Rhythm and Rhyme

This workshop was designed to help new poets become familiar with the concept of metre, that is rhythm, in poetry. However, I believe that understanding the workings of metre will add to the readers' enjoyment too – the poets' offerings become much more accessible when you can see the mechanics at work. Enjoy. Simply Metre - 1 Rhythm is about the sound of language and is based on syllable groups. A syllable is that part of speech which we hear and can be identified by the presence of a vowel, vowel group (au, ous, io etc) or pseudo-vowel (y). Each group of syllables is called a foot – it’s a human failing that we have to name things, which brings us to Conventional Terminology - that just means everyone uses the same labels for the same things. A comparison can be drawn quite quickly by looking at other examples; flowers are identified as roses, carnations and orchids while hair colours are blonde, brunette and auburn. These sub-group nouns are labels we use for identification and everyone understands what is meant. In much the same way each metre has a label of identification. Though I will use these terms, don’t worry about them just yet, unless you intend writing an essay; it is recognising the sound of the rhythm which matters. As Shakespeare said, 'A rose by any other name…' I will try to develop this essay in a way that introduces the technical terms gently. There are five main types of metre and two that are used for variation, but I will cover these one at a time and only move on when the time is right. The first rhythm we will look at is the iamb, by far the most common metre used. The most important thing is to be able to recognise it when you hear it. The iamb occurs naturally in such words as apply, berate, concur, decide, excite, forego and so on. From this, you will see that it is composed of two syllables – an unstressed syllable followed immediately by a stressed syllable (da DUM). That is all there is to iambs, really, except for the repetition within the line and the concept of measurement. Now we know what an iamb is, but you need more than one iamb to make metre. Here I have to make an important point – metre is used to measure individual lines of poetry. I’ll come back to this point later, at the moment it is enough to know that each line is a metrical unit, it stands separate from the body of the poem. Another point to note is that metre bears no relation to the meaning of the words; I’ll use the example iambs given above to illustrate this. apPLY is an example of a line containing one iambic foot, (one occurrence of da DUM) apPLY /beRATE, - shows two iambic feet (da DUM, da DUM) apPLY / beRATE / conCUR – shows three iambic feet (da DUM, da DUM, da DUM) apPLY/ beRATE/ conCUR/ deCIDE - four iambic feet (da DUM, da DUM, da DUM, da DUM) apPLY/ beRATE/ conCUR/ deCIDE/ exCITE – five iambic feet (da DUM, da DUM, da DUM, da DUM, da DUM) and so on. The lines are nonsense lines but the metre is solid. Note the use of a separator between the feet of the line –this is recognised device for identification, which I will expand on later. Look at these lines below and see if you can identify the number of feet in each, I'll do the first line as a guide. The CUR/few TOLLS/ the KNELL/ of PART/ing DAY, - five iambic feet (da DUM, da DUM, da DUM, da DUM, da DUM) The lowing herd winds slowly o’er the lea. (Gray’s ‘Elegy’) The king sits in Dunfermline toon, Drinking his blood red wine (‘Sir Patrick Spens’) The grave’s a fine and private place But none, I think, do there embrace (‘Marvell’s ‘To his coy mistress’) Why should a foolish marriage vow, Which long ago was made (Dryden ‘Song from Marriage a la Mode’) I’ll do the scansion for each later. For now, I want to suggest an exercise that will help you recognise the iamb better and provide you with a resource for the future. I’ve already given examples of natural iambs above. Using these as a starting point build up your own banks of around twenty words, paying strict attention to the rhythm you hear.