Iamb what iamb

I’ve been reading what is now The Penguin Dictionary of English Literary Terms and Literary Theory by the late J.A. Cuddon, of whose death sixteen years ago I was distressed to learn when I discovered a version of the book on Scribd while looking for a link for you. One reason for reading this perhaps dull-sounding but in fact quite engaging and certainly rather massive tome is to learn the lingo my beloved second brother, Jonathon Penny, longtime PhD in English Literature, recently published poet and lately aspiring alter ego of one Professor Percival P. Pennywhistle, keeps throwing around. Other reasons include deeper understanding of what I’m trying to do as an almost universally ignored writer of fiction and poetry. This is my poetry blog, so in this post, I’ll write about the poetical aspect of my obscurity.

Now, I’ve been writing verse and occasional poetry for quite a long time. Since the twelfth grade, I think. I call the stage during and shortly after my first formal study of letters my Sound and Fury Period. It was more or less all worthwhile, I suppose, but I can’t understand much of it anymore. The focus back then was on the words much more than on the meaning. As time passed and I learned to be human, I gradually focused more and more on meaning, agreeing with Pope’s epigram, remembered from twelfth grade English Literature, that “The sound must be an echo to the sense.” My beloved second brother disagrees with me on what that includes and excludes and I’m sure that if you compared our respective productions, you would find a few passages representative of the debate–unless you share his background in literature. In any case, though I still bask in assonance and imagery, singing so as to be comprehended is part of the deal these days.

A new phase in my development as a turner of phrase and rhythm is called for now: breaking free of the iamb. Blame it on Shakespeare, but iambs, often in pentameters, seem to flow from my inky tongue like love from a Teddy bear. All right, English is largely iambic, but it’s long bothered me that so many of those limping pairs crowd up the music of my flowered speech. Imagine my joy, therefore, when I managed to write an entire poem (“Eye Contact with a Bull”) without obvious intrusions by the lame-footed folk. There may be one or two hobbling about, but they did not congregate in mobs.

To the end of varying my feet, so to speak, I have made a list of the various feet so far encountered in the Dictionary. Someday, as an exercise, though hopefully a productive one for this blog, I will deliberately practice with them. I do not hereby eschew the iamb, faithful if plodding companion of many a literary jaunt, but I need a few other buddies to hike with. Iambs are jealous, though. It’s going to take some fierce snubbing to keep them down.