on TELL and NOT and MOURN and NUM, but the second line only has seven syllables-and thus is catalectic. The word "dream," then, occupies a two-syllable space, which allows it to "stretch out" and become the sort of dreamy thought that the word connotes.
Several More Terms
Now that the basic terms have been explained, we can go through several others more quickly. An anapest is a foot consisting of two short syllables and a long syllable, such as in the word in ter VENE. As an adjective, it is anapestic. Byron's Descent of Sennacherib, which probably is read nowhere anymore, has examples of this. I will highlight to illustrate:
"And the SHEEN of their SPEARS was like STARS of the SEA
Where the BLUE waves roll NIGHT ly o'er DEEP gal i LEE."
Since there are four anapests in each line, the lines are written in anapestic tetrameter.
The opposite of an anapest, which means "rebounding, bcause the foot is the reverse of a dactyl," is, appropriately, a dactyl. A dactyl consists of one long and two short syllables. Derived from the Greek word for finger, it is thought to have been so named because it, like a finger, concists of one long and two short members. But this definition, from the Century, doesn't make much sense to me. As I look at my fingers, it appears that they are tripartite, but that the various "parts" are not easily differentiated by length.
The word "TEN der ly" is a dactyl. We most frequently associate the dactyl rhythm in our experience with the waltz beat--LONG short short, LONG short short. Examples of the dactyl are legion. From Longfellow we have:
"THIS is the FOR est prim EV al. the MUR mur ing PINES and the HEM LOCKS.
Whoops. In the last foot of this hexameter we have what is called a spondee, a foot of two long syllables. The root of this word is taken from the Greek word for "drink offering," and it is tantalizingly unclear what the connection between a drink offering and a foot of two long/equally stressed syllables is. But the waltz beat is most familiar to many in Christan Gospel hymns. Let's use the word tenderly from before to illustrate:
"SOFT ly and TEN der ly JES us is CALL ING
CAL ling for YOU and for ME
SEE on the POR tals he's WAIT ing and WATCH ING...
Actually this rhythm isn't as clear as we would like. The first line consists of three dactylic feet, closing with a spondee. The line therefore wants to get us moving in the "waltz" pattern, and then, with the spondee, tells us to pause on the "Calling," which actually is the theme of the song.
Well, with that little digression to a Gospel hymn, let's return to a more straightforward dactyl from the Beatles:
"PIC ture your SELF in a BOAT on a RIV er with
TAN ger ine TREE ees and MAR ma lade SKI ii es."
Conclusion
Once you begin not simply to be able to identify these forms but to internalize them, you can begin to play with them. Your iambic pentameters can be broken up here and there by a spondee for emphasis. You can vary your poetic form. You can introduce catalectic into the line in order to shorten the person's words as well as the regard to which the reader should pay him. Then, when this is combined by the weight of some of the concepts being discussed, as we saw in Milton, for example, we can as it were direct the eyes of our readers/hearers to specific points in our words. Rather than saying, as we often do in prose, that X or Y point is the most important one, we can use a range of poetic devices to bring readers gently to share our understanding. Then, sometimes, before the reader even knows it, s/he is "hooked" by the words before him/her. That, friends, is the goal of good writing.
So, learn all your words--iambic and anapestic and dactylic and spondaic and trochaic and the types of feet in a line, and then begin to "play" with words. See what results...
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