In my poetry course, we’re looking this week at ‘How Meter’s Made’, the beat in the music of poetry. And Tamar Yoseloff tells us “there are no rules, only established verse forms, the names of different meters, the way different poets through time have used meter, and ideas on best practice.”
I like the idea of established forms, setting me free to create within a set of rules. And though the whole Wordsworth, Browning, da-de-da-de-da thing holds no charms for me (that’s what comes of studying Victorian poets for months of my degree), I am partial to a delicious sonnet, to blank verse, or a clever villanelle.
This morning, I’ve read Robert Frost’s poem, ‘Mending Wall’. It’s blank verse and he uses iambic pentamenter, (5 beats to a line, emphasis on second beat) but of course he varies it, makes then breaks that rule so subtly that the whole poem sounds like an old New England farmer in front of the fire, nursing a whisky, reflecting, meandering, thinking over his day. He captures a moment, really it’s nothing more than a passing thought, so clearly and honestly, that it comes down to me, through great distance, time and lifestyle, intact and true.
‘Something there is that doesn’t love a wall’ he begins. And later, in the last third of the poem, he repeats it:
And of course that sets me thinking about the Great Wall of Trump Jong-Un, the malevolent clown whom a playful god has set to reign over the Western world. And another line in the poem, when Frost muses on his neighbour’s insistence on mending the unnecessary wall between them:
Elegant Variations 