Running from the Dog

It's a word for bad writing: "doggerel." My handy dictionary says it comes from Middle English and refers to "dog Latin" -- apparently an insult.

Non-scholars back in those days (I imagine) would have experienced Latin outside church in metrical form, for the most part. And bad meter would result in some pretty "dog-gone" poetry.

For our part, it's what we dread: being called a writer of "doggerel." We toilers in the "traditional" field can pluck some pretty rotten grapes (or apples, or peaches, or ... ) when we just don't pay attention to what we're doing in meter.

Almost always, your English doggerel is going to come out stepping too regular: ta-tum, ta-tum, ta-tum, ta-tum, ta-tum. Line after line after line of it just ends up sounding stupid or forced. Dog-gone it.

But highly irregular meter is going to be just as bad, in the sense of not sounding like verse at all. It's the insult at the other end of the metrical-insult continuum: "prosaic."

Where's the balance? OK, you have been scanning poems, haven't you? You have been scanning a lot of them, right?

You've nailed "Lycidas," and "In Memoriam" and a bunch of sonnets by now -- and you don't need me any more ... . (sniffs away teardrop)

Ta-TUM ta-TUM TUM-ta ta-TUM ta-TUM

It's called a "resolution".* What's above is only one of several possibilities.

But you know that already, right?

Next time: That little pause.


*Note: The actual term is 'substitution' for English prosody. The term 'resolution' comes from Classical prosody. I use 'resolution' here to remind people of music, as in 'resolving' a note or chord from dissonance to something that sounds more regular. I don't think I'm the first to do this.