[Bards] Need help with formats

[Jay Rudin]

Esther wrote:

> This is fascinating, but utterly new to me. Where was this switch 
> back and forth used? Why? What are the rules? Who did it?

It was used in almost any great poem in English you've ever seen.  Shakespeare's trochaic inversions are usually at the start of a line, or after a ceasura (short break near the middle of the line).

To be, or not to be; that is the question.
[iamb, iamb, iamb (ceasura); trochee, iamb with feminine ending]

Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer
[trochee, iamb, iamb, iamb, iamb with feminine ending]

Other poets and songwriters use it as well.  A trochaic inversion can work so well that nobody notices it:
Rudolph the red-nosed reindeer 
[trochee, iamb, iamb with feminine ending]

Shoot if you must, this old grey head, 
[trochee, iamb, iamb, iamb]

Other very common substitutions are anapests and amphibrachs for iambs, dactyls for trochees, etc.  This is the equivalent of adding an extra unaccented syllable, like grace notes in music.  What I've called an iamb with feminine ending above could just as easily be called an amphibrach.

Just sit right back, and you'll hear a tale
[iamb, iamb, anapest, iamb]

Over many a quaint and curious volume of forgotten lore
[trochee, dactyl, trochee, dactyl, trochee, trochee, trochee, trochee with masculine ending]

The rules?  Ummm... I'm no great expert.  If it flows well and the sound of the words adds to the sense of them, it's a Good Thing.  If the flow sounds stilted or forced, it's a Bad Thing.  Also, it depends a lot on the culture.  Saxon has no meter beyond the heavy beats, so it doesn't apply.  Greek and Latin quantitative verse has very strict substitution rules (and isn't based on stressed and unstressed syllables, but on length of syllables (akin to half notes and quarter notes).

Consider the second line of Shakespeare's Sonnet 107:
Not mine owne feares, nor the prophetick soule,
 ~  ~  /    /      / ~   ~   /     ~ /
Of the wide world, dreaming on things to come,

The first line is easy -- just a single trochaic inversion after the ceasura.  But how do we scan the second line?  An anapest followed by a single syllable foot, followed by a trochee?  I guess we can say that the first two feet are replaced by a minor Ionic (da-da-DUM-DUM), but who uses Ionics in English verse?  That still leaves three accented syllables in a row.  Nonetheless, the verse flows well, and is considered one of his great poems.  Now, we can't do that; we aren't Shakespeare level geniuses.  (Or, if we are discussing Renaissance theory, I guess I should say that we don't *have* Shakespeare-level geniuses.)

> Can you expand on this, at least by giving me a short bibliography
> of where to start my own research? I feel like I came in in the
> middle of a great story....

Almost any good book on poetry.  I recommend Clement Wood's Rhyming Dictionary (already cited by Robert), John Hollander's Rhyme's Reason, Lawrence Perrine's Sound and Sense, the Princeton Encyclopedia of Poetry and Poetics, and Miller Williams's Patterns of Poetry -- all occasionally found at Half-Price Books.

Robin of Gilwell / Jay Rudin
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