The ode less travelled: unlocking the poet within (6 page)

For every branch of every science known.

B
YRON:
Don Juan
, Canto I, X

So threatened he, but Satan to no threats

Gave heed, but waxing more in rage replied:

M
ILTON:
Paradise Lost
, Book IV

Look closely at those two examples above. Not only do they feature these run-ons or enjambments, which allow a sense of continual flow, they also contain
pauses
which break up that flow; in the examples above it happens that these pauses are expressed by commas that serve the office of a breath, or change of gear: I shall render them like this ¶.

His mother was a learned lady ¶ famed

For every branch of every science known.

So threatened he ¶ but Satan to no threats

Gave heed ¶ but waxing more in rage replied:

The name for such a pause or break is a
caesura
⁶
(from the Latin caedere, caesum, to cut.
⁷
You’d pronounce it as in ‘he
says
YOU’RE
a
fool’).

Caesuras don’t by any means have to lead on to an enjambment as in the two examples above, however. You can have a caesura in an end-stopped line.

The woods decay ¶ the woods decay and fall.

St Agnes’ Eve ¶ Ah, bitter chill it was!.

And, spite of Pride ¶ in erring Reason’s spite.

One truth is clear ¶‘Whatever is, is right.’

Not every comma will signal a caesura, by the way. In Poetry Exercise 1 I included this pair of lines from
Paradise Lost
:

Their wand’ring course, now high, now low, then hid

Progressive, retrograde, or standing still.

Only the first comma of the first line is a caesura.

Their wand’ring course ¶ now high, now low, then hid.

Progressive, retrograde, or standing still.

Commas in lists (
serial
commas and
Oxford
commas as grammarians would call them–a now archaic usage of commas, placing them before conjunctions like ‘and’, ‘with’ and ‘or’) do not usually herald a caesura; though some readers might argue that the second comma of the second line above
could
betoken the small pause or breath that defines a caesura.

How can a scrutiny of such minuscule nuances possibly help you in your writing of poetry? Well, you wait until Exercise 3: I confidently predict that you will astonish yourself.

The fact is, enjambment and caesura, these two–what shall we call them? techniques, effects, tricks, devices, tools?–however we describe them, are
crucial
liberators of the iambic line. They either
extend
or
break
the flow, allowing the rhythms and hesitations of human breath, thought and speech to enliven and enrich the verse. They are absolutely
not
a failure to obey the rules of pentameter. Let’s look at the Byron and the Milton again:

His mother was a learned lady, famed

For every branch of every science known.

So threatened he, but Satan to no threats

Gave heed, but waxing more in rage replied:

You might be tempted to believe that for the sake of sense the lines
should
be written thus:

His mother was a learned lady,

Famed for every branch of every science known.

So threatened he,

But Satan to no threats gave heed,

But waxing more in rage replied:

And Wilfred Owen’s two lines could become:

If you could hear, at every jolt,

The blood come gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs

This arrangement would enable us to end-stop in our heads or out loud as we read the verse. Surely that’s a better way of organising things? That is the
sense
after all, so why not therefore break the lines accordingly? This is the twenty-first century, isn’t it?

N
O, DAMN YOU, NO
! A
THOUSAND TIMES NO
!

T
HE ORGANISING PRINCIPLE BEHIND THE VERSE IS NOT THE

SENSE BUT THE
METRE
.

Metre is the
primary rhythm
, the organised background against which the
secondary
rhythms of sense and feeling are played out. This is a
crucial
point. You may think that the idea of feeling and thought being subservient to metre is a loopy one. Why should poets build themselves a prison? If they’ve got something to say, why don’t they get on and say it in the most direct manner possible? Well, painters paint within a canvas and composers within a structure. It is often the feeling of the human spirit trying to break free of constrictions that gives art its power and its correspondence to our lives, hedged in as ours are by laws and restrictions imposed both from within and without. Poets sometimes squeeze their forms to breaking point, this is what energises much verse, but if the forms were not there in the first place the verse would be listless to the point of anomie. Without gravity all would float free: the ballet leaps of the poet’s language would lose almost all their power. ‘Souls who have felt too much liberty’, as Wordsworth said,
welcome
form: ‘In truth the prison, into which we doom/Ourselves, no prison is.’
⁸

Back to our caesuras and enjambments. We may not consciously be aware as we listen or read on the page, but the five beats, even when paused or run through, predominate in the inner ear. The fact that the
sense
runs through, doesn’t mean the lines shouldn’t end where they do.

If you could hear, at every jolt, the blood

Come gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs

Although there is run-on, consider in your mind and your poet’s ear the different value that is given to ‘blood’ in the example above and in this:

If you could hear, at every jolt,

The blood come gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs

R
EAD THEM BOTH ALOUD
and note how much more stress is placed on ‘blood’ in the proper, pentametric layout. I’m sure you agree that Owen knew what he was doing and that the line structure should stay.

There will always be a tiny sense of visual or aural end-stopping at the end of a line no matter how much its sense runs on.

Shakespeare, as you would expect, in the
blank
(unrhymed) verse of his plays, uses caesura and enjambment a great deal. They are keys that unlock the dramatic potential of iambic pentameter. Look at this speech from the first scene of
The Winter’s Tale
. Leontes, crazed by jealousy, believes his wife to have cuckolded him (that she’s slept with another man). Here he is with their small son, Mamillius. Don’t forget to recite or move your lips!

Go play, boy, play. ¶ Thy mother plays, and I

Play too; ¶ but so disgraced a part, ¶ whose issue

Will hiss me to my grave. ¶ Contempt and clamour

Will be my knell. ¶ Go play, boy, play. ¶ There have been,

Or I am much deceived, ¶ cuckolds ere now,

And many a man there is, ¶ even at this present,

Now, ¶ while I speak this, ¶ holds his wife by th’arm

That little thinks she has been sluiced in’s absence,

And his pond fished by his next neighbour, ¶ by