[Perry Miller]

I just discovered that, despite not yet getting through boot camp, I can post on this forum. In my effort to get 15 critiques under my belt, I looked on back pages and found the poem Roof by John Riley, which engendered quite a debate about whether the poem was metrical or not. One member even scolded John for posting the poem on the wrong board. Fortunately, a moderator came along and judged the poem to be metrical.

But this got me worrying about my own poetry (once I start to post it). My tendency is to count syllables and let the stresses fall where they fall. I'll do it like this: Let's say that I am going for the sound of IP, I'll give myself a range of 9-11 syllables per line to write in. Once I've written a draft, I will then count the beats in each line. Usually the beats will be 5 for some lines and 4 for others. That is, in fact, what I want, since over the years I have found that persistent IP -- always 5 beats per line -- sounds too intense for me. If I allow some lines to have 4 beats, that creates a more relaxed cadence.

Given all this, I'm worried that some members will insist that I post my poems on the Free Verse board; but I don't consider most of my poems to be free verse. Rather, the term I use for them is "loosely metered". To the extent that I do a tremendous amount of counting of syllables and beats when writing, it would feel unfair to me to be permanently consigned to the Free Verse board, which I assume gets less traffic. I just don't see myself as a free verse poet.

So the question is, what is meter? Meter can be strict meter, as in actual IP with standard variants. Or, according to the rules, it can mean accentual syllabic. "Accentual syllabic" implies less rigidity than strict meter. That's how I view my writing, as accentual syllabic.

What I like to say is, "The ear hears everything." So if I write within a tight range of syllables and a tight range of beats, the reader's ear should hear the regularity of that -- and to the extent that the reader is hearing a pattern, that to me qualifies as "meter". I'm saying this because I'm hoping to avoid arguments over the kind of poetry I'm writing.

Now, sometimes I do this: I'll write a poem in this loose meter, and when I'm done I'll discover that I have broken a lot of phrases across line-endings, phrases which would sound better if they were contiguous. So then I'll rewrite the poem with the phrases intact, causing the syllable count per line to vary widely. In THAT case I would put the poem on the Free Verse board.

I should also say that when I am writing in loose meter, I sometimes allow the last line of each stanza or strophe to choose its own length. Despite that, I will still consider the poem to be metered. I also sometimes allow lines to go long for special effect, or to be short for special effect. I guess what I'm saying is, if there is a discernible rhythmic pattern to a poem, I will consider that to be sufficiently metrical to put it in the Metrical forum.

[Roger Slater]

Post in Metrical if you want critiques that include comments regarding the poem's meter. If you want critiques that use words like "iamb", post in Metrical.

If your IP poems tend to have tet lines here and there, one way to show that it's what you intended, rather than an accident, is to indent those lines. Many het-met poems use indents to signal the meter, with all lines of a given metrical length sharing the same degree of indentation.

[Yves S L]

Instead of counting syllables to approximate accentual meter, why not learn to aurally differentiate between 5 beat and 4 beat lines as you are writing to get an approximate syllable count?

My main issue with folk who approximate accentual meter by using a range of syllables, then write "rhythmically", and then count later is that I cannot see how adding an additional step after one has written the lines gains the necessary real-time fluency in accentual meter. It is a neither here nor there approach to me that just muddies the waters, and makes it harder for the ear to learn to accurately judge what is happening as it is happening.

For me, the point of strict accentual meter is that it is simply the fastest way to learn how to control rhythm, and then afterwards one can use one's ear to consciously create the whatever rhythmic patterns one hears in one's mind.

There is an endless range of rhythmic and tonal possibilities in iambic pentameter alone, from the soft pittter patter of a small children at play to the insistent banging of a drum.

What is meter? It lies purely within your own personal abilities to process sounds.

[Susan McLean]

Perry, accentual-syllabic meter is the strictest meter. It counts both syllables and beats, and it has rules about what kind of variations can be used and what kind can't. Accentual meter counts only beats per line. In between the two is loose iambic meter, which is mainly iambic but allows an anapest or two per line to loosen the meter. Syllabic verse is not in a pattern of metrical feet at all, because it involves counting only syllables, so it will sound like free verse.

If you want to write metrical verse, it does not have to be strictly regular. Iambic meter, in particular, is very flexible, allowing a lot of variations, and anapestic meter usually includes a few iambs (as in limericks). But you need to learn to hear the beats as you write, if you want to write in meter. Check a dictionary for the stresses in words if you are uncertain about where they fall. Unstressed syllables can carry the beat (that is called "promotion") and stressed syllables can be "demoted" to unstressed in order to carry the beat. It is common to have only four stresses in an iambic pentameter line because of promotion, but if you get the pattern of stresses wrong, it will sound like free verse, which is not the object of writing in meter. I suggest looking at a book such as Timothy Steele's All the Fun's in How You Say a Thing to get some idea of how it works.

Susan

[Carl Copeland]

Perry, I often read things in Met that sound Non-Met to me. Some poets here like their meter so subtle that it’s beyond my range. There are also Non-Met poems so musical that I have to go back and check to make sure they aren’t hiding a regular beat. My point is that there’s a frontier zone, and if that’s where you like to be, I doubt anyone is going to make a big deal about which side of the fluid border you choose to post on. I can’t recall the border police ever having detained anyone during my time here.

[Perry Miller]

Thank you for your feedback. The point is that I listen to my own internal rhythms, and that internal music is NOT free verse, so I don't want to be pushed into that category. Where the beats fall DOES matter to me, so I call my poetry metered or "loosely metered". Personally, I can't imagine NOT listening to my innate sense of rhythm. To me, most free verse sounds like prose, and my poetry doesn't sound like prose.

If "accentual syllabic" is the strictest form, then it is essentially the same as strict meter. I took that phrase to mean that the poet was considering both syllables and beats, but not necessarily strictly.

Now, I can't post a poem yet, but I will post the three opening lines from a poem I wrote about a woman whose dream it was to open a food store. It will show you what I am talking about:

It was her dream to own a deli,
to sell her favorite foods to the world
and be the earth mother that she was.

IT was / her DREAM / to OWN / a DEL / i
to SELL /her FAV / rite FOODS / to the WORLD
and BE / the EARTH MOTH / er THAT / she WAS
alternative scansion:
and BE / the EARTH / MOTH er / THAT she / WAS

You can see that the third line is the problem. There are five stressed syllables, and it can be scanned two ways. I prefer the first way because I consider a bacchius to be an acceptable substitute for an iamb, in the same way an anapest is. But you can see the problems we may run into.

Just so you all know, I'm turning 74 this summer and I've been writing poetry since my early twenties, and I have written articles on meter and scansion. I'm new to this forum but not new to writing.

==========

Ah, I now realize that I could have written that third line like this, and it sounds about as good:

and be the earth mother she was.

and BE / the EARTH / MOTH er / she WAS

... but there are other lines in that poem with similar difficulties, and I can't rewrite them all. The point is, the poem is rhythmic, so I would naturally post it in the Metrical forum.

[Roger Slater]

It's clear that you should post in the metrical forum, given all you've said. You might encounter an occasional comment suggesting a given poem isn't metrical, but you're as likely, if you post in non-metrical, to encounter comments telling you your poem belongs in metrical. Ultimately, it doesn't matter much. No one will be angry or issue a reprimand if they don't agree with your designation.

[Susan McLean]

Perry, I'd call what you posted "loose iambic," though it scans best for that if you lose the "that" in the third line. If you post lines like that on the metrical board, you will get some suggestions for polishing the rougher sections, but no one will say that it is not metrical.

Susan

[Perry Miller]

Thank you, Roger and Susan. Before I read your comments, I concluded I should just post on the Free Verse forum, but now I've decided to make that decision for each poem individually. Your comments have been helpful.

Let me just add that in my early writing, there were more metrical anomalies than there are today. Over time I discovered that if I was more careful with the meter, my poems generally sounded better. The human ear likes regularity.

[Susan McLean]

Perry, I too was self-taught when I first started writing in meter. One can intuit a lot about the rules just by reading a lot of metrical poems. But the comments here helped me learn the rules behind those poems, and now if I break one of the rules, I do so intentionally, not inadvertently. One big breakthrough for me was learning how to wrap an unstressed syllable at the end of a line into the next line seamlessly by starting that line on a stressed syllable.

Susan