Sherry Chandler » On Meter and Patience
On Meter and Patience
from Judson Jerome’s The Poet’s Handbook (Writers Digest Books, 1980):
It is the asymmetry of the pentameter line which makes it so effective, especially for longer poems. It doesn’t break down. It can have continuously varying subunits, created by moving the caesuras around, or it can roll out its full length without a pause. It can achieve great dignity and el0quence or be adapted to the raucous fits and starts of comedy; can convery meditation, argument, reasoning, lyrical grace, or wild passion. There are good reasons why so many poets have settled on it for their major work, reasons which you can discover best by patience.
Back in March 2001 – which seems like a lifetime ago – I did a Ropewalk Winter Weekend. The poetry section was led by Andrew Hudgins, a poet whose work I’ve admired for years, at least in part because he proved to me that you can be Southern and Baptist and a poet all in one frail frame. I recognized the culture out of which he wrote and I liked his sometimes outrageous take on that culture.
During that weekend, Hudgins talked meter, meter, meter. He analyzed all our poetry to find those places where we accidentally fell into meter. He said meter helped him solve the problem of line breaks, which otherwise just seemed like an intellectual exercise to him. And he said that working in meter was a good way to get control of hard-to-control material. I had some material in desperate need of a controlling element along about then, so I was listening hard.
Hudgins also said you could learn to write an iambic pentameter line in an afternoon. And so you can, I suppose. It’s learning to write an entire poem in iambic pentameter that’s the hard part, at least for me.
I’ve put much study and work into it these last four years and still haven’t quite mastered it. I have come to think that the vernacular I grew up speaking doesn’t lend itself easily to the da DUM da DUM of iambics. But, to refer to yoga for a bit, I have found some joy in the journey.
Some stretching, some building of strength, some contact with serenity — to extend my metaphor. Some patience? Well, I’m working on that…
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