= 27d567bc2d48d9f40e9ccc20ea370b15)
pjeby comments on Open Thread: January 2010 - Less Wrong
You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.
= 783df68a0f980790206b9ea87794c5b6)
Loading…= b715d02e85f7b3b4ae65ca3d3e450868)
Subscribe to RSS Feed
Powered by Reddit
= f037147d6e6c911a85753b9abdedda8d)
You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.
Comments (725)
It reminds me of something that happened in college, where a poem of mine was being put in some sort of collection; there was a typo in it, and I mentioned a correction to the professor. He nodded wisely, and said, "yes, that would keep it to iambic pentameter."
And I said, "iambic who what now?"... or words to that effect.
And then I discovered the wonderful world of meter. ;-)
Your poem is trying to be in iambic tetrameter (four iambs - "dit dah" stress patterns), but it's missing the boat in a lot of places. Iambic tetrameter also doesn't lend itself to sounding serious; you can write something serious in it, sure, but it'll always have kind of a childish singsong-y sort of feel, so you have to know how to counter it.
Before I grokked this meter stuff, I just randomly tried to make things sound right, which is what your poem appears to be doing. If you actually know what meter you're trying for, it's a LOT easier to find the right words, because they will be words that naturally hit the beat. Ideally, you should be able to read your poem in a complete monotone and STILL hear the rhythmic beating of the dit's and dah's... you could probably write a morse code message if you wanted to. ;-)
Anyway, you will probably find it a lot easier to fix the problems with the poem's rhythm if you know what rhythm you are trying to create. Enjoy!
For those who still read books, recommend "The Poem's Heartbeat".
Yes, I'm well aware of what iambic tetrameter is and that the poem generally conforms to it :-). The intended meter isn't quite that simple though. The final verse of each stanza is only three feet, and the first foot of the third verse of each stanza is a spondee. Verses are headless where necessary.
There's also an inverted foot in "Be the test later or done?", but I'm leaving that in even though I could easily substitute "ahead" for "later". Despite breaking the meter, it sounds better as-is.
Fair enough. I found other aspects of the poem so awkward, though, that I never actually finished any one full stanza without wincing. The rhythm seemed like the one thing I could offer a semi-objective opinion on, and I figured that maybe some of the other things that were bothering me were a result of you trying to fit a meter without conscious awareness of what meter you were trying to fit.