Iambic Pentameter (Variants & Long Lines – II) or Tho. Middleton, his Variants, Departures & Hexameters

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This is the fourth and final post in a series on scanning Iambic Pentameter – a follow up to my first post on Iambic Pentameter Variants. This post is the deep end. It draws together what has already been discussed, shows how to apply it to some gnarly Iambic Pentameter (as tough as it gets), and adds some final variants, including Long Lines, which haven’t already been discussed. For a look at the other posts, click on the Categories Widget under About: Iambic Pentameter.

[January 11, 2009 – I did a little editing for the sake of clarity and I corrected some typos. If something seems confusing or wrong, let me know.]

This post takes a look at the first 75 lines of a play by Thomas Middleton, a contemporary and co-author of some of Shakespeare’s plays.   Middleton’s Blank Verse seems a good place to start if only because it demonstrates so many variants. I thought that showing how I read the verse (which is just my take on it) might be helpful to others.

complete-thomas-middleton

The material comes from Thomas Middleton: The Collected Works. I opened the book at random to a play called Wit at Several Weapons. I had never heard of it (like much of the material in the book). Middleton is a fine dramatist (perhaps the greatest after Shakespeare) and while his gifts don’t compare to the sustained rhetoric and poetry of Shakespeare, Marlowe or even Webster, his poetry can strike like lightning – brief but brilliant.  From his most famous play, A Game at Chess, comes the lovely line: “I’m taken like a blackbird/ In the great snow.”

So far, Wit at Several Weapons is a bawdy, sexual, somewhat sinister play – not the kind of subject matter that lends itself to poetic transcendence. Describing women, Middleton (in the character of the Old Knight), writes: “They must be wooed a hundred several ways,/ Before you obtain the right way in a woman:/ ‘Tis an odd creature, full of creeks and windings,/ The serpent has not more.”

And that’s about as poetic as the play gets – the rest, poetically, is boiler plate at best.

What is more interesting, from a purely aesthetic standpoint, is just how free Middleton is with Iambic Pentameter. He was a Jacobean playwright and he, along with other Jacobean playwrights, took Iambic Pentameter to the breaking point (and beyond) – likewise Webster and Massinger. The rigor of blank verse as much as dissolves with these poets. The verse form wasn’t to see such experimentation again for almost 300 years – the 20th Century.

First, here is the opening of the play, uninterrupted. Or, you can skip this and get on with the analysis.

The First 75 Lines

thomas-middleton1WittyPate

Sir, I’m no boy, I’m deep in one-and-twenty,
The second year’s approaching.

Old Knight

A fine time
If e’er he mean to make account of any.

WittyPate

Wits, sir?

Old Knight

Ay, wits, sir; if it be so strange to thee
I’m sorry I spent that time to get a fool,
I might have employed my pains a great deal better.
Thou know’st all that I have I ha’ got by my wits,
And yet to see how urgent thou art too;
It grieves me thou art so degenerate
To trouble me for means; I never offered it
My parents from a schoolboy; past nineteen once
(See what these times are grown too!), before twenty
I rushed into the world, which is indeed
Much like the art of swimming; he that will attain to’t
Must fall plump, and duck himself at first,
And that will make him hardy and adventurous
And not stand putting in one foot, and shiver,
And then draw t’other after, like a quake-buttock;
Well he may make a paddler i’ the world,
From hand to mouth, but never a brave swimmer,
Borne up by th’ chin, as I bore up myself
With my strong industry that never failed me;
For he that lies borne up with patrimonies
Looks like a long great ass that swims with bladders:
Come but one prick of adverse fortune to him
He sinks, because he never tried to swim,
When wit plays with the billows that choked him.

WittyPate

Why, is it not a fashion for a father, sir,
Out of his yearly thousands to allow
His only son a competent brace of hundreds,
Or such a toy?

the-witch-by-middleton

Yes, if he mean to spoil him
Or mar his wits he may, but never I.
This is my humour, sir, which you’ll find constant;
I love wit so well, because I live by’t,
That I’ll give no man power out of my means to hurt it,
And that’s a kind of gratitude to my raiser,
Which great ones oft forget. I admire much
This age’s dullness. When I scarce writ man,
The first degree that e’er I took  in thriving,
I lay intelligencer close for wenching,
Could give this lord or knight a true certificate
Of all the maidenheads extant; how many lay
‘Mongst chambermaids, how many ‘mongst Exchange wenches
(Though never many there, I must confess,
They have a trick to utter ware so fast);
I knew which lady had a mind to fall,
Which gentlewoman new divorced, which tradesman breaking,
The price of every sinner to a hair
And where to raise each price; which were the termers
That would give velvet petticoats, tissue gowns,
Which pieces, angels, suppers, and half-crowns:
I knew how to match and make my market,
Could give intelligence where the pox lay ledger,
And then to see the lechers shift a point,
‘Twas sport and profit too; how they would shun
Their adored mistress’ chambers, and run fearfully
Like rats from burning houses! So brought I
My clients o’ the game still safe together,
And noble gamesters loved me, and I felt it:
Give me a man that lives by his wits, say I,
And never left a groat, there’s the true gallant.
When I grew somewhat pursy, I grew then
In men’s opinions too, and confidences;
They put things called executorships upon me,
The charge of orphans, little senseless creatures,
Whom in their childhoods I bound forth to feltmakers,
To make ’em lose and work away their gentry,
Disguise their tender nature with hard custom,
So wrought ’em out in time: there I risse ungently;
Nor do I fear to discourse this unto thee,
I’m armed at all points against treachery.
I hold my humour firm; if I can see thee thrive by thy wits while I live, I shall have the more courage to trust thee with my lands when I die; if not, the next best wit I can hear of carries ’em: for since in my time and knowledge so many rich children of the City conclude in beggary, I’d rather make a wise stranger my executor than a foolish son my heir, and to have my lands called after my wit, thou after my name; and that’s my nature.

The First 75 Lines & Patrick Gillespie: His Interjections

Couple things needing to be said: I wasn’t alive 400 years ago. I don’t know how actors actually spoke their lines or how the Dramatists actually conceived of meter. Nobody has to agree with me. This is just how I have learned to read blank verse, both by reading other scholars on the subject and my own efforts to master the form. Also, I don’t want to give the impression that iambic pentameter overrules any other consideration. Not everything should or needs to be fitted to the iambic pattern. It’s art and instinct.   

WittyPate

Sir, I’m no boy, I’m deep in one-and-twenty,
The second year’s approaching.

Old Knight

A fine time

So far, the lines are easily identifiable as Iambic Pentameter. The first line is 11 syllables, ending with a feminine ending (a very common variant), the second is divided at the fourth foot between the two speakers: The second year’s approaching / A fine time. But the next line seems to out & out break with the Iambic Pentameter pattern:

For a youth to live by his wits, then, I should think,

This is a 12 syllable line; but is it hexameter and is it iambic hexameter? Hexameter lines, or long lines, are infrequent but accepted departures from the iambic pentameter pattern in blank verse. They can be found in Shakespeare & become more frequent after him. However, one way to tell if one is dealing with a hexameter line is to count metrical feet. If one simply counts off a foot at every two syllables, then one ends up with this:

for-a-youth-to-live-by-his-wits-trochaic

This would be a Hexameter line, but with too many variant feet to be called Iambic; and would break completely with the Iambic Pentameter pattern of blank verse. The scansion would be very doubtful given the expectations of the time. The division of the feet also works against the phrasing – and this is where scansion is part art and part science. As I mentioned in my previous post, especially as concerns anapests, one sometimes allows the phrasing to define the metrical foot. So, with that in mind, we end up with:

for-a-youth-to-live-by-his-wits-anapestic

This variation is not inconceivable in Jacobean Blank Verse, as far as variants go, but two anapests in a single line is unlikely. One of the advantages to the regularity of Iambic Pentameter, in Elizabethan and Jacobean Drama, is that it made the script easier for actors to remember. And that was important. They were frequently acting several different plays during a given week. So, while the line above doesn’t bare the mark of Elision or Eclipsis (as it might have just ten years earlier) it’s a safe bet that the line was probably pronounced as though the anapests were elided.

for-a-youth-to-live-by-his-wits-iambic

In this case, the line is felt, rhythmically, like Iambic Pentameter. The phrase For a is spoken quickly, the a almost disappearing. In the third foot, by his, becomes  by’s wits. The whole line, in this wise, has the effect of being spoken quickly or trippingly, as Shakespeare might have said. That said, the line will still have an anapestic ring to it. Poets from this period were content to introduce anapests that could be elided. The effect is a kind of grey area. They were paying lip service to the iambic pattern without being slavish. In the hands of the Jacobean poets, though, such grey areas were frequently overplayed, as in the line above.


If e’er he mean to make account of any.

Notice that ever is elided to read e’er through syncope (the removal of a letter or syllable from the middle of a word) [Sister Miriam Joseph: Shakespeare’s Use of the Arts of Language p. 52]. In this case, either the copyist or Middleton chose to deliberately spell out the elision and, by extension,  his concern that the Iambic rhythm be maintained.  (And this is the curious feature of this and the play in general. There’s a kind of schizophrenic  attentiveness to the meter. On the one hand, as with the line before this one, Middleton or the copyist doesn’t seem concerned with the meter or with indicating where the actors should elide words. Should we care about the meter? Then, with the very next line, Middleton or the copyist elides ever. Does he or doesn’t he care? Here’s my theory:

The iambic meter mattered.

However, Middleton and his contemporaries were frequently writing with great haste and they weren’t thinking of their works as poems to be read by the public. 1.) These plays were to be performed by actors drenched in the practice of performing blank verse – some having performed for and with Shakespeare and Marlowe. Middleton probably didn’t find it necessary to spell out every instance of elision, knowing the actors would “normalize” the lines. 2.) He may have simply overlooked such indications in the haste of writing. 3.) Few plays from this period survive in the author’s original hand. Texts were frequently altered by copyists if only because they couldn’t read the Dramatist’s hand writing.

All these may sound like rationalizations, but the play to remember is Marlowe’s Tamburlaine. This play electrified the public and other Dramatists not just for its subject matter – the drama – but for the genius of its blank verse. The verse form was part and parcel of the drama and dramatists were, in part, appraised by their use of it. These were heady times for the English language.

WittyPate

Wits, sir?

Old Knight

Ay, wits, sir; if it be so strange to thee
I’m sorry I spent that time to get a fool,

The phrase sorry I spent can be elided so that the y and I combine if spoken quickly, somewhat maintaining the Iambic beat.

I might have employed my pains a great deal better.

This line can be elided to read something like: I might ha’employed my pains… (You might think this is a stretch, but Middleton employs this very elision in the next line.)

Thou know’st all that I have I ha’ got by my wits,

This is a deceptively difficult line to scan because of our modern habits of speech. In this case, the subject matter of the Old Knight’s speech gives us a clue. Namely, he’s talking about himself. So, the line could be scanned as follows:

all-that-i-have

George Wright calls this a heavy feminine ending (the final extra syllable in the fifth foot being an intermediate or strong stress). I would be more apt to call it a double closing, (which would then relate it to the double onset – which is what Wright calls an anapestic first foot or anacrusis). But calling the fifth foot in the line above a heavy feminine ending makes sense too (and in the end, it just doesn’t matter). Middleton and other Jacobean poets were  increasingly fond of the heavy feminine ending while Shakespeare used it with considerable restraint. The ending allows for greater flexibility but also threatens the rhythm of blank verse. It’s one of the reasons the verse of the Jacobean theater sounds more diffuse, less disciplined and memorable than the earlier verse – (though perhaps only in my opinion).


And yet to see how urgent thou art too;
It grieves me thou art so degenerate

These two lines firmly reestablish the Iambic Pentameter pattern by precluding the need for elipsis. So far, it has been possible to read most of the lines within an iambic and pentameter pattern . But now comes the next line.


To trouble me for means; I never offered it

This is the first line which seems to defy elision. Using syncope, one might be able to elide never to ne’er, but that creates an anapest.

to-trouble-anapestic

This is an acceptable variant and an acceptable scansion, but I’m more inclined to think that we have our first hexameter line.

to-trouble-hexameter

In this case, knowing to what degree anapests were avoided, it makes more sense to me that Middleton would opt to preserve the iambic rhythm – though it makes the line Iambic Hexameter rather than Iambic Pentameter.

My parents from a schoolboy; past nineteen once

I read the line above is an eleven syllable line with a heavy feminine ending.

(See what these times are grown too!), before twenty
I rushed into the world, which is indeed
Much like the art of swimming; he that will attain to’t

And this line beginning Much like is an archly variant line. When I first read it I was completely baffled. I think, though, that it is still an acceptable variant within the larger Iambic Pentameter passage – if only by the slimmest of margins and only on a – once every hundred lines – basis. But that’s just my aesthetic opinion. The verdict? I think it’s a hexameter line with a heavy feminine ending. Middleton can get away with it, perhaps, because the hexameter line is an accepted variant (to judge by the writing of contemporaneous playwrights) and because the heavy feminine ending was, by that time, accepted. Here is how I scan it.

hexameter reading of attain to't

Notice the elision of to it to to’t, as if Middleton knew he was getting away with something. Now this is stretching the limits – expecting an ostensibly 14 syllable line to be an acceptable deviation from a 10 syllable iambic pentameter pattern! Yet, there you have it. The great master himself, William Shakespeare, sometimes peppered his blank verse with hexameter lines. Here is the precedent (taken from Shakespeare’s Metrical Art, Page 147).

How dares thy harsh rude tongue sound this unpleasing news? (Richard II, 3.4.74)

Fleeter than arrows, bullets, wind, thought, swifter things (Love’s Labor’s Lost 5.2.261)

It’s worth stressing that not all metrists accept Hexameter lines as an allowable variant. Some metrists try to regularize all lines so that they fit the iambic pentameter grid. But I don’t see how it can be done in all cases and I tend not to be dogmatic but pragmatic. I can’t see how any metrist could possibly regularize Middleton’s line. I find it easier to believe, given the practice of their day, that hexameters were understood as a “legal” variant.

Must fall plump, and duck himself at first,

The line above is missing an unstressed syllable in the first foot – commonly called a headless line.

headless-line

And that will make him hardy and adventurous
And not stand putting in one foot, and shiver,

The two lines above both end with feminine endings.


And then draw t’other after, like a quake-buttock;

This is another odd line. The iambic pentameter of the blank verse is at the breaking point. I read the line as having a heavy feminine ending – buttock was probably pronounced like butt’ck, syncope reducing a two syllable word to, essentially, one.


Well he may make a paddler i’ the world,
From hand to mouth, but never a brave swimmer,

The line above works as long as one doesn’t put too much stress on brave. The fourth foot would be phyrric and the last foot another feminine ending. Thus:

never-a-brave-swimmer

The two lines, more firmly iambic pentameter, help re-establish the, up to now, heavily varying meter.


Borne up by th’ chin, as I bore up myself

The line above is firmly iambic with the elision of by th’chin to b’th’chin. If you think this is extreme, compare it to Shakespeare: I had rather be set quick i’th’earth. Such elision was normal practice at the time and reflects a syllabic ambiguity which poets of the day seemed to take for granted. Many hypermetrical syllables can be elided in this fashion and apparently were.

With my strong industry that never failed me;
For he that lies borne up with patrimonies
Looks like a long great ass that swims with bladders:
Come but one prick of adverse fortune to him

All the lines above are firmly iambic with feminine endings.

He sinks, because he never tried to swim,
When wit plays with the billows that choked him.

I read the last line as having a phyrric in the fourth foot and a spondaic in the fifth. All in all, these last six lines have re-established the iambic pentameter pattern.

WittyPate

Why, is it not a fashion for a father, sir,

I read this line as having what is called a triple ending – when two unstressesed syllables follow the final stressed syllable of the fifth foot: essentially a feminine ending with an extra unstressed syllable. Thus:

triple-ending

There are also examples of triple endings in Shakespeare.

Out of his yearly thousands to allow
His only son a competent brace of hundreds,

In the line above, syncope reduces competent to comp’tent, mainting a strong iambic rhythm.

Or such a toy?

Old Knight

Yes, if he mean to spoil him
Or mar his wits he may, but never I.
This is my humour, sir, which you’ll find constant;
I love wit so well, because I live by’t,

I read the line above as being headless with a strong feminine ending. An acceptable variant after four strongly iambic pentameter lines.


That I’ll give no man power out of my means to hurt it,

The line above reads like a 14 syllable line by modern standards! However, according to the practice of the day, power can be read (as now) as having one syllable, while out of my could be elided to something like out’o’my means. This would make the line standard iambic pentameter with a feminine ending. It might scan as follows:

out-of-my-means-iambic-reading

Another possibility would be to give power two syllables, making the line hexameter with a feminine ending. I personally find this latter reading more believable:

out-of-my-means-hexameter-reading

This elides of my to o’my – such that the preposition of almost disappears. This is more easily within the practicable elision of the day.

And that’s a kind of gratitude to my raiser,

Gratitude was probably pronounced grat’tude, maintaing the iambic meter with a feminine ending.


Which great ones oft forget. I admire much
This age’s dullness. When I scarce writ man,
The first degree that e’er I took  in thriving,
I lay intelligencer close for wenching,
Could give this lord or knight a true certificate

Certificate can be read as certif’cate, making the ending feminine, or the line can be treated as having a triple ending. So far, though, another long stretch of Iambic Pentameter.

Of all the maidenheads extant; how many lay

To me, the line above is most easily read as a Hexameter line.

Mongst chambermaids, how many ‘mongst Exchange wenches

I read the line above as another line with a triple ending. Thus:

exchange-wenches-triple-ending

(Though never many there, I must confess,
They have a trick to utter ware so fast);
I knew which lady had a mind to fall,

The three lines above, perfectly iambic, reestablish the meter.


Which gentlewoman new divorced, which tradesman breaking,

This is an interesting line. It’s probably easiest read as another Hexameter (with a feminine ending). If one is determined to regularize the line, one might use sycnope to quickly slur the last three syllables of gentlewomen (such that, in effect, the word is reduced to two syllables).

The price of every sinner to a hair
And where to raise each price; which were the termers
That would give velvet petticoats, tissue gowns,

Petticoats was probably pronounced Pett’coats, maintaining the Iambic rhythm.

Which pieces, angels, suppers, and half-crowns:
I knew how to match and make my market,

The line above is headless, the stress on I. (Remember, the Old Knight is bragging about himself.) Thus:

i-knew-how-headless-reading

Understanding the rules and standards of the day, the reading above is far more likely than an anapestic reading:

i-knew-how-anapestic-reading

Such a reading as above would be to bring a 21rst Century sensibility to a 17th Century aesthetic.

Could give intelligence where the pox lay ledger,

Intelligence was most likely pronounced intell’gence, again maintaining the iambic line.

And then to see the lechers shift a point,
‘Twas sport and profit too; how they would shun
Their adored mistress’ chambers, and run fearfully

Fearfully could be read as fearf’lly, a feminine ending, or as a triple ending. Either would be acceptable. Frequent triple  endings were certainly more frequent among Jacobean playwrights.

Like rats from burning houses! So brought I
My clients o’ the game still safe together,
And noble gamesters loved me, and I felt it:
Give me a man that lives by his wits, say I,

By his wits was probably elided to read by’s wits – maintaining the iambic pattern.

And never left a groat, there’s the true gallant.
When I grew somewhat pursy, I grew then
In men’s opinions too, and confidences;
They put things called executorships upon me,

Executorships was probably pronounced exec’torships, making the line iambic pentameter with a feminine ending.

The charge of orphans, little senseless creatures,
Whom in their childhoods I bound forth to feltmakers,

Reading the line above as an Iambic Pentameter line with a triple ending.

To make ’em lose and work away their gentry,
Disguise their tender nature with hard custom,
So wrought ’em out in time: there I risse ungently;

Risse means rose. The line is hard to read. Most likely, there I can be elided:

there-i-risse-elision

Another possibility is to treat the colon as a midline break (which is what it is in either case) and the phrase there I risse as being a kind of double onset for the next phrase (there I being two unstressed syllables before risse). Remember, a double onset is when an iambic pentameter line begins with an extra unstressed syllable: Not a word, a word, we stand upon our manners (Wright P. 170). This would be, in effect, a reverse of the Epic Caesuras, a very common feature in Shakespeare’s works. For example:

seven-ages-epic-caesuras

This is from As You Like It 2.7.43. Notice the extra unstressed syllable at the midline break.

Nor do I fear to discourse this unto thee,
I’m armed at all points against treachery.

It’s hard to regularize these last two lines. Even in Jacobean England, I doubt that they would have acted the lines as follows:

final-couplet

I’ll be blunt. They’re clumsy. They’re bad lines. The second line could be read as having two anapests – at all points | against treach |. But this isn’t any less clumsy by the standards of blank verse.  The lines were ultimately written for the rhyme of thee and treachery. It was traditional, sometimes, to signal the end of a soliloquy or extended speech with a rhyming couplet, but the rhyme, in this case, is poorly executed and not a true rhyme. This may not be a sign of Middleton’s incompetence. It may simply be haste. (Dramatists in these days weren’t writing for posterity but for money – and new plays were needed fast, fast, fast!)

middleton-textual-companionThe clumsy meter and rhyme could also reflect on the character of the Knight (although I always doubt these sorts of readings; but it’s possible). After all, the Old Knight is a blow hard and just as he speaks these last two lines he collapses into prose – a curious effect and not often seen mid-speech in the theater of the day. It were as if the old blowhard simply gave up on the pretense of blank verse, exhausted by it, falling into the matter-of-fact discourse of prose – (similar to the rapid fire list of side-effects at the end of a drug commercial).

All in all, I would have to say that Middleton’s blank verse, at least in this opening act,  is only just passable. The frequent variants and long lines weaken the overall pattern, sapping it of its vigor and rigorousness.  The enjambment and end-stopping is varied, more so than with many of our modern “formalist” poets, but the effect is diluted by the frequent feminine and triple endings. It’s not good blank verse but it’s blank verse as the Jacobeans practiced it.

The passage demonstrates the wild side of Jacobean Blank Verse.

Iambic Pentameter (Variants – I)

  • This post was edited, tweaked & improved on March 24, 2009.
  • February 22, 2009 – If you enjoy Frost (& Middleton is a scansion too far), you might like reading Birches along with a color coded scansion of Birches included in my post on Frost’s Mending Wall. To find all the posts I’ve written on Robert Frost, click here.
  • December 24, 2018 – Brief addition.

Variants That May or May Not Be Variants

Individual lines of Iambic Pentameter can be found in any poem, including free verse.

However, since free verse avoids any regular meter, there’s no meter from which to vary.

  • There tends to be a fair amount of confusion as to how something can be considered metrical without being strict in regard to its meter. In other words, how do we account for variant feet in an otherwise metrical poem and at what point do too many variant feet undermine the meter? The best way to answer this is to think of meter as a musical beat. As far as we know, much ancient poetry appears to have been associated with music. In other words, poetry started out as lyrics. The stress patterns of the words commonly reflected the music’s beat (as in Hymn Meter). A musical melody reflects a given time signature such as 6/8 or 4/4 or 3/4. Think of variant feet like syncopation or triplets in a 4/4 time signature. A melody doesn’t always follow a given beat, but it also isn’t so disruptive as to lose the beat. If you think of meter as a time signature (iambic verses anapestic meter for example), then think of variant feet as a kind of syncopation that both works against the beat and reinforces it.

So, variants are only relevant within the context of Metrical poetry. Blank verse is meter consisting of un-rhymed iambic pentameter. It is the verse of Shakespeare’s Plays and the verse of Milton’s Paradise Lost.

john-milton1This turn hath made amends; thou hast fulfill’d
Thy words, Creator bounteous and benigne,
Giver of all things faire, but fairest this
Of all thy gifts, nor enviest. I now see
Bone of my Bone, Flesh of my Flesh, my Self
Before me; Woman is her Name, of Man
Extracted; for this cause he shall forgoe
Father and Mother, and to his Wife adhere;
And they shall be one Flesh, one Heart, one Soule.

Paradise Lost Book 8 491-499

In the passage above, Adam expresses his gratitude for the creation of Eve – man’s gratitude for woman.

The first line that appears irregular is the fourth line. However, this line is not, in fact, a variant. Milton usually wrote a very strict blank verse in terms of syllable count. So, if a line looks like it might contain an extra syllable, especially in Milton, there’s usually a way to read it while maintaining the integrity of the pentameter line. In the case of the fourth line, -viest (of enviest) should be elided (0r synaeresized as some metrists say), making it one syllable instead of two.

scansion-milton-a1

Making the assumption that a poet means for two syllables to be elided, when habit of speech tells us they can be, is usually a safe assumption for poets through the 19th century. But this assertion, like all things, isn’t without controversy. Some metrists will assert that anapests shouldn’t be swept under the rug and that elision is simply a prudish avoidance of anapests. Anything can be carried too far; and not all anapests should be excised. On the other hand, metrists who oppose such elision (as above) give no answer as to why so many anapests during this period of poetry occur with words that can be easily elided or synaeresized. Even in the 20th Century, Robert Frost will frequently read anapestec feet as Iambic. In Birches, he writes They are but contracts the words to read They’re when reciting the poem. It’s hard for critics to argue with that! In poetry prior to the 20th century, indisputable anapests can be hard to find unless one considers all epic caesura to be anapests (more on that later). The pragmatic answer is that poets saw words like  enviest as a sort of middle ground – a compromise between anapests and a stricter iambic rhythm. Simple as that.

By the 20th century, the strictures and expectations concerning blank verse (Iambic Pentameter) loosen considerably. Also, especially toward the end of the 20th century, poets have become less knowledgeable and skilled in the use of blank verse and iambic pentameter. One need not assume that a word can be or should be elided.

The 8th line is trickier: “Father and Mother, and to his Wife adhere“. This is an eleven syllable line and there are two ways to scan it. One way, knowing that Milton was a very rule-bound writer of blank verse, is to look for another possible elision.

scansion-milton-b

In this case, “to his could be elided – the two words combining so that, when one reads it quickly, the word “his” almost disappears: Father and Mother, and to’s Wife adhere. Such elisions were common practice in Milton, Shakespeare, Pope, Dryden and many other poets during this period. (Poets during the Restoration took Iambic Pentameter very seriously.)

But then again… the tricky “Art” of Scansion

But then again, as I presently devote an entire post to this passage, I’ve taken to another possibility:

Epic Caesura

In this scansion, I’ve read the line as having an Epic Caesura (to be discussed below). The rest of the feet are iambic. (In essence, an Epic Caesura is a feminine ending at a midline break.)  So… some lines can be scanned in multiple ways. As for myself, I think I’ve come to prefer this second scansion.

Missing & Extra Syllables

In my last post (Basics), we saw that even though a poem or play might be written in Iambic Pentameter, individual lines may vary from the overall pattern. The 11 syllable line beginning Hamlet’s famous, blank verse soliloquy is an example: To be or not to be, that is the question. A given line may have 9 , 11 or even 12 syllables instead of 10. And variations in Iambic Pentameter can extend even further. Shakespeare will sometimes intersperse the overall 10 syllable pattern with 6 syllable lines – called squinting lines (a term coined by George Wright).

Not all of these lines could be called Iambic Pentameter (since they’re not all Pentameter or five foot lines), but they might be variations if they vary from (but not too far from) an established iambic pentameter pattern. They also will generally be iambic. In other words, all these lines might be found in Free Verse but context is everything. In free verse, there is no meter to vary from, therefore the same line in a free verse poem wouldn’t be heard as a variation.

Let’s say a given line in an Iambic Pentameter poem has eleven syllables.

How, if one is scanning, do we decide which foot contains the extra syllable?

The following rule of thumb is fairly reliable: Choose the scansion that preserves the most Iambs. NOTE: If you were reading a poem that was Trochaic Tetrameter or Trochaic Pentameter, let’s say, then you would choose the scansion that preserves the most Trochees.

(I stress fairly because, in some cases, scanning a poem is as much art as science. If you don’t have a tin ear for the rhythm of language, the art of scansion is learned quickly.)

Missing Syllables: Headless Line

Here is an example from my own blank verse poem, Ulysses in Burlington, Vermont :

Longboard idle at the curb – I dole
My laws to boys that leer and know not me

If you divide the first line without giving thought to preserving the most iambs, marking off every two syllables, you might scan the first line as follows:

scansion-ulysses

This gives us five feet (a Pentameter line). But by simply marking off every two syllables, starting with the first word, we have created a line with no Iambic Feet. They are all Trochaic – meaning that the first syllable of each foot is stressed and the second unstressed (the reverse of an Iambic Foot). If this were a free verse poem, this scansion would probably be as good as any. And if this were a free verse poem, another way to scan might be as follows:

scansion-ulysses-2

In this case, we have a four foot line, or a tetrameter line, not pentameter. (A one foot line is a monometer line, two foot line is a dimeter line; a three foot line is trimeter; a four foot, tetrameter; five foot, pentameter; six foot, hexameter.) In the line above, the first two feet are Trochaic, the third foot is Anapestic (two unstressed followed by a stressed syllable, while the last foot is Iambic.

While tetrameter lines or trochaic pentameter is not unheard of in an Iambic Pentameter poem, consider it an option of last resort. If we follow our rule of thumb, preserve the most Iambs when scanning an Iambic Pentameter Poem (as well as trying to preserve the five feet of a pentameter line) we end up with the following:

scansion-ulysses-33

A Cretic Foot?

The arrow indicates a missing syllable. This scansion preserves our five feet and preserves the Iambic pattern established by the poem.You might be tempted to read the first two feet as one |Long-board id|, a cretic foot – also called an amphimacer. This foot is exceedingly rare in Iambic Poetry. It also would make the line above a Tetrameter line:

Longboard id|le at| the curb| – I dole

There’s no hard and fast reason why one couldn’t read the first foot as cretic, but metrists generally prefer to read a line within the context of an established metrical pattern. Since the established metrical pattern of the poem is blank verse (I wrote it), my intention was to treat the line as a headless Iambic Pentameter variant.

  • Hint!If you just can’t make sense of a line, sometimes it helps to scan the line backwards. Start by establishing the last foot of the line first, (|I dole| in the line above), then work your way backwards.

Missing Syllables: Broken-backed Lines

A line missing an unstressed syllable before the stressed syllable in the first foot is called a headless line and is a common variant of Iambic Pentameter. A missing syllable may occur in any foot. Here’s an example from Shakespeare:

scansion-richard-ii

In this case, the third foot is missing an initial unstressed syllable. This is called a broken-backed line because an unstressed syllable is missing after a midline pause (Wright: Shakespeare’s Metrical Art Page 176). The final foot is an Amphibrachic Foot which, in an Iambic Pentameter poem, is called a Feminine Ending. That is, when a line ends on an unstressed syllable, it is called Feminine. When it ends with a stressed syllable, it is called Masculine.

One more important lesson to notice about the line above is that it contains ten syllables. But just because the line contains ten syllables doesn’t make it Iambic Pentameter through and through. Otherwise one might have been tempted to scan it as follows:

scansion-richard-ii-21

But this breaks our tidy rule of thumb. Instead of having three iambic feet (the first foot is still considered iambic with an intermediate stress), we now have two. For a full consideration of lines with missing syllables, try reading Shakespeare’s Metrical Art, already linked above.

Extra Syllables: The Feminine Ending

Any line in an Iambic Pentameter poem that contains more than ten syllables (syllables which can’t be elided) contains extra syllables. Perhaps the most common extra-syllabic variant is the line with a feminine ending – an amphibrach in the fifith foot.

to-be-scansion

Extra Syllables: The Anapestic Feminine Ending

In the 20th Century, Poets like Robert Frost (especially) introduced anapestic feminine endings.
youd-think

In the final foot of the example above, Frost substitutes an anapest for an Iamb (in what would otherwise be an Iambic Feminine Ending). More on this line and the poem it comes from in my post on Frost’s Birches.

  • Note: The amphibrach  is also common before a midline break and is called an Epic Caesura (see example at bottom of post.)

Extra Syllables: The Heavy Feminine Ending

Another form of the feminine ending is known as the heavy feminine ending, wherein the final (and extra) syllable of the line receives an intermediate or heavy stress (example from Middleton’s The Changeling).

heavy-feminine-ending

Like the feminine ending,  the heavy feminine ending can also occur before a midline break – another form of Epic Caesura – but, to my knowledge, never occurs in Shakespeare and very infrequently in Middleton.

Here’s another example of a Heavy Feminine Ending from Frost’s Birches:

heavy-feminine-ending1

Extra Syllables: A Triple Ending

A final foot with a kind of double feminine ending (two additional unstressed syllables in the final foot) is called a triple ending (example from my next post on Thomas Middleton).

triple-ending1

or Shakespeare:

tirple-ending-he-to-hecuba

A triple ending can also occur before a midline break (Hamlet Act IV Scene 5).

midline-triple-ending

(Note that all these examples are still pentameter: they still have five feet though they are not iambic through and through.) Any of the other metrical feet can contain extra syllables and the rule of thumb for scanning those lines remains the same – use the scansion that preserves the most iambic feet.

scansion-macbeth

This is from MacBeth, IV iii Line 5. You might be tempted to think the line above has 12 syllables. However, the word spirits can be elided, and given what we know of the time and Shakespeare’s metrical habits, it probably should be (though no one can say with absolute certainty). The word woman, however, cannot be elided. This foot is amphibrachic, containing an extra unstressed syllable before a midline pause (the end of a phrase). It is called an Epic Caesuras (George Write: Shakespeare’s Metrical Art Page 165). The example is my own. The Epic Caesuras is easily among the most common extra-syllabic variant after the feminine ending. It is, in fact, a kind of feminine ending that occurs midline.

Extra Syllables: Epic Caesuras & Epic Controversies

But, as I mentioned earlier, calling this pattern an epic caesura is not without controversy among cut-throat scansion professionals (and they do cut throats). Some metrists, like Robert Wallace, seem exasperated with the term and the seeming avoidance of anapests. They would read the line above as follows:

was-he-not-born-anapestic-reading

This dispenses with the “pretense” of an epic caesura and the elision of the word spirits. I could go along with treating spirits as two syllables (who knows how they really pronounced it). In this case one has an anapest in the final foot.  But simply stamping this as an anapest somewhat ignores the history of meter and how it was practiced during the time.  Again, my own view is that poets like Shakespeare treated such words as an acceptable middle ground – a sort of neither/nor. In the same way that Canterbury was pronounced as a three syllable word (see my post on Chaucer), I have frequently heard spirit  pronounced as having a single syllable.

As to the whole concept of an epic caesura, I’m for it. Dicing up woman, in my view, ignores the phrase. There is some art to scansion and this is where I, personally, would apply it. Why ignore phrasing just to hang an anapest on the wall? A metrist like David Baker (Meter in English pp. 328-329) may not like the term, epic caesura, but if not, then he has to answer why these “anapests” all seem to occur with a midline break. It is the most common “anapest” in Shakespeare – and so was clearly considered an acceptable iambic pentameter variant. If all anapests were equally acceptable then one should expect to find them at every point of the line and with equal regularity – but prior to the 20th Century one simply does not. This tells us that the midline “anapest” was considered a special case – a sort of midline feminine ending. Given the evidence, I think it’s worth discriminating this foot from the run-of-the-mill anapest.

Extra Syllables: On to the Anapest

That said, the anapest is the second most common extra-syllabic variant (though far behind the epic caesura), a variant which readily picked up speed two centuries after Shakespeare died. Prior to the 19th Century, the anapest was considered a sign of decadence and depravity – literally. Critics and poets were scandalized by them. By the 20th century though, and after free verse had become the dominant verse form, the anapest became a regular (if not too regular) feature of iambic pentameter poetry. It’s overuse (overused by poets too accustomed to free verse and unskilled formal poets) frequently threatens to break down any regular metrical pattern – casting into doubt a poem’s claim to an iambic pentameter pattern. Frost used the anapest regularly but was also careful to ground the the meter just regularly by writing solid Iambic Pentameter lines – that is, without variants.

In case it’s not clear already, the anapest consists of a metrical foot containing two unstressed syllables followed by a stressed syllable. Here is a possible example from Browning’s the Last Duchess.

She rode with round the terrace—all and each
Would draw from her alike the approving speech

The second line could be scanned as follows:

scansion-last-duchess

Notice the extra syllable in the fourth foot. This is an anapest if we judge it by 20th century standards. However, that said, this poem was written in the 19th century, Browning learned from poets like Shakespeare, Milton and Keats and the rest of the poem, My Last Duchess, is perfectly Iambic. It’s possible that we once again have two syllables that should be elided: the approving could be read as th’approving. Browning doesn’t write it this way though. He doesn’t use synaloephasignaling the omission or elision of one or two vowels with an apostrophe as in t’other for the other. Perhaps he doesn’t feel the need to (it was assumed), but he did use synaloepha elsewhere in the poem. It is for the reader or performer to decide. I’m willing to call it an anapest – a little variation is a good thing.

The Primary Variant Feet and Their Names

If the nominal pattern for a poem were Iambic (unstressed followed by a stressed syllable) the following feet would be considered variants. By in large, these feet account for almost all of the variants you will find.

Trochaic : Stressed followed by unstressed. Hamlet Act I Scene I

trochaic

Spondee: Intermediate Stress followed by Stressed. Hamlet ActI Scene III

spondee

Pyrrhic: Unstressed followed by unstressed or intermediate Stress.  Hamlet Act II Scene V

pyrrhic

pyrrhic-2

Spondaic: Stressed followed by a stressed syllable.  Act III Scene 4

spondaic

Dactylic: Stressed followed by two unstressed syllables. Tempest Act V Scene 1 (Notice that this line is a tetrameter line due to the two Dactylic feet.)

dactylic

Amphibrachic: Unstressed followed by stressed followed by unstressed. Hamlet Act III Scene 4. In the fifth foot, this is called a Feminine Ending. In the examples below, they would more particularly be called Iambic Feminine Endings.

amphibrachic

If the Amphibrach occurs before a midline break, it is called an Epic Caesura (example from my own All Hallows’ Eve). (The Epic Caesura, an extra unstressed syllable, was a frequent Shakespearean variant.)

epic-caesura

Anapestic: Two unstressed followed by a stressed syllable. 2 Henry VI Act II Scene 1

anapestic

In my previous post (Basics) I mentioned that sometimes phrases can define a metrical foot. The anapest would be an example of this. If a line has 11 syllables, or even twelve, and the last foot isn’t a feminine ending, then it’s likely that one or two of the metrical feet are anapests (not Iambic). In this case, it doesn’t make sense to simply mark off a foot at every two syllables, especially if the line is part of a larger poem with an established meter like Iambic Pentameter (and, as with the line above,  it would defeat the rule that one should preserve as many Iambs as possible).  In the line above, the phrase, in a day, defines the metrical foot.

All of the variations above can occur in any of the five feet in a Pentameter line.

  • Note: There are critics & poets who deny that meter “exists”. I tend to group them with flat-earthers and moon landing denialists. Dan Schneider, of Cosmoetica, is one of them. If you’re curious to read my response to some of his writing, read Critiquing the Critic: Is Meter Real.

What’s Next?

The third post, Iambic Pentameter & Shakespeare, tries to answer the question: Who cares? Why does any of this matter? Why on God’s green earth would anyone want to scan a poem? And we’ll answer the question using Shakespeare’s Sonnet 116.

The fourth post , Iambic Pentameter: Variants & Long Lines, is more or less the second half of this post. It takes a look at some variants (not discussed here) by actually scanning some of Thomas Middleton’s blank verse (a contemporary of Shakespeare).  The verse isn’t pretty, which is why it’s useful for demonstrating the extremes of metrical variants. Between these four posts, you will hopefully have a good fix on how to scan Iambic Pentameter.

And finally, know who said this?

scott-patton“You know. . .if I had my way, I’d send that genius son of a bitch an engraved invitation in iambic pentameter: A challenge in two stanzas to meet me alone in the desert. I’ll deliver it. Rommel in his tank and me in mine. We’d stop about paces. We’d get out, we’d shake hands. . . then we’d button up and do battle, just the two of us. That battle would decide the outcome of the war. It’s too bad jousting’s gone out of style.”

Feel free to comment if you have questions, suggestions or if you would like to see some part of this subject treated more fully – I’ll add it.

Iambic Pentameter (The Basics)

  • Revised, tweaked and improved March 24 2009.
  • February 22, 2009 – If you enjoy Frost, you might like reading Birches along with a color coded scansion of Birches included in my post on Frost’s Mending Wall. To find all the posts I’ve written on Robert Frost, click here.
  • After you’ve read up on Iambic Pentameter, take a look at some of my poetry. I’m not half-bad. One of the reasons I write these posts is so that a few readers, interested in meter and rhyme, might want to try out my poetry. Check out Spider, Spider or, if you want modern Iambic Pentameter, try  My Bridge is like a Rainbow or Come Out! Take a copy to class if you need an example of Modern Iambic Pentameter. Pass it around if you have friends or relatives interested in this kind of poetry.
  • November 14th 2015 Another blogger has taken up the effort to write some introductory posts on Iambic Pentameter. He takes a different tact than I do, choosing to recognize larger patterns (repeating patterns) in multiple feet: the 4th paeon, the 1rst epitrite, the 3rd epitrite, the Spondee-paeon, the Paeon-Spondee, the choriamb, the minor ionic, and minor ioncis with deferred closures, etc.. His blog is called versemeter  and his first introductory posts are broken into three parts: Iambic Pentameter Part 1, Part 2 and Part 3. I encourage you to take a look, see what you think, and comment. Let him know what you think. At minimum, it demonstrates that there are different approaches to meter. Use the one that works for you.

First Appearance

Iambic Pentameter is the meter of Blank Verse, most Sonnets, and a variety of verse forms starting in the14th and continuing through the 21rst Century.

Iambic Pentameter is closely associated with Blank Verse, which some websites credit as having first been written by Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey. The assertion is incorrect. Chaucer was, in fact, the first poet to write Iambic Pentameter and examples can be found with the prologue of the Canterbury Tales.

Whan that aprill with his shoures soote
The droghte of march hath perced to the roote,
chaucer-stained-glassAnd bathed every veyne in swich licour
Of which vertu engendred is the flour;
Whan zephirus eek with his sweete breeth
Inspired hath in every holt and heeth
Tendre croppes, and the yonge sonne
Hath in the ram his halve cours yronne,
And smale foweles maken melodye,
That slepen al the nyght with open ye
(so priketh hem nature in hir corages);
Thanne longen folk to goon on pilgrimages,
And palmeres for to seken straunge strondes,
To ferne halwes, kowthe in sondry londes;
And specially from every shires ende
Of Engelond, to Caunterbury they wende,
The hooly blisful martir for to seke
That hem hath holpen, whan that they were seeke.

Although, at first glance, this may not appear to be Iambic Pentameter, it is. We’ll get back to it in another post.

What is Iambic and Pentameter?

All of Elizabethan, Jacobean and Restoration Drama, written in verse, is written using Iambic Pentameter (Blank Verse) – this includes all of Shakespeare’s Plays and Sonnets. Milton’s Paradise Lost is written in Iambic Pentameter. Keats’ Sonnets & Hyperion, along with most of his major poems, are written in Iambic Pentameter.  Almost every major poet , prior to the 20th Century, wrote Iambic Pentameter when writing their best known poetry.  Exceptions would be poets like Walt Whitman (free verse), Robert Burns (who wrote a variety of metrical lines – mostly iambic), and Emily Dickinson (whose meter is derived from hymn tunes, which is why so many of her poems can be sung to Yellow Rose of Texas).

Iambic is an adjective. Iamb is the noun and is short for Iambus. Iambus is from the Greek and refers to two. Therefore, Iamb refers to any two syllable “unit”, referred to as a foot by metrists, consisting of an unstressed syllable followed by a stressed syllable (or ictus).

What is a Foot?

A foot is defined as a group of syllables (unspecified in number) comprising a metrical unit. In the case of an Iamb, the metrical foot contains two syllables.

In the following example, I’ve bolded and italicized the stressed syllables.

To be or not to be

The bolded and italicized words receive greater stress, when speaking, than the words which have not been bolded or italicized.

Now, if we break this line into feet, we end up with following:

To be | or not | to be | that is | the question.

Except for the last foot, each foot consists of two syllables. The last foot is a variant called an amphibrach (in that it varies from the first four iambic feet). The amphibrach is a foot (a metrical unit) consisting of an unstressed, stressed, and unstressed syllable.

A strictly iambic line would be:

Of hand, | of foot, | of lip, | of eye, | of brow   (Shakespeare: Sonnet 106: Line 6)

What is Pentameter

The Greek prefix Pent- or Penta-, means five. Pentameter therefore means a line of verse consisting of five metrical feet. Remember, a metrical foot contains an unspecified number of syllables until it is modified by an adjective like Iambic.

What is Iambic Pentameter

The adjective, Iambic, modifies Pentameter to mean, a line of verse consisting of five Iambic metrical feet [feet containing an unstressed and stressed syllable].

There are also examples of poems written in trochaic pentameter. In this case, the term would mean a line of verse consisting of five trochaic [metrical feet [feet containing an stressed and unstressed syllable]. (Note: The stressed and unstressed syllables, in comparison to Iambic, are reversed.)  It would also be possible to have amphibrachic pentameter. To my knowledge, no poems have been written in this meter. If any reader knows of one, let me know!

The line:

Of hand, | of foot, | of lip, | of eye, | of brow

is strictly Iambic Pentameter because each foot is strictly an Iamb and there are strictly five feet.

The line:

To be | or not | to be | that is | the question.

or

To be | or not | to be | that is | the question.

is not, strictly speaking, an Iambic Pentameter line, because the final foot is amphibrachic and the fourth foot may be read as being trochaic. However, it is considered an acceptable variant of the Iambic Pentameter line. In the second scansion of the line above, putting the emphasis on is might sound awkward, but imagine an actor speaking the line. The second scansion gives the line a different emphasis. It all depends on where the is is.

Perfect Iambic Pentameter?

After having written this, I’ve noticed various websites who (not to put too fine a point on the matter) get it wrong. Frostfriends.org, for example, writes the following about the closing line of Frost’s poem Birches:

Birches: “It’s when I’m weary of considerations.” This line is perfect iambic pentameter, with an extra metrical (feminine) ending.

Their statement is incorrect. This line is not perfect iambic pentameter (and this is more than just splitting hairs). A perfectly iambic pentameter line would not have a feminine ending (an amphibrach) in the final foot. The correct thing to say would have been – this is a perfectly acceptable variant within an iambic pentameter pattern.

More on this poem, and its scansion, can be found at my post on Frost’s Birches.

Symbols used in scanning Metrical Poetry

Lastly, the symbols used to denote stress in a line of verse are as follows:

weak-stress This symbol denotes a weak stress.

intermediate-stressThis symbol denotes an intermediate stress.


strong-stressThis symbol denotes a strong stress.

metrical-divider This symbol denotes the division of a metrical foot.

So, the line above would appear as follows:

to-be-scansion

Note: I’ve scanned that as receiving the stress although I believe that the word is should receive it. For more on this opinion and why, visit my post on To Be or Not To Be.

And consider the following scansion:

when-to-scansion

In the scansion above, notice that the word sweet receives an intermediate stress. This means that most readers would probably put less stress on sweet (saying it less loudly) than on the syllable si– of silent. Try it out. Also, importantly, notice that the feet divide the words. An iambic metrical foot consists of two syllables, not necessarily two words. Thus, count two syllables and mark off a foot, count two more syllables and mark off a foot, etc… Mark off every two syllables regardless of the words. If the lines contains more than 10 syllables, as in the scansion of “To be or not be”, one of your metrical feet will not be iambic.

A Ten Syllable Line is not the same as an Iambic Pentameter Line

It’s also possible that just because a line has ten syllables, it might not have 5 feet. It might have four feet with two anapestic feet. And this is where science becomes art. There is an art to scansion, but it is not hard to learn. While metrical feet may divide words, the placement of metrical feet is not insensitive to phrasing. In other words, sometimes it may make more sense to recognize a phrase as being anapestic or, as with feminine endings, amphibrachic.

(My next post answers what to do when considering such variants.) In the example above, the last foot was not iambic. In other examples, the first, second, third or fourth foot might not be iambic. When I write my next post, on variant lines, we’ll figure out how to tell which foot gets the extra syllable.

Two More Symbols: Elision

There are two more commonly used symbol to consider. One is the symbol for elision. Elision means that instead of pronouncing a word as having, say, two syllables, it is pronounced as having one. Likewise, a word that appears to have three syllables, might be pronounced as two.

elision This symbol denotes elision.

Consider the following line:

scansion-with-elision

This example is taken from George T. Wright’s Shakespeare’s Metrical Art. Only the first foot is scanned. Notice that lier of livelier may be pronounced with two syllables li-er or one -lier. If the reader wishes to maintain the iambic rhythm of the line, the whole word livelier would be pronounced with two syllables. If the word were pronounced with three, then the line would be considered dactylic – a strong stress or syllable followed by two weak stresses or syllables.

livelier

Two More Symbols: The Missing Syllable

Finally, a less common but equally useful symbol designates a missing syllable.

missing-syllable

It is useful when discussing variant lines, such as the following from my blank verse poem My Bridge is Like a Rainbow:

missing-syllable-in-my-bridge

The symbol indicates a missing syllable in an otherwise fully Iambic line. The line itself is called a headless line, but more on that in my next post.

The next post will deal with sorting out variation in the Iambic Pentameter line  – how they can be read, how to know, and if you can know.

Other Symbols, Other Systems

the-book-of-formsIt’s worth noting that there are other systems and symbols used to denote stress patterns in English Language Poetry. The one that I’ve presented here is the most universally used and recognized. There may be slight differences. For instance, Lewis Turco, in his book The Book of Forms, doesn’t use the intermediate symbol that I provided above – he uses a dot instead.

turco-intermediate-stressSymbol used for Intermediate Stress in Lewis Turco’s The Book of Forms.

Besides the difference in this one symbol, however, Turco uses the same basic system I have been describing. You may run across other symbols or, if you are researching this as a part of a class, you may have an instructor that prefers one symbol over another. All that matters is that you understand the basic ideas that these symbols represent. The symbols themselves are secondary.

Beyond this point, the fights between metrists can get ugly. There is no end to the precision to which some metrists aspire. Some detest the basic system of scansion described above. Some dispense with the symbols altogether and opt to typographically move individual words up or down (in relation to each other) according to how much stress they believe each word should receive. My own view is that these systems of scansion lose sight of their original purpose. They reflect a sort of obsessiveness that has more to do with linquistics than with poetry.

  • Note: There are critics & poets who deny that meter “exists”. I tend to group them with flat-earthers and moon landing denialists. Dan Schneider, of Cosmoetica, is one of them. If you’re curious to read my response to some of his writing, read Critiquing the Critic: Is Meter Real.

(This is the short form, for a slightly more detailed description, try Wikipedia.)

Feel free to comment if you have questions or suggestions.