That we love iambic pentameter?

It is, in fact, so weird that this is true!

For those of you whom have no idea what iambic pentameter is, I will explain it, but for those whom do, you can skip head a bit.

Iambic pentameter is a style in which to write poetry. It was very popular with Shakespeare, who wrote most nearly all of his sonnets in this style. In this style each line of poetry has ten syllables, with five stresses that occur on every other syllable, starting with the second. For example:

These words are an example of the thing!

(da DUM, da DUM, da DUM, da DUM, da DUM)

Or, in more literary sense:

So long as men can breathe or eyes can see,

So long lives this and this gives life to thee.
(Shakespeare’s 18th Sonnet).

Because the pattern specifically follows the pattern of “da DUM” is said to be iambic. Because there are five “DUMs” total the line is written in pentameter.

So, now you know what iambic pentameter is. What you may not know is that we as people LOVE it! An insane amount of work published today is written in Iambic Pentameter. In fact there are entire poetic forms that demand iambic pentameter in their execution (the sonnet and blank verse, to name two). Furthermore, some linguists have contended that iambic pentameter is the most pleasing metrical pattern possible.

Well, this is weird. Poetry is supposed to sound like/emulate/reflect music, and the “iambic” aspect of this metrical pattern does this. What doesn’t do this, is the “pentameter” part. As stated earlier, pentameter means that there are five stresses per line. Musically, we could say that there are five “beats” per line.

Closing a thought with five beats is severely contradictory to almost all Western music. Most Western music contains four beats per “thought” creating a seamless and free flowing rhythm without interruption. In fact this system is known as “common time” because it occurs so frequently.

For any music buffs out there, you probably recognize this as 4/4 time, because there are four quarter notes per measure.

If this idea were translated into poetry, it would be written in iambic tetrameter (as opposed to pentameter) and would read something like this:

Helen, thy beauty is to me
Like those Nicean barks of yore,
That gently, o'er a perfumed sea,
The weary, wayworn wanderer bore
(To Helen – Edgar Allen Poe)

Read that out loud a couple times. Seamless, right? No breaks, no pauses, just a perfectly flowing combination of words and rhythm.

This is because tetrameter mirrors most general conventions of musical phrasing and pauses.

On the other hand, pentameter would translate musically as something written in 5/4 time, meaning that there are five beats per measure. Such a time signature is known in music theory as a “complex time signature” and is sometimes even refereed to as an “unusual time signature.”

But while unusual in music, five “beats” per idea is far from unusual in poetry, as emphasized so adamantly before.

And that’s what’s weird. For being so wildly popular and “pleasing” iambic pentameter forces the speaker of the poem (when read out loud) to take awkward pauses between lines. Unlike tetrameter, which may be read without pause or cease, iambic pentameter demands breaks in speech to sound cohesive. In fact, I would challenge anyone to read a Shakespearean sonnet completely fluidly (without pauses, that is) and see how pleasing it really sounds.

Perhaps we, as aesthetic judges, should seriously consider how “pleasing” iambic pentameter really is, or in the least, analyze how closely music and poetry actually relate. Because as of now, there is certainly a weird discrepancy between our musical tastes of rhythm and our poetic tastes of rhythm.

And that concludes my blog post for today!

(Or in a more pleasing conclusion:

And that concludes my blog post now.)