Metrical Mood

Victoria Slotto is talking about meter for dVerse Meeting the bar today. Meter to me is not so much a discipline of choosing the number of beats or type of foot, but of bringing musicality to a poem.  I am, therefore inclined to take liberties with strict meter to suit the mood and the sense of a poem.

Here is an example of a Spenserian Stanza which swings between pentameter, tetrameter and hexameter. It also changes from first to second person, in order to give myself a good talking to.

Spenserian Stanza

That fellow did not deserve my absolution
for using me and dropping me the way he did
but time has a way of creating resolution –
it soothes the hurt in order to remit
the blame, erase resentment, call it quits.
Remember only good times – and they were –
to re-live historic bitterness forbid.
Life comes again, you were not burnt
but only scorched.  Move on, forgive, towards re-birth.

 

And here are a couple of short strict(ish) iambic tetrameter triolets:

Triolet 1

What do you think this is ?  A game?
eight line metrical rhyming verse
with repeats, a triolet is its name.
What do you think this is? A game?

It’s fun to write one all the same –
to fun I’m not at all averse.
It really is some kind of game,
to write in metrical rhyming verse.

Triolet 2

A woman’s place is in the wrong,
to stroke the ego of her man.
Despite the fact that she is strong
a woman’s place is in the wrong.

To keep the peace – her canny plan –
she has to jolly him along,
pretend that she is in the wrong –
to soothe the ego of her man.