30 Poems in 30 Days: Syllabic Verse
September 15, 2007 by J.C. Hewitt
This is Day 12 of 30 Poems in 30 Days
As previously discussed, there are many types of poetic meters and forms. One of the most straightforward is syllabic verse. Syllabic verse sets a specific number of syllables per line or per stanza, but does not focus on stressed or unstressed feet. This type of meter has been more popular in languages with less of a focus on stressed syllables, such as Japanese and Spanish. Haiku, with its pattern of five, seven and five syllables, is one of the most common examples of syllabic meter.
The benefit of syllabic meter in English language poetry is that it is less restrictive than meters that focus on stressed and unstressed feet. Syllabic verse gives a poem structure, but avoids the patterned, sometimes singsong qualities of popular English meters such as iambic or dactyl. Syllabic meters can be as simple as ten syllables per line and can grow quickly in complexity from there.
Those who dislike syllabic meter feel that it doesn’t provide real structure, that the English language is far more focused on stressed and unstressed syllables than on the number of syllables. Their contention is that most people don’t notice the number of syllables in a line, only the number of stresses, therefore, determining line length solely by the number of syllables is meaningless.
In my opinion, syllabic meter is a reasonable poetic compromise between image-based lines and metered poetry. While length-based word choice still enters into consideration when writing syllabic verse, you don’t have to torture yourself trying to replace the most appropriate word with one that fits the meter. Syllabic verse “looks” like poetry because the line length is patterned, but it allows you the freedom to experiment within the line.
Today’s Poetry Assignment
Write a poem using syllabic verse. You can assign length ether by line or stanza. If you are stuck for a way to begin, start with this two-word ten-syllable line:
Incompatible Participation
Today’s Recommended Poet
Jon Anderson was one of my first poetry instructors when I was in the Creative Writing Program at the University of Arizona. He doesn’t publish as often as I wish he would, but his 2001 book, Day Moon
On the web:
Exiled On Mountain, Bewail Fate & Praise Autumn
I like syllabics! My list poem a few days back was a version thereof. New one coming up soon.
At Night
Forbidden to leave the giant bed
She watched the radio voices
Dark shadows move across the shades
a car might move down the turn row
That would one day be an alley
But to the child vanished to bed
Between cold flat white sheets
It was the world’s echo calling
I watch his sleeping face,
the hint of a frown
in the lines between his eyes
and the purse of his mouth.
A puzzled frown only,
as if in his dream
a question has arisen
which he is pondering.
This is a gentle face,
soft as a baby’s
although by no means so smooth,
because he is old now.
I know that he is old,
the world tells me so.
Everything tells me so
except my own vision.
I look at him and see,
dreaming unguarded,
the sweetly serious child
in this private moment.
Dear Connie, love yours. For what it says – to which I can so much relate – and also for the beautiful simplicity with which it is said.
I haven’t worked with syllabic verse per se in some time. It creates an interesting rhythm. I was trying to avoid rhyme for this assignment although the poem wanted me to use sleep instead of bed the second time. When I re-write it for the “book,” I will probably change it to sleep.
What an interesting experience this is turning into.
Rosemary: I really loved that combination poem you did in the last assignment, the mixing of form and free verse. Well done. The lines lent themselves so very well to the lingering mixed emotions of that sort of experience.
John: Excellent choice of poets and assignments. Thank you for your hard work.
My Entry:
The Right
My Friend
Thinks we should just
Turn the Middle East to
Glowing Nuclear
Glass and end the problem
Once and for all
Might makes right
Right?
For the
Most part I think
Genocide is not a
Reasonable
Answer to our problems
Thug life justice
Is not right
Right?
I think
Democracy
At the point of a gun
Misses the point
You cannot force freedom
On the people
You oppose
Right?
My friend
He agrees but
In too violent a
Way for my tastes
Our side is the right side
Just kill them all
Save ourselves
Right?
I’m stuck
In the middle
Of impossible peace
Ignorant war
And everyone who thinks
That left or right
Their side is
Right
Right ! ! !
You know I never really understood meter before this project. Scansion was gobbledygook. I always thought in syllables, although I don’t know where I learnt that. Apart from the haiku, I don’t remember ever hearing about syllabics. I just did it. Sometimes. Funny what you pick up through osmosis.
I have avoided rhyme as well, Connie, trying to focus on the form as I have never thought about it consciously before. (That’s also why I chose Sapphics for my meter poem.) So here are my entries. I have a pair.
SUMMER CINQUAIN (2, 4, 6, 8, 2)
Sunshine,
Lure me again
to Lych Gate; December
cherries; dense green shade; picnic lace
and words.
WINTER TANKA (5, 7, 5, 7, 7)
So long were the nights
of our grey stolen season.
Cold glitter of stars,
in the mist corporeal,
broken by morning’s bright frost.
John: As Connie said, Right!!! That single syllable refrain is very powerful.
Rosemary: Gentle and lovely and loving.
Connie: As Rosemary said, beautiful simplicity.
I don’t think I’ve ever read a better cinquain!
The tanka’s pretty wonderful too.
Who could not be “lured”
Connie,
You also used “Dark Shadows” in your imagist poem. I think you can find a better line than that.
Rosemary,
Hint of a frown is a little everyday, how about “the rumor of a frown”?
CM: The Summer Cinquain is excellent. I wasn’t quite as excited by the Tanka, the language seemed a little too formal.
Yes, I use a lot of dark shadows. I will probably leave it, but I will take another look at both of them. Diane Wakowski uses a repetition of colors, foods, jewelry, and confessionals. Margarette Atwood uses cold things, like snow and ice, desolation. Kate Chopin used birds. Marge Piercy used cats and vegetables in her earlier work, she is a gardner, and also, feminist victimization . Denice Levertov uised repetitive themes of joy and beauty, ekphrases abound. She peppered her poems with oodles of line breaks and breath spaces, in the tradition of the Black Mountain school.
Connie: It is your choice of course. It just doesn’t evoke much for me. When I read it I think, “of course the shadow is dark, that’s what a shadow is.” I also think of the TV soap Opera with the vampires.
Nah, don’t like “rumour” – I’m LOOKING at him, after all. But thanks for pointing out the weakness; I’ll think up some other word or phrase. Maybe “suggestion” or “trace”or …
Someone on MySpace noted that the 2nd and 3rd lines of 4th verse pulled her away from the poem – and I realised that in those lines I stop looking AT him and start thinking ABOUT him. So one way and another, this is in for a bit of a rewrite.
lolol . . . John, that is exactly why I used it in this case . . . I love Dark Shadows — oooooeeeeee ! ! ! ! The goth, the vamp — even in early childhood . . . .
“lolol . . . John, that is exactly why I used it in this case . . . I love Dark Shadows — oooooeeeeee ! ! ! ! The goth, the vamp — even in early childhood . . . .”
… I have no response to that.
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Sorry, posted the last draft too soon…
Baby in the Pool
You stood
on the shallow
step, grinning, holding on,
ready to be launched into the
deep end.
Saul Nadatas last blog post..Your Paper