The Ode Less Travelled.

Unlocking the Poet Within.

by Stephen Fry

Foreword.

I HAVE A DARK AND DREADFUL SECRET HAVE A DARK AND DREADFUL SECRET. I write poetry. This is an embarra.s.sing confession for an adult to make. In their idle hours Winston Churchill and Noel Coward painted. For fun and relaxation Albert Einstein played the violin. Hemingway hunted, Agatha Christie gardened, James Joyce sang arias and Nabokov chased b.u.t.terflies. But poetry poetry?

I have a friend who drums in the attic, another who has been building a boat for years. An actor I know is prouder of the reproduction eighteenth-century duelling pistols he makes in a small workshop than he is of his knighthood. Britain is a nation of hobbyistseccentric amateurs, talented part-timers, Pooterish potterers and dedicated autodidacts in every field of human endeavour. But poetry poetry?

An adolescent girl may write poetry, so long as it is securely locked up in her pink leatherette five-year diary. Suburban professionals are permitted to enter jolly pastiche compet.i.tions in the Spectator Spectator and and New Statesman New Statesman. At a pinch, a young man may be allowed to write a verse or two of dirty doggerel and leave it on a post-it note stuck to the fridge when he has forgotten to buy a Valentine card. But that's it it. Any more forays into the world of Poesy and you release the beast that lurks within every British breastand the name of the beast is Embarra.s.sment.

And yet...

I believe poetry is a primal impulse within us all. I believe we are all capable of it and furthermore that a small, often ignored corner of us positively yearns to try it. I believe our poetic impulse is blocked by the false belief that poetry might on the one hand be academic and technical and on the other formless and random. It seems to many that while there is a clear road to learning music, gardening or watercolours, poetry lies in inaccessible marshland: no pathways, no signposts, just the skeletons of long-dead poets poking through the bog and the unedifying sight of living ones floundering about in apparent confusion and mutual enmity. Behind it all, the dread memory of cla.s.srooms swollen into resentful silence while the English teacher invites us to 'respond' to a poem.

For me the private act of writing poetry is songwriting, confessional, diary-keeping, speculation, problem-solving, storytelling, therapy, anger management, craftsmanship, relaxation, concentration and spiritual adventure all in one inexpensive package.

Suppose I want to paint but seem to have no obvious talent. Never mind: there are artist supply shops selling paints, papers, pastels, charcoals and crayons. There are 'How To' books everywhere. Simple lessons in the rules of proportion and guides to composition and colourmixing can make up for my lack of natural ability and provide painless technical grounding. I am helped by grids and outlines, pantographs and tracing paper; precise instructions guide me in how to prepare a canvas, prime it with paint and wash it into an instant watercolour sky. There are instructional videos available; I can even find channels on cable and satellite television showing gentle hippies painting lakes, carving pine trees with palette knives and dotting them with impasto snow. Mahlsticks, sable, hogs-hair, turpentine and linseed. Viridian, umber, ochre and carmine. Perspective, chiaroscuro, sfumato sfumato, grisaille, tondo and morbidezza morbidezza. Reserved modes and materials. The tools of the trade. A new jargon to learn. A whole initiation into technique, form and style.

Suppose I want to play music but seem to have no obvious talent. Never mind: there are music shops selling instruments, tuning forks, metronomes and 'How To' books by the score. And scores by the score. Instructional videos abound. I can buy digital keyboards linked to programmes that plug into my computer and guide me through the rudiments, monitoring my progress and accuracy. I start with scales and move on to chords and arpeggios. There are horsehair, rosin and catgut, reeds, plectrums and mouthpieces. There are diminished sevenths, augmented fifths, relative minors, trills and accidentals. There are riffs and figures, licks and vamps. Sonata, adagio, crescendo, scherzo and twelve-bar blues. Reserved modes and materials. The tools of the trade. A new jargon to learn. A whole initiation into technique, form and style.

To help us further there are evening cla.s.ses, clubs and groups. Pack up your easel and palette and go into the countryside with a party of like-minded enthusiasts. Sit down with a friend and learn a new chord on the guitar. Join a band. Turn your watercolour view of Lake Windermere into a tablemat or T-shirt. Burn your version of 'Stairway to Heaven' onto a CD and alarm your friends.

None of these adventures into technique and proficiency will necessarily turn you into a genius or even a proficient craftsman. Your view of Snow on York Minster Snow on York Minster, whether languishing in the loft or forming the basis of this year's Christmas card doesn't make you Turner, Constable or Monet. Your version of 'Fur Elise' on electric piano might not threaten Alfred Brendel, your trumpet blast of 'Basin Street Blues' could be so far from Satchmo that it hurts and your take on 'Lela' may well stand as an eternal reproach to all those with ears to hear. You may not sell a single picture, be invited even once to deputise for the church organist when she goes down with shingles or have any luck at all when you try out for the local Bay City Rollers tribute band. You are neither Great Artist, sessions professional, ill.u.s.trator or admired amateur.

So what? You are someone who paints a bit, scratches around on the keyboard for fun, gets a kick out of learning a tune or discovering a new way of rendering the face of your beloved in charcoal. You have another life, you have family, work and friends but this is a hobby, a pastime, FUN. Do you give up the Sunday kick-around because you'll never be Thierry Henry? Of course not. That would be pathologically vain. We don't stop talking about how the world might be better just because we have no chance of making it to Prime Minister. We are all politicians. We are all artists. In an open society everything the mind and hands can achieve is our birthright. It is up to us to claim it.

And you know, you might might be the real thing, or someone with the potential to give as much pleasure to others as you derive yourself. But how you will ever know if you don't try? be the real thing, or someone with the potential to give as much pleasure to others as you derive yourself. But how you will ever know if you don't try?

As the above is true of painting and music, so it is true of cookery and photography and gardening and interior decoration and chess and poker and skiing and sailing and carpentry and bridge and wine and knitting and bra.s.s-rubbing and line-dancing and the hundreds of other activities that enrich and enliven the daily toil of getting and spending, mortgages and shopping, school and office. There are rules, conventions, techniques, reserved objects, equipment and paraphernalia, time-honoured modes, forms, jargon and tradition. The average pract.i.tioner doesn't expect to win prizes, earn a fortune, become famous or acquire absolute mastery in their art, craft, sportor as we would say now, their chosen leisure pursuit. It really is enough to have fun It really is enough to have fun.

The point remains: it isn't a burden to learn the difference between acid and alkaline soil or understand how f-stops and exposure times affect your photograph. There's no drudgery or humiliation in discovering how to knit, purl and cast off, snowplough your skis, deglaze a pan, carve a dovetail or tot up your bridge hand according to Acol. Only an embarra.s.sed adolescent or deranged coward thinks jargon and reserved languages are pretentious and that detail and structure are boring. Sensible people are above simpering at references to colour in music, structure in wine or rhythm in architecture. When you learn to sail you are literally shown the ropes and taught that they are called sheets or painters and that knots are hitches and forward is aft and right is starboard. That is not pseudery or exclusivity, it is precision, it is part of initiating the newcomer into the guild. Learning the lingo is the beginning of our rite of pa.s.sage.

In music, tempo is not the same as rhythm, which is not the same as pulse. There are metronomic indications and time signatures. At some point along the road between picking out a tune with one finger and really playing we need to know we need to know these distinctions. For some it comes naturally and seems inborn, for most of us the music is buried deep inside but needs a little coaxing and tuition to be got out. So someone shows us, or we progress by video, evening cla.s.s or book. these distinctions. For some it comes naturally and seems inborn, for most of us the music is buried deep inside but needs a little coaxing and tuition to be got out. So someone shows us, or we progress by video, evening cla.s.s or book. Talent is inborn but technique is learned Talent is inborn but technique is learned.

Talent without technique is like an engine without a steering wheel, gears or brakes. It doesn't matter how thoroughbred and powerful the V12 under the bonnet if it can't be steered and kept under control. Talented people who do nothing with their gifts often crash and burn. A great truth, so obvious that it is almost a secret, is that most people are embarra.s.sed to the point of shame by their talents. Ashamed of their gifts but proud to bursting of their achievements. Do athletes boast of their hand-eye coordination, grace and natural sense of balance? No, they talk of how hard they trained, the sacrifices they made, the effort they put in.

Ah, but a man's reach should exceed his graspOr what's a heaven for?

Robert Browning's cry brings us back, at last, to poetry. While it is perfectly possible that you did not learn music at school, or drawing and painting, it is almost certain that you did learn poetry. Not how to do it, almost never how to write your own, but how, G.o.d help us, to appreciate appreciate it. it.

We have all of us, all of us all of us, sat with brows furrowed feeling incredibly dense and dumb as the teacher asks us to respond to an image or line of verse.

What do you think Wordsworth was referring to here?What does Wilfred Owen achieve by choosing this metaphor?How does Keats respond to the nightingale?Why do you think Shakespeare uses the word 'gentle' as a verb?What is Larkin's att.i.tude to the hotel room?

It brings it all back, doesn't it? All the red-faced, blood-pounding humiliation and embarra.s.sment of being singled out for comment.

The way poetry was taught at school reminded W. H. Auden of a Punch Punch cartoon composed, legend has it, by the poet A. E. Housman. Two English teachers are walking in the woods in springtime. The first, on hearing birdsong, is moved to quote William Wordsworth: cartoon composed, legend has it, by the poet A. E. Housman. Two English teachers are walking in the woods in springtime. The first, on hearing birdsong, is moved to quote William Wordsworth: TEACHER 1: Oh cuckoo, shall I call thee bird Or but a wandering voice? 1: Oh cuckoo, shall I call thee bird Or but a wandering voice?TEACHER 2: State the alternative preferred With reasons for your choice. 2: State the alternative preferred With reasons for your choice.

Even if some secret part of you might have been privately moved and engaged, you probably went through a stage of loathing those bores Shakespeare, Keats, Owen, Eliot, Larkin and all who came before and after them. You may love them now, you may still hate them or perhaps you feel entirely indifferent to the whole pack of them. But however well or badly we were taught English literature, how many of us have ever been shown how to write our own poems?

Don't worry, it doesn't have to rhyme. Don't bother with metre and verses. Just express yourself. Pour out your feelings.

Suppose you had never played the piano in your life.

Don't worry, just lift the lid and express yourself express yourself. Pour out your feelings.

We have all heard children do just that and we have all wanted to treat them with great violence as a result. Yet this is the only instruction we are ever likely to get in the art of writing poetry: Anything goes.

But that's how modern poetry works works, isn't it? Free verse, don't they call it? Vers libre Vers libre?

Ye-e-es...And in avant-garde music, John Cage famously wrote a piece of silence called '4 Minutes 33 Seconds' and created other works requiring ball-bearings and chains to be dropped on to prepared pianos. Do music teachers suggest that to children? Do we encourage them to ignore all harmony and rhythm and just make noise? It is important to realise that Cage's first pieces were written in the Western compositional tradition, in movements with conventional Italian names like lento, vivace and fugato. Pica.s.so's early paintings are flawless models of figurative accuracy. Listening to music may inspire an extraordinary emotional response, but extraordinary emotions are not enough to make music.

Unlike musical notation, paint or clay, language is inside every one of us. For free. We are all proficient at it. We already have the palette, the paints and the instruments. We don't have to go and buy any reserved materials. Poetry is made of the same stuff you are reading now, the same stuff you use to order pizza over the phone, the same stuff you yell at your parents and children, whisper in your lover's ear and shove into an e-mail, text or birthday card. It is common to us all. Is that why we resent being told that there is a technique to its highest expression, poetry? I cannot ski, so I would like to be shown how to. I cannot paint, so I would value some lessons. But I can speak and write, so do not waste my time telling me that I need lessons in poetry, which is, after all, no more than emotional writing, with or without the odd rhyme. Isn't it?

Jan Schreiber in a review of Timothy Steele's Missing Measures Missing Measures, says this of modern verse: The writing of poetry has been made laughably easy. There are no technical constraints. Knowledge of the tradition is not necessary, nor is a desire to communicate, this having been supplanted in many pract.i.tioners by the more urgent desire to express themselves. Even sophistication in the manipulation of syntax is not sought. Poetry, it seems, need no longer be at least as well written as prose.

Personally, I find writing without form, metre or rhyme not 'laughably easy' but fantastically difficult. If you can do it, good luck to you and farewell, this book is not for you: but a word of warning from W.H. Auden before you go.

The poet who writes 'free' verse is like Robinson Crusoe on his desert island: he must do all his cooking, laundry and darning for himself. In a few exceptional cases, this manly independence produces something original and impressive, but more often the result is squalordirty sheets on the unmade bed and empty bottles on the unswept floor.

I cannot teach you how to be a great poet or even a good one. Dammit, I can't teach myself myself that. But I can show you how to have fun with the modes and forms of poetry as they have developed over the years. By the time you have read this book you will be able to write a Petrarchan sonnet, a Sapphic Ode, a ballade, a villanelle and a Spenserian stanza, among many other weird and delightful forms; you will be confident with metre, rhyme and much else besides. Whether you choose to write on the stupidity of advertising, the curve of your true love's b.u.t.tocks, the folly of war or the irritation of not being able to open a pickle jar is unimportant. I will give you the tools, you can finish the job. And once you have got the hang of the forms, you can devise your own. The Robertsonian Sonnet. The Jonesian Ode. The Millerian Stanza. that. But I can show you how to have fun with the modes and forms of poetry as they have developed over the years. By the time you have read this book you will be able to write a Petrarchan sonnet, a Sapphic Ode, a ballade, a villanelle and a Spenserian stanza, among many other weird and delightful forms; you will be confident with metre, rhyme and much else besides. Whether you choose to write on the stupidity of advertising, the curve of your true love's b.u.t.tocks, the folly of war or the irritation of not being able to open a pickle jar is unimportant. I will give you the tools, you can finish the job. And once you have got the hang of the forms, you can devise your own. The Robertsonian Sonnet. The Jonesian Ode. The Millerian Stanza.

This is not an academic book. It is unlikely to become part of the core curriculum. It may help you with your English exams because it will certainly allow you to be a smart-a.r.s.e in Practical Criticism papers (if such things still exist) and demonstrate that you know a trochee from a dactyl, a terza from an ottava rima and a.s.sonance from enjambment, in which case I am happy to be of service. It is over a quarter of a century since I did any teaching and I have no idea if such knowledge is considered good or useless these days, for all I know it will count against you.

I have written this book because over the past thirty-five years I have derived enormous private pleasure from writing poetry and like anyone with a pa.s.sion I am keen to share it. You will be relieved to hear that I will not be burdening you with any of my actual poems (except sample verse specifically designed to help clarify form and metre): I do not write poetry for publication, I write it for the same reason that, according to Wilde, one should write a diary, to have something sensational to read on the train. And as a way of speaking to myself. But most importantly of all for pleasure for pleasure.

This is not the only work on prosody (the art of versification) ever published in English, but it is the one that I should like to have been available to me many years ago. It is technical, yes, inasmuch as it investigates technique, but I hope that does not make it dry, obscure or difficultafter all, 'technique' is just the Greek for 'art'. I have tried to make everything approachable without being loopily matey or absurdly simplistic.

I certainly do not attempt in this book to pick up where those poor teachers left off and instruct you in poetry appreciation. I suspect, however, that once you have started writing a poem of any real shape you will find yourself admiring and appreciating other poets' work a great deal more. If you have never picked up a golf club you will never really know just how remarkable Ernie Els is (subst.i.tute tennis racket for Roger Federer, frying pan for Gordon Ramsay, piano for Jools Holland and so on).

But maybe you are too old a dog to learn new tricks? Maybe you have missed the bus? That's hooey. Thomas Hardy (a finer poet than he was a novelist in my view) did not start publishing verse till he was nearly sixty.

Every child is musical. Unfortunately this natural gift is squelched before it has time to develop. From all my life experience I remember being laughed at because my voice and the words I sang didn't please someone. My second grade teacher, Miss Stone would not let me sing with the rest of the cla.s.s because she judged my voice as not musical and she said I threw the cla.s.s off key. I believed her which led to the blockage of my appreciation of music and blocked my ability to write poetry. Fortunately at the age of 57 I had a significant emotional event which unblocked my ability to compose poetry which many people believe has lyrical qualities.

So writes one Sidney Madwed. Mr Madwed may not be Thomas Campion or Cole Porter, but he believes that an understanding of prosody has set him free and now clearly has a whale of a time writing his lyrics and verses. I hope reading this book will take the place for you of a 'significant emotional event' and awaken the poet that has always lain dormant within.

It is never too late. We are all opsimaths.

Opsimath, noun: one who learns late in life.

Let us go forward together now, both opsimathically and optimistically. Nothing can hold us back. The ode beckons.

How to Read this Book

THERE IS no getting away from it: in about five minutes' time, if you keep reading at a steady rate, you will start to find yourself, slowly at first and then with gathering speed and violence, under bombardment from technical words, many of them Greek in origin and many of them perhaps unfamiliar to you. I cannot predict how you will react to this. You might rub your hands in glee, you might throw them up in whatever is the opposite of glee, you might bunch them into an angry fist or use them to hurl the book as far away from you as possible. no getting away from it: in about five minutes' time, if you keep reading at a steady rate, you will start to find yourself, slowly at first and then with gathering speed and violence, under bombardment from technical words, many of them Greek in origin and many of them perhaps unfamiliar to you. I cannot predict how you will react to this. You might rub your hands in glee, you might throw them up in whatever is the opposite of glee, you might bunch them into an angry fist or use them to hurl the book as far away from you as possible.

It is important for you to realise now, at this initial stage, thatas I mentioned earliermost activities worth pursuing come with their own jargon, their private language and technical vocabulary. In music you would be learning about fifths and relative majors, in yachting it would be boom-spankers, tacking into the wind and spinnakers. I could attempt to 'translate' words like iamb iamb and and caesura caesura into everyday English, but frankly that would be patronising and silly. It would also be very confusing when, as may well happen, you turn to other books on poetry for further elucidation. into everyday English, but frankly that would be patronising and silly. It would also be very confusing when, as may well happen, you turn to other books on poetry for further elucidation.

So please, DO NOT BE AFRAID DO NOT BE AFRAID. I have taken every effort to try to make your initiation into the world of prosody as straightforward, logical and enjoyable as possible. No art worth the striving after is without its complexities, but if you find yourself confused, if words and concepts start to swim meaninglessly in front of you, do not panic. So long as you obey the three golden rules below, nothing can go wrong. You will grow in poetic power and confidence at a splendid rate. You are not expected to remember every metrical device or every rhyme scheme: I have included a glossary at the back. Just about every unusual and technical word I use is there, so if in doubt flip to the back where you should find an explanation given by definition and/or example.

If you already know, or believe you know, a fair amount about prosody prosody (usually p.r.o.nounced prosser-di, but sometimes prose-a-di), that is to say the art of versification, then you may feel an urge to hurry through the early sections of the book. That is up to you, naturally, but I would urge against it. The course is designed for all comers and it is better followed in the order laid out. Now, I am afraid you are not allowed to read any further without attending to the three golden rules below. (usually p.r.o.nounced prosser-di, but sometimes prose-a-di), that is to say the art of versification, then you may feel an urge to hurry through the early sections of the book. That is up to you, naturally, but I would urge against it. The course is designed for all comers and it is better followed in the order laid out. Now, I am afraid you are not allowed to read any further without attending to the three golden rules below.

The Golden Rules RULE O ONE.

In our age one of the glories of poetry is that it remains an art that demonstrates the virtues and pleasures of TAKING YOUR TIME TAKING YOUR TIME. You can never read a poem too slowly, but you can certainly read one too fast.

Please, and I am on my knees here, please please read all the sample excerpts and fragments of poetry that I include in this book (usually in indented paragraphs) read all the sample excerpts and fragments of poetry that I include in this book (usually in indented paragraphs) as slowly as you possibly can as slowly as you possibly can, constantly rereading them and feeling their rhythm and balance and shape. I'm referring to single lines here as much as to larger selections.

Poems are not read like novels. There is much pleasure to be had in taking the same fourteen-line sonnet to bed with you and reading it many times over for a week. Savour, taste, enjoy. Poetry is not made to be sucked up like a child's milkshake, it is much better sipped like a precious malt whisky. Verse is one of our last stands against the instant and the infantile. Even when it is simple and childlike it is be savoured.

Always try to read verse out loud out loud: if you are in a place where such a practice would embarra.s.s you, read out loud inside yourself (if possible, moving your lips). Among the pleasures of poetry is the sheer physical, sensual, textural, tactile pleasure of feeling the words on your lips, tongue, teeth and vocal cords.

It can take weeks to a.s.semble and polish a single line of poetry. Sometimes, it is true, a lightning sketch may produce a wonderful effect too, but as a general rule, poems take time. As with a good painting, they are not there to be greedily taken in at once, they are to be lived with and endlessly revisited: the eye can go back and back and back, investigating new corners, new incidents and the new shapes that seem to emerge. We are perhaps too used to the kind of writing that contains a single message. We absorb the message and move on to the next sentence. Poetry is an entirely different way of using words and I cannot emphasise enough how much more pleasure is to be derived from a slow, luxurious engagement with its language and rhythms.

RULE T TWO.

NEVER WORRY about 'meaning' when you are reading poems, either those I include in the book, or those you choose to read for yourself. Poems are not crossword puzzles: however elusive and 'difficult' the story or argument of a poem may seem to be and however resistant to simple interpretation, it is not a test of your intelligence and learning (or if it is, it is not worth persevering with). Of course some poems are complex and highly wrought and others may contain references that mystify you. Much poetry in the past a.s.sumed a familiarity with cla.s.sical literature, the Christian liturgy and Greek mythology, for example. Some modernist poetry can seem b.l.o.o.d.y-minded in its dense and forbidding allusion to other poets, to science and to philosophy. It can contain foreign phrases and hieroglyphs. There are literary and critical guides if you wish to acquaint yourself with such works; for the most part we will not concern ourselves with the avant-garde, the experimental and the arcane; their very real pleasures would be for another book. about 'meaning' when you are reading poems, either those I include in the book, or those you choose to read for yourself. Poems are not crossword puzzles: however elusive and 'difficult' the story or argument of a poem may seem to be and however resistant to simple interpretation, it is not a test of your intelligence and learning (or if it is, it is not worth persevering with). Of course some poems are complex and highly wrought and others may contain references that mystify you. Much poetry in the past a.s.sumed a familiarity with cla.s.sical literature, the Christian liturgy and Greek mythology, for example. Some modernist poetry can seem b.l.o.o.d.y-minded in its dense and forbidding allusion to other poets, to science and to philosophy. It can contain foreign phrases and hieroglyphs. There are literary and critical guides if you wish to acquaint yourself with such works; for the most part we will not concern ourselves with the avant-garde, the experimental and the arcane; their very real pleasures would be for another book.

It is easy to be shy shy when confronting a poem. Poems can be the frightening older children at a party who make us want to cling to our mothers. But remember that poets are people and they have taken the courageous step of sharing their fears, loves, hopes and narratives with us in a rare and crafted form. They have chosen a mode of expression that is concentrated and often intense, they are offering us a music that has taken them a long time to createmany hours in the making, a lifetime in the preparation. They don't mean to frighten or put us off, they long for us to read their works and to enjoy them. when confronting a poem. Poems can be the frightening older children at a party who make us want to cling to our mothers. But remember that poets are people and they have taken the courageous step of sharing their fears, loves, hopes and narratives with us in a rare and crafted form. They have chosen a mode of expression that is concentrated and often intense, they are offering us a music that has taken them a long time to createmany hours in the making, a lifetime in the preparation. They don't mean to frighten or put us off, they long for us to read their works and to enjoy them.

Do not be cross with poetry for failing to deliver meaning and communication in the way that an a.s.semblage of words usually does. Be confident that when encountering a poem you do not have to articulate a response, venture an opinion or make a judgement. Just as the reading of each poem takes time, so a relationship with the whole art of poetry itself takes time. Observation of Rule One will allow meaning to emerge at its own pace.

RULE T THREE.

Buy a notebook, exercise book or jotter pad and lots of pencils (any writing instrument will do but I find pencils more physically pleasing). This is the only equipment you will need: no cameras, paintbrushes, tuning forks or chopping boards. Poets enjoy their handwriting ('like smelling your own farts,' W. H. Auden claimed) and while computers may have their place, for the time being write write, don't type.

You may as well invest in a good pocket-sized notebook: the Moleskin range is becoming very fashionable again and bookshops and stationers have started to produce their own equivalents. Take yours with you everywhere everywhere. When you are waiting for someone, stuck in an airport, travelling by train, just doodle with words. As you learn new techniques and methods for producing lines of verse, practise them all the time.

Imagine the above-mentioned are the End User Licence Agreement to a piece of computer software. You cannot get any further without clicking 'OK' when the installation wizard asks you if you agree to the terms and conditions. Well, the three rules are my my terms and conditions, let me restate them in brief: terms and conditions, let me restate them in brief: 1. Take your time 2. Don't be afraid 3. Always have a notebook with you I agree to abide by the terms and conditions of this book

CHAPTER ONE.

Metre Poetry is metrical writing.

If it isn't that I don't know what it is.

J.V. CUNNINGHAM.

I.

Some very obvious but nonetheless interesting observations about how English is spokenmeet metrethe iambthe iambic pentameterPoetry Exercises 1 & 2

YOU HAVE ALREADY achieved the English-language poet's most important goal: you can read, write and speak English well enough to understand this sentence. If this were a book about painting or music there would be a lot more initial spadework to be got through. achieved the English-language poet's most important goal: you can read, write and speak English well enough to understand this sentence. If this were a book about painting or music there would be a lot more initial spadework to be got through.

Automatic and inborn as language might seem to be, there are still things we need to know about it, elements that are so obvious very few of us ever consider them. Since language for us, as poets in the making, is our paint, our medium medium, we should probably take a little time to consider certain aspects of spoken English, a language whose oral properties are actually very different from those of its more distant ancestors, Anglo-Saxon, Latin and Greek and even from those of its nearer relations, French and German.

Some of what follows may seem so obvious that it will put you in danger of sustaining a nosebleed. Bear with me, nonetheless. We are beginning from first principles.

How We Speak Each English word is given its own weight or push as we speak it within a sentence. That is to say: Each English word word is is giv given its own weight weight and and push push as we as we speak speak it with it within a a sent sentence.

Only a very badly primitive computer speech programme would give equal stress to all the words in that example. Throughout this chapter I use bold bold type to indicate this weight or push, this 'accent', and I use type to indicate this weight or push, this 'accent', and I use italics italics for imparting special emphasis and for imparting special emphasis and SMALL CAPITALS SMALL CAPITALS to introduce new words or concepts for the first time and for drawing attention to an exercise or instruction. to introduce new words or concepts for the first time and for drawing attention to an exercise or instruction.

A real English speaker would speak the indented paragraph above much, but certainly not exactly exactly, as I (with only the binary choice of heavy heavy/light available to me) have tried to indicate. Some words or syllables will be slid over with hardly a breath or a pause accorded to them (light), others will be given more weight (heavy).

Surely that's how the whole world speaks?

Well, in the Chinese languages and in Thai, for example, all words are of one syllable (monosyllabic) and speech is given colour and meaning by variations in pitch pitch, the speaker's voice will go up or down. In English we colour our speech not so much with alterations in pitch as with variations in stress: this is technically known as ACCENTUATION ACCENTUATION.1. English, and we shall think about this lateris what is known as a STRESS-TIMED STRESS-TIMED language. language.

Of course, English does contain a great many monosyllables (many more than most European languages as it happens): some of these are what grammarians call PARTICLES PARTICLES, inoffensive little words like prepositions (by, from, to, with), p.r.o.nouns (his, my, your, they), articles (the, an, a) and conjunctions (or, and, but). In an average sentence these are unaccented unaccented in English. in English.

From time time to to time time and for as and for as long long as it as it takes takes.

I must repeat, these are not special emphases special emphases, these are the nat natural ac accents imparted. We glide over the particles ('from', 'to', 'and', 'for', 'as', 'it') and give a little push to the important words ('time', 'long', 'takes').

Also, we tend to accent the operative operative part of monosyllabic words when they are extended, only lightly tripping over the -ing and -ly, of such words as part of monosyllabic words when they are extended, only lightly tripping over the -ing and -ly, of such words as hop hoping and quick quickly. This light tripping, this gliding is sometimes called scudding scudding.

We always say Brit British, we never say British or or Brit-ish Brit-ish, always machine, never mach machine or mach-ine mach-ine. The weight we give to the first syllable of Brit British or the second syllable of machine is called by linguists the is called by linguists the TONIC ACCENT TONIC ACCENT. Accent here shouldn't be confused either with the written signs (DIACRITICAL MARKS) that are sometimes put over letters, as in cafe and Fuhrer, or with regional accentsbrogues and dialects like c.o.c.kney or Glaswegian. Accent for our purposes means the natural push or stress we give to a word or part of a word as we speak. This accent, push or stress is also called ictus ictus, but we will stick to the more common English words where possible.

In many-syllabled or POLYSYLLABIC POLYSYLLABIC words there will always be words there will always be at least one at least one accent. accent.

Credit. Dispose. Continue. Despair. Desperate.

Sometimes the stress will change according to the meaning or nature of the word. READ THE FOLLOWING PAIRS OUT LOUD: He inclines to pro to project bad vibes bad vibesA pro project to study the in inclines.He proceeds to re to rebel.The re rebel steals the pro proceeds.

Some words may have two stresses but one one (marked here with an ') will always be a little heavier: (marked here with an ') will always be a little heavier: abdicate con consideration.

Sometimes it is a matter of nationality or preference. READ OUT THESE WORDS: Chick Chicken-soup. Arm-chair. Sponge-cake. Cigarette. Magazine.