The Everything Writing Poetry Book (13 page)

The vowel may be reduced in an unstressed initial syllable as well. In the word
con
(as in
con man
), the o is a low back vowel. But in words like
container
or
constrain
, the
o
becomes a schwa or is dropped altogether. Vowels will also disappear between consonants that are formed with similar tongue positions. Thus in words like
pistol
or
bitten
, in which the
t
, the
l
, and the
n
sounds require the tongue tip to touch the roof of the mouth, the
o
and the
e
vowels are dropped.

Another point to consider is parts of speech, which will be discussed in more detail later. For now, simply remember that the more important words, like nouns and verbs, tend to be stressed, and less important words, such as prepositions, conjunctions, and determiners (including articles), remain unstressed. Thus, in a sentence such as “A big fly landed in the milk,” stress will naturally fall on
fly
(noun), the first syllable of
landed
(verb), and
milk
(noun).
Big
(adjective) is stressed because it forms a unit with the noun
fly
, but the words
A
(article),
in
(preposition), and
the
(article), and the suffix -
ed
are not stressed.

The following points should help you keep these general rules straight:

•
Unstressed syllables:
articles, conjunctions, prepositions, prefixes, suffixes, linking and helping verbs

•
Stressed syllables:
nouns, roots and bases, main verbs (showing action)

These tendencies are not 100 percent accurate, but they provide a reasonable starting point. Note that certain parts of speech (adjectives, adverbs, pronouns) are not listed; they are usually stressed according to the needs and the syntax of the sentence or to the other general tendencies noted previously.

Use Your Dictionary

The easiest way to distinguish between the stressed and unstressed syllables of polysyllabic words is to look them up in a dictionary. For example, if you locate the word
modulate
, you will see a guide for pronunciation and syllabification next to it, likely using parentheses or backward slashes. Hyphens or centered periods will set off the syllables; a high-set mark will precede the syllable with the primary stress, a low-set mark will precede syllables with secondary stress, and alternative letters and symbols will show the pronunciations of the letters. A good desk dictionary, rather than a simple spelling dictionary, will give you the information you need.

Solid Footing

Partly because of the way words are pronounced and partly because of the early influence of music on poetry, certain patterns of stressed and unstressed syllables emerge in poems and create recognizable beats. A poet may use a specific pattern in a poem to give it shape and structure. This pattern of stressed and unstressed syllables is called a
foot
(plural
feet
).

Foot Patterns

Just as footfalls in an empty corridor can create a rhythm of sound to your ear, the foot patterns of some poetry create very strong rhythms. Consider the following chart:

Eight Foot Patterns Found in English Poetry

In case you're wondering, the scansion marks are called
breves
(˘) and
accents
(′). You can use them when you are reading poetry and want to record the foot patterns you see. In the examples throughout this book, you may see capital letters or accents used to set off the stressed syllables. The unstressed syllables will remain in lowercase, unmarked.

Now, look at some examples of foot patterns as they appear in real verses. To start, consider Sonnet 2 by William Shakespeare:

When forty winters shall besiege thy brow,
And dig deep trenches in thy beauty's field,
Thy youth's proud livery so gazed on now,
Will be a tatter'd weed of small worth held:
Then being asked, where all thy beauty lies,
Where all the treasure of thy lusty days;
To say, within thine own deep sunken eyes,
Were an all-eating shame, and thriftless praise.
How much more praise deserv'd thy beauty's use,
If thou couldst answer “This fair child of mine
Shall sum my count, and make my old excuse,”
Proving his beauty by succession thine!
This were to be new made when thou art old,
And see thy blood warm when thou feel'st it cold
.

As you read the sonnet, take note of which syllables are stressed and which are not stressed. For example, in the first line, the stresses seem to fall most naturally on the syllables as follows: “When FORTy WINTers shall beSIEGE thy BROW.” The capitalized (stressed) syllables belong mostly to nouns and verbs, with one stressed syllable falling within an adjective. Three of the four stressed syllables appear in two-syllable words, so consulting a dictionary would tell you which of the syllables is stressed.

Now, look at the stressed and unstressed syllables of the second line: “And DIG DEEP TRENCHes in thy BEAUTy's FIELD.” The same rules seem to apply to the stressed syllables here—all but one belong to nouns and verbs, with that one (
deep
) being an adjective. The unstressed syllables in both lines seem to be the least important syllables—suffixes, prefixes, or words like conjunctions, helping verbs, and prepositions.

Finding Patterns

At this point, you should be able to detect any patterns in the stressed and unstressed syllables. For one thing, if you count the number of syllables in the first two lines of Shakespeare's sonnet, you come up with ten in each. Noticing this pattern, you find that Shakespeare deliberately chose this arrangement. Now, go back and reference the chart of all the different feet for a moment. All of the feet listed have either two or three syllables. Since two goes evenly into ten five times, you can use lines to mark the divisions as follows:

When FORT|y WINT|ers shall | besiege | thy BROW,
And DIG | DEEP TRENCH|es in|thy BEAUT|y's FIELD
,

You should be able to see that most of the syllable pairs (seven out of ten) contain an unstressed syllable followed by a stressed. To confirm this pattern, take a look at the next two lines:

Thy YOUTH'S | PROUD LIV | ery | so GAZED | on NOW,
Will be | a TAT| ter'd WEED| of SMALL | WORTH HELD:

In these lines, too, six out of ten syllable pairs follow the unstressed/stressed pattern. On the chart, this pattern of unstressed/stressed syllables is called an
iamb
. The dominant foot pattern for the poem, as analyzed so far, is therefore
iambic
.

Shakespeare has used other two-syllable foot patterns here: spondees and pyrrhics. The reason is that English does not lend itself to a regular foot pattern. Forcing the entire poem to hold to a single foot pattern would make it sound unnatural. Shakespeare therefore allowed the spondees and pyrrhics to remain so the poem would approximate spoken English.

Measuring Meter

Once you have found the stressed and unstressed syllables, and once you have found the foot patterns of a poem, you can begin to look for a
meter. Meter
is another word for
measure
. So when you are looking for a poem's meter, you are measuring its lines by the number of feet they contain. Therefore, measuring the lines of a poem is much like measuring the walls of a room. But it will be much easier once you become familiar with the tools you are using. To do this, go back to the four lines that you have analyzed from Shakespeare's poem so far:

When FORT | y WINT | ers shall | beSIEGE | thy BROW,
And DIG | DEEP TRENCH | es in | thy BEAUT | y's FIELD,
Thy YOUTH'S | PROUD LIV | ery | so GAZED | on NOW,
Will be | a TAT | ter'd WEED | of SMALL | WORTH HELD: