Monday, October 6, 2008

Resolve it!

If you've been writing strictly iambic lines, please don't be offended by the last post. I was not calling your verse "doggerel."

But it's possible that others might.

It's all about (remember that post, dear readers?) sticking to what you feel is right. And, about making changes in what you're doing only when you feel it's good and proper.

Resolutions are ways to keep your verse interesting to readers. But there are reasons to keep things regular, in some cases.

For instance, I've been looking at verse for hymns pretty closely lately, and most of those I've studied come out in straight "ta-TUMs." They need to do that, I suppose, to fit the requirements of the musical measure: SM, CM, LM, etc.

Also, poems purposely written with a hymn-like feel will likely do the same (think Emily Dickinson, for one).

But perhaps it's nice to know the lines don't need to do that, as long as some simple guidelines are kept in mind.

And there's something you may want to keep in mind as well before those guidelines are approached.

Here it is: a caesura is a slight pause or break in a line of English verse. Shorter verse lines, such as the tetrameter or trimeter, usually leave that little pause at the end (usually alternating with period or semicolon stops).

Those of you who are studying pentameter verse may have noticed the caesura usually falls somewhere in the middle of that line.

I say "somewhere" because those of you who've been scanning pentameter lines probably have noticed that it's (fairly) rare for one of the masters (Shakespeare, Milton, etc.) to split that third foot in the middle with a caesura. So there's naturally some variation in where that little break goes, pentameter-wise.

It's considered a good thing. :)

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