thereās something to me very offputting about alexandrines. iambic hexameter. maybe itās just my english-speaking brain because theyāre so typical in french, but not in english. but i think itās not just alexandrines, even; itās any hexameter. i NEVER write in it; not a lot of english poets do. it had its hey-day as a manner of closing tercets in pentameter for poets like pope. itās mostly a sixteenth-seventeenth century thing in our language, when english poetry was still in a kind of anguished state because no one knew what would be the longevity and spread of the language. i mean, if beowulf, the first english poem, is old english, and no one knows who wrote it, and chaucer was the first english poet, then that period was kind of a middle school phase for english poetry (at least, in comparison to all the progress and different movements since; i think that makes the most sense chronologically). iambic pentameter was still the standard as set by chaucer. but learned poets still would borrow from other languages like french and italian and greek and latin. and itās french whence we get the alexandrine.
sometimes i think i might just not be used to alexandrines because theyāre so infrequent in my native tongue. actually, when i was quite new to poetry, i had trouble getting the hand of iambic pentameter. when i first read shakespeare i had no sense of the rhythm, like a lot of other high school freshman made to go over romeo and juliet. but now, of course iām comfortable with iambic pentameter! itās like a second heartbeat. it flows quite naturally. i think some of my initial unease was from the fact that i hadnāt read that much poetry for myself at that point; i was much more comfortable with song lyrics. and a lot of song lyrics in english donāt use pentameter; they use some form of (often imperfect and perhaps unintentional) iambic (or trochaic)Ā heptameter (14 syllables, or 7 feet), at least in pop songs, broken up into two separate lines like the ballad of reading goal by oscar wilde, or most emily dickinson poems. 8 syllables in one line, 6 syllables in the next, another 8-syllable line which may or may not rhyme with the first, and another 6-syllable line that does rhyme (or nearly rhyme) with the second line. an interwoven quatrain. and that works out especially well, and is so common, because a lot of songs use a standard 4/4 beat. 8-syllable lines fill up one measure, and the 6-syllable lines fill up most of a measure, and thereās room for a held-out note or some kind of instrumental riff to fill up the end of the measure. an especially fast-paced pop song may just use iambic tetrameter the whole time and have no pause between lines or held notes (which means, each measure is 8/8/8/8 syllables). or there can be a bunch of different ways to alter it with this meter with alternative lengths of notes, but the general gist is, if youāre filling up a song and each measure is 4 beats, a system of meter where thereās 4 stressed syllables is ideal. four stresses in the lyrics, to match four beats in the music, and unstressed syllables to take up the eighth-notes. and in the matching line of six syllables, one beat, usually at the end, gets to be emphasized by a pause of the vocal to allow the singer to take a breath.
but iām not giving a long music lesson for nothing. pentameter is very unpopular in music because it exceeds a 4/4 beat measure (unless you get into sixteenth notes or something, or have unusually long pauses for a pop song, or an unusual number of held notes, or an unusually-long held note) (again, a lot of reasons not to use pentameter in your pop song, and why itās usually used most often in choruses, which tend to be the most unique part of a song so an unusual lyrical meter is less jarring). but i still am now very used to pentameter! some part of me thinks itās just repetition and practice, and seeing it everywhere since getting into poetry. but iād also propose that thereās just something pleasing about certain numbers, to the ear. and i donāt know if that has to do with the way we all grow up listening to 4/4 beats in music, or if 4/4 beats in music are particularly common because 4 is just one of those inherently pleasing numbers.
and this is where it matters more how many stresses are in a line, than how many syllables. because my observation applies to any kind of meters, whether theyāre iambic (unstressed syllable followed by a stress), trochaic (stressed followed by an unstressed), anapestic (two unstressed syllables followed by a stressed), amphibrachic (three syllables, the one in the middle is stressed and the two around it are unstressed), or dactylic feet (a stressed syllable followed by two unstressed). i think 4 is the most pleasing number, thus, tetrameter (4 stresses per measure, regardless of what kind of foot you use) is so common. and this also explains the commonality of iambs and trochees, as disyllabic feet. two disyllabic feet make four overall syllables, and twice as many make four stressed syllables and four feet.Ā
but wait, what about the trisyllabic feet: the anapests, the amphibrachs, the dactyls? well, yes: trisyllabic feet are still not inherently jarring, even if theyāre less common in english than the iamb. theyāre usually the lyrical meter for waltzes, and that makes sense, what with a 3/4 timestamp. thatās one syllable per beat, and one stressed syllable per measure. but waltzes still often have a pattern that occurs every 4 or 8 measures (or even 2), to make the song sound more rounded and pleasing to the ear.
so 4 is a pleasing number, because itās twice as many as 2, and half as many as 8; by extension, 2 and 8 are pleasing, because of their relation to 4. i should also say, 1 is a pleasing number, not only because itās the first whole number that stands alone, but it is half of 2, and one-fourth of four. then why is heptameter (7 feet) so common? how can seven be a pleasing number? itās prime, for fuckās sake! you canāt divide it by 2, you canāt divide it by 4. i think that would be because of the pause at the end of a 4/4 measure i mentioned up above. when you read a line (or a 4-foot/3-foot couplet) of heptameter, your brain reads a longer pause at the end, before beginning the next line, than the pause between multiple consecutive lines of tetrameter. when you read lines likeĀ āhe did not wear his scarlet coat,/for blood and wine are red,/and blood and wine were on his hands/when they found him with the deadā thereās a longer natural pause between the wordsĀ āred,/andā thanĀ āhands/whenā because the tetrameter completed by āhandsā is heard as a whole mental 4/4 measure, and the longer pause betweenĀ āred,/andā is your brain finishing the beat before going onto the next line. therefore, 3 counts as a pleasing number because of its allowance of a pause of one beat before getting to a fourth, and 7 is a pleasing number because it is the sum of 4 and 3, two pleasing numbers.
pentameter is still somewhat problematic by this line of thinking because by having 5 stresses it violates the rule of a 4/4 mental measure, and thatās probably why pentameter is so rarely accompanied by other meters. it doesnāt mix well like dimeter/trimeter/tetrameter/heptameter where the amount of pauses and line-breaks played around with during a stanza. but there is often, within a line of pentameter, what is referred to as aĀ āturnā: this was something i learned from geoffrey tillotson while reading his book on alexander pope, in the section about correct versification. around the fourth, fifth, or sixth syllable of a ten-syllable line. so, by the time of the second or third stress, and 2 and 3 are, of course, pleasing numbers. in the turn of pentameter, there is a felt change within the phrase. just inĀ āshall i compare thee to a summerās day?ā the turn would be between the words thee and to.Ā āshall i compare thee...ā is an independent clause andĀ ā...to a summerās day?ā is a dependent. turns arenāt always so logical and definite as to have to be made up of an independent and dependent clauses; they can be made up of a change in tone, a change of subject, or any number of parts that break up a sentence or phrase. but, traditionally, there is a turn in pentameter (at least by the theory of correctness which poets like pope would follow, and enforce when looking at the works of shakespeare). and the turn happens around stresses 2/3 in most instances. and even if it didnāt happen there, it would happen around stresses 1/4 or 4/1. 2 and 3 are pleasing numbers; 1 and 4 are pleasing numbers. as a consequence, this turn, which joins two micrometers of 2 and 3 feet (or 1 and 4 feet) is pleasing. 5 is the sum of only pleasing numbers, in any instance.
this is why hexameter is so sucky. 6 is not a pleasing number. it should be, seeing as itās twice 3, but remember, 3 is only pleasing because of the mental pause which completes 4. two 3s making 6 is still two less than a pleasing 8, and two more than a pleasing 4. therefore a mental pause must be twice as long as it is in trimeter, which feels unnatural. itās an unpleasant pause between lines. it sounds in the brain as if itās too long to be correctly in any correct relation to 4 or 5, and still short of an expected and acceptable 7 or 8. can you believe it?! 6 is a less pleasing number than 3, 5, or 7: all of them odd numbers, all of them prime numbers. it just sounds ridiculous! and oh, it is. it is.
so thatās why i donāt like alexandrines. they are unnatural, and displeasing, from what i have made out in my own head to be the ultimate mathematical guide for writing pleasant-sounding poetry, at least in english, in a culture of people accustomed to hearing 4/4 music from birth. syllables all mean something different in different languages, and hold different types of weights and tones. iām sure to the french who innovated it, and the later early-modern english poets who imitated it, that it made sense by the kinds of music they were positioned to compare all metrical poetry to. but alas, in my modern english brain, i cannot make sense of the alexandrine.
