An Introduction to Prosody

First of all, more than any other texts, the late John Hollander’s writings, in particular Rhyme’s Reason: A Guide to English Verse, are responsible for illuminating the beginnings of my personal path on the journey to understanding and applying prosody. I intend to provide an introduction to prosody to similarly illuminate the basics of verse for novices to the subject, and, I am sure it will be heavily influenced by Hollander’s writings, despite the fact I am being far less thorough than he is in the general sense of prosody; and far more focused on the specifics of accentual-syllabic verse (or, at least, its tools). The writings below owe a debt to John Hollander. Prosody is an attempt to answer the how and why of meter, rhythm, rhyme, and, of course, their overarching umbrella term, poetic form; technically, prosody is the theory and application of poetic form, but this is a beginner’s guide. By no means is this guide a comprehensive explanation/exploration of prosody. The goals of this guide are very basic: accentual-syllabic verse, will be our focus, meaning: the terminology involved; the ability to distinguish between stressed and unstressed syllables; the common verse forms in English; and how to begin applying scansion. To start us of, what is a syllable? For our purposes, it is: A vocal sound or set of sounds uttered with a single effort of articulation and forming a word or an element of a word; each of the elements of spoken language comprising a sound of greater sonority (vowel or vowel-equivalent) with or without one or more sounds of less sonority (consonants or consonant-equivalents); also, a character or set of characters forming a corresponding element of written language.-The Oxford English Dictionary One may still use the school-child method of counting how many times one’s jaw drops, but note that the school-child method is not fool-proof. Now, understanding syllables is important because they are the beginning point of what will be covered. Two or three syllables are combined into a single unit – a metrical foot. There are multiple types of metrical feet and to determine what the correct foot is one must consider the relation of stressed and unstressed syllables within the foot. Therefore, one must understand several concepts at once in order to even begin to gauge individual success/failure. This is complicated – however, that’s what PoetryGenius is for. An iamb is a pair of syllables which are: unstressed – stressed: abóut is an iamb. The stressed syllable in a word is represented by an accent mark (´) while a breve (˘) is used to represent an unstressed syllable; furthermore, feet are separated by a vertical line (|) and a caesura is marked with two vertical lines (||). For clarity in type, I will begin by only marking stressed syllables. Generally, when doing prosody, it is best to double or triple space the poem you intend to work on and do your prosody by hand – the markings should be right above the sound, which isn’t always the vowel; also, with handwriting, the width, or length of the lines used to represent the separation of feet and caesura can be further distinguished. Now, let’s do a basic line. Read the below line naturally a few times:       A line of iambs’ sound ascends up high It should have looked like this if made into prosody:       A líne | of í | ambs’ sóund | ascénds | up hígh Let’s do something a little longer:       A line of iambs’ sound ascends up high       Almost the same as this insidious new line;       Except the second line is alexandrine, dude! Scanned we get this (unstressed included for clarity on lines 2 and 3)       A líne | of í | ambs’ sóund | ascénds | up hígh       ălmóst |thĕ sáme | ăs thís | ĭnsíd | ĭóus | nĕw line; ||       ĕxcépt | thĕ séc | ŏnd líne | ĭs ál| ĕxán | drĭne |,| dúde. || The third line is also an Alexandrine, i.e. hexameter, meaning it is six beats wide. The most common foot in English is the iamb, while the most common line-width is pentameter, like the first line. Alexandrines/hexameter are rare in recent English poetry, although they used to be used fairly frequently to either speed up or slow down iambic pentameter. Also, note the fact a caesura is in the middle of the last foot -- that's one of the confusing parts of doing prosody with a key board -- on a printed copy you can just use different line lengths for feet separation and caesarae. The next most common foot in English is the trochee: stressed–unstressed. Try these lines:       Falling cadence forces us forward. This is the       Meter that triumphant men are marching to       In all the martial songs and battle-hymns. Scansion:       Fállĭng | cádĕnce | fórces ŭs | fórwărds.|| | Thís ĭs | thé       Métĕr | thát trĭ | úmphănt | mén arĕ | márchĭng | tó       Ín all thĕ | mártĭal | sóngs ănd | battle-hýmns. || “But wait, PoetryGenius,” you say. “There are extra syllables on these lines and–“ Yes! This verse introduces two new concepts besides trochees: first, catalectic lines, which are often present in trochaic lines because they urge readers towards the next line; and secondly, elision – which is the omissions of parts or all of a sound from a word. Here, we can say “In all” is really just one syllable, as I did: we also have "forces" instead of "forc – es." There are plenty of pronunciation questions – is “Meter that triumphant men are marching to” really perfectly trochaic? Maybe – but it’s open to other variations and in fact, we don’t want perfect adherence in the feet of a poem – it sounds robotic to the ear and becomes boring. However, the example as provided would be classified as a pair of trochaic pentameter catalectic lines followed by a trochaic tetrameter line. Tetrameter (four beats for a line) is very popular for trochees and iambs, and the most famous examples of catalectic lines are the trochaic tetrameter catalectic verse of William Blake's “The Tyger.” E.G.       Tyger Tyger. Burning bright,       In the forests of the night:       Týger | Týger. || | Búrning | bríght       Ín the| fórests | óf the | níght: || Trochees and iambs are the two most dominant/common metrical feet in English. These are your basic tools for setting out to perform prosody. You’ll find most English verse is crafted in iambic meter with trochees thrown in for variance. Pure iambic verse sounds robotic – variation is essential. Variation, surprise, is the very essence of every artist’s trade; and one of the most important sources of metrical power and pleasure is the perpetual tension between the regular and the irregular, between the expected and the unexpected, the base rhythm and the variation. --Jon StallworthyStallworthy gets at a very important point in the above quotation. Most verse is meant to sound effortless and natural – not forced and robotic. Performing prosody is both simplified and complicated by this aspiration. Verse without variations is incredibly simple to perform prosody on, since one only has to figure out the general pattern and then relentlessly repeat it. Variations force readers to contemplate each word in a piece of verse – but the aspiration to create a natural sound means the process of memorizing/reciting a poem almost always reveals the way to mark a poem you are iffy on. Now the next big players in English verse (when it comes to metrical feet) are the spondee (stressed-stressed) and the pyrrhic (unstressed-unstressed). These two feet are substituted for either trochees or iambs – verse isn’t written in spondaic meter. Yeats’s “Leda and the Swan” is the focus of one of our most advanced lessons in prosody on RapGenius; we’ll use an excerpt of the sonnet here, simply to demonstrate the use of variant feet in meter. Try to figure out the prosody of the first line below (all four lines are provided to give context): A sudden blow: the great wings beating still Above the staggering girl, her thighs caressed By the dark webs, her nape caught in his bill, He holds her helpless breast upon his breast. a súd | den blów: || | the gréat | wíngs béat | ing still iamb-iamb-medial caesura-iamb-spondee-iamb A caesura midline is always worth noting. In this line we are dealt “a sudden blow” by the unexpected colon, and that compels us to read on to learn where this “blow” came from. WINGS BEAT is a spondee for several reasons: The “wings” are “great wings” and are responsible for the “beating,” which seems as if it may be tied to the “sudden blow.” Thus, the word “wings” commands strength and must be stressed. Pyrrhics are a different case. They are very rare and always debatable. If you’re performing prosody and think a pyrrhic exists, triple-check, because it probably doesn’t. A pair of unstressed syllables is simply weak and often unnatural. This brings us to the PoetryGenius “Prosody Rules of Thumb and Advice.” Prosody is intimidating until one grasps all the ideas – then it usually becomes fairly simple. There are a couple of tricks to make recognizing verse easier that should always be used and are especially helpful to beginners. The only time I’d feel confident using a pyrrhic is when it is immediately followed by a spondee – this creates metrical balance. "No spondee – no pyrrhic" – is a good guideline. Now, here are a few other tricks. John Milton’s “On the Late Massacre in Piedmont” is often extremely baffling to the fledgling scholar attempting prosody. We’ll apply the rules of thumb, tricks, and advice to the poem to demonstrate how one gets started. Avenge, O Lord, thy slaughtered saints, whose bones Lie scattered on the Alpine mountains cold, Even them who kept thy truth so pure of old, When all our fathers worshiped stocks and stones; Forget not: in thy book record their groans Who were thy sheep and in their ancient fold Slain by the bloody Piedmontese that rolled Mother with infant down the rocks. Their moans The vales redoubled to the hills, and they To Heaven. Their martyred blood and ashes sow O'er all th' Italian fields where still doth sway The triple tyrant; that from these may grow A hundredfold, who having learnt thy way Early may fly the Babylonian woe. The first thing to do is count the syllables for a few lines. A venge O Lord they Slaugh tered saints whose bones – 10 – but it could be eleven so the next line in necessary for confirmation. Lie scat tered on the al pine moun tains cold – 10 again. A ten syllable line is almost always going to be iambic pentameter. Trochaic lines tend to be catelectic so we’d expect an odd number of syllables – but don’t go marking away just yet. Instead, go through the poem and find the good, obviously polysyllabic, words. You’re looking for words that can only be pronounced a limited number of ways (or one way) so skip ones that might have elision applied to them (i.e. early): avenge, slaughtered, alpine, mountains, fathers, worshiped, forget, record, ancient, piedmontese, infant, redoubled, heaven, martyred, Italian, hundredfold, Babylonian. These are all good words to use because there’s little ambiguity to their pronunciation. Fill in the blanks (not literally) and then look at the rest of the words to puzzle things together. For an example, we did fill in the blanks with unstressed syllables as a dash (--), and stressed syllables as a slash (/). --/ , O Lord, thy /-- saints, whose bones Lie scattered on the /-- /-- cold, Even them who kept thy truth so pure of old, When all our /-- /-- stocks and stones; --/ not: in thy book --/ their groans Who were thy sheep and in their /-- fold Slain by the bloody /--/ that rolled Mother with /-- down the rocks. Their moans The vales --/-- to the hills, and they To/--. Their /-- blood and ashes sow O'er all th' --/-- fields where still doth sway The triple tyrant; that from these may grow A /--/, who having learnt thy way Early may fly the /--/-- woe. Now lets split that up into feet: --/ | O Lord | thy / | -- saints | whose bones Lie / | -- on | the / | -- / | -- cold Even them | who kept | thy truth | so pure | of old When all | our / | -- / | -- stocks | and stones --/ | not: in | thy book | --/ | their groans Who were | thy sheep | and in | their / | -- fold Slain by | the blood | y / | -- / | that rolled Mother | with / | -- down | the rocks. | Their moans The vales | -- / | -- to | the hills, | and they To / | --. Their | /-- | blood and | ashes sow O'er all | th' -- / | -- fields | where still | doth sway The tri| ple ty | rant; that | from these | may grow A / | -- / |, who hav | ing learnt | thy way Early | may fly | the / | -- / | -- woe. With that work done, we know the poem is in iambic pentameter, and simply have to figure out which monosyllables are stressed and which are not. This poem is full of variations, but using this basic guideline really clears it up. It is easier by far to perform prosody with a pen and paper instead of staring at a text you can't mark up. Print out poems with 2.5 to 3 lines spacing to work with them. Early on, this results in a lot of mistakes, but it's extremely helpful. Here's how I did "On The Late Massacre in Piedmont" On the left, I mark the rhyme scheme, and if it's a slant rhyme. I wait till I've done enough of the prosody on a poem to decide what the dominate meter is and write that near the top, or on the right of a line if the lines alternate dominate meters. Then, I write the names of any variant feet beneath the lines. Arrows indicate enjambed lines while double lines indicate end-stops. I mark caesura with a pair of thin lines, and make them either shorter or longer than the breaks between feet -- either way works as long as you stay consistent throughout the poem.