This fourth exercise calls for 16 unrhymed lines of iambic pentameter. They should use pyrrhic and trochaic substitutions, weak endings, and enjambments. To review, pyrrhic substitutions are two unstressed syllables in a row, trochaic substitutions are stressed syllables followed by unstressed syllables, weak endings are lines ended with unstressed syllables, and enjambments are phrases which continue between lines. If you’re following along, feel free to share your attempts in the comments.
The text of my poem is preoccupied with the same subject as the exercise itself – the implementation of these stress structures. As I mentioned previously, I find identifying the appropriate stresses difficult, and this exercise confuses things further by allowing the placement of stresses more or less wherever you please. Just call it a pyrrhic or trochaic substitution and you can circumvent the entire structure of iambs while still calling your lines iambic. That’s not how the tools are supposed to be deployed, of course, but it’s their natural extension. Again, for some words and phrases the placement of the stresses is obvious, while for others I have no ear for hearing them. In my head or aloud when I’m reading poetry I know to be in a certain rhythm, I tend to overemphasize the stresses I know should be there, regardless of whether or not the words actually accommodate them. Doing this with Canterbury Tales gives insight into how words were pronounced in Middle English, but the technique can mask where the poet actually wanted the stresses to fall.
Anyway, I’m going to keep practicing stresses. The more I practice, the more I start to get a feel for the style, so I may need to return and repeat some of these exercises in the future. For now, here’s my attempt at the fourth poetry exercise from The Ode Less Traveled.
These stresses seem subjective compared to
A simple count of syllables and a
Division into iambs. Sometimes I
Can clearly tell where the stresses fall in
A given line, but other times I could
Interpret a line at least six different
Ways. This does not suit the engineer in
Me, and makes this exercise a struggle
To tell if I do it well or not. Are
These alternative stresses not a way
To largely ignore the iambic stress and
Instead write the line we choose without a
Thought to stress, and then ascribe the result
To pyrrhics, trochees, and weak endings? With
Practice perhaps I’ll solidify just
How all these stresses are supposed to go.
IGC Publishing 