Why can’t I read that line?

One thing I’d like to accomplish with AmongHisPrivateFriends.com is to help you read the verse in The Sonnets fluently. Some sonnets are easy to read. But I’ve been reading The Sonnetsfor decades and there are still some that trip me up over and over again. I have to read them carefully and I have to practice to get them right. Over the years, I’ve gotten better at it—I stumble less, and I understand what I need to do to read the line so it sounds right.

Let me stop there for a minute to explain what I mean by “right.” I’m talking about being able to read a line of verse so it sounds nice to your ear. That’s all that matters. If you like the sound of it, you’ve read it “right.” If you don’t like the sound of it, there’s something wrong. Of course, this is very subjective. You might not like the way a line of verse sounds because you haven’t figured out how to pronounce the words the best way, or you might not be used to an unusual rhythm. In The Sonnets, unusual rhythms that don’t sound nice are rare, so the problem is mainly one of figuring out how to say the words—where to pause and how much stress to put on each syllable. But there is no one correct way to read a line. Different people will read a line differently because they will interpret a phrase differently or read stresses on different words. (I often read a line differently from one day to the next.) Those variations can have a dramatic effect on the verse. They’re all correct ways to read a line, as long as they sound OK. But if your interpretation of a line leads to a verse that sounds awful, it’s time to reconsider your choices.

That’s where an understanding of meter comes in handy. Just a few basic concepts can help change an “unreadable” line in one that, well, sounds like poetry. Start with an understanding of the regular pentameter line (five iambs, an unstressed syllable followed by a stressed syllable), which sounds something like: te-DUM- te-DUM- te-DUM- te-DUM- te-DUM (with a pause somewhere in the middle). Add the irregular lines, like feminine endings—an extra, unstressed syllable at the end—(present in about a third of the sonnets but fewer than 10% of lines). These tend to give a sort of lilting, sing-song quality to a line. Then there are lines containing a trochee, spondee or pyrrhic [see glossary] (at least one of these in over 90% of sonnets but only about one-fourth of lines). Most important are the common combinations of those variant feet. The most common combination is the trochee-iamb (not surprising, since trochees make up a little more than half of irregular feet and iambs make up almost 95% of all feet in The Sonnets). This combination has a lovely, flowing sound: DUM-te-te-DUM. It’s often followed by a pause, so a line that has an initial trochee-iamb as its only irregularity will often sound like this: DUM-te-te-DUM | te-DUM- te-DUM- te-DUM. (The vertical line shows what’s called the midline pause. There’s almost always at least one in a pentameter line because it’s hard to get out ten syllables without one. The technical term is the caesura, but I don’t like to use that—it’s just jargon.) Another common combination is the pyrrhic-spondee (more surprising since pyrrhics make up just a little over 10% of irregular feet and spondees about a third). Although this combination makes up barely more than 5% of irregular feet, it accounts for about half the pyrrhics in The Sonnets. It also has its own special rhythm. It’ll be easiest to show with a couple of examples from Sonnet 19, which has two. First, in line 3 we have: “PLUCK the keen TEETH from the FIERCE LIon’s JAW.” Pluck the keen teeth is, of course, an initial trochee iamb. Do you see that “DUM-te-te-DUM |”? The pyrrhic-spondee is “from the fierce lion.” Surrounded by iambs it sounds like this: “te-DUM-te-te-DUM-DUM-te-DUM.” It’s like a short drum roll: te-te-DUM-DUM. We hear this again in line 7: “To the WIDE WORLD and ALL her FAding SWEETS.” [NOTE: I don’t like to get into statistics a lot, quoting all those percentages, but I just wanted to point out how special those variations are to creating different sounds in the verse.]

Perhaps you’ve noticed something else about meter during this discussion. It’s not all about how much you stress a syllable. It’s also about how much time you spend on each syllable—the syllable length. If you were to read a poem in iambic pentameter to the beat of a metronome (let’s ignore for the moment lines with feminine endings) pronouncing each syllable with exactly the same length it would sound exceedingly dull. We don’t talk that way, and we shouldn’t read poetry that way. In line 7 of Sonnet 19, I spend about twice as much time reading “wide world” as I do reading “to the.” This is a common effect of a pyrrhic-spondee. Pyrrhics speed up a line and spondees slow it down. There’s something else, too. I read “Pluck the keen teeth” as a trochee-iamb. Did you want to put more emphasis on keen (PLUCK the KEEN TEETH)? That would make it a trochee-spondee. It would give the line more emphasis. Does it sound nice? If you like it, it’s ok. There’s more than one way to read a line. 

There’s more to learn about meter that can help you read verse. But I think that’s enough for today. I’ll talk about extra syllables that come and go next.