Stephen Fry - The Ode Less Travelled - Unlocking The Poet Within

II

End-stopping–enjambment–caesura–weak endings–trochaic and pyrrhic substitutions

End-stopping, Enjambment and Caesura

In our first exercise we looked at existing fragments of iambic pentameter:The woods decay, the woods decay and fall,The vapours weep their burthen to the ground.

And we had a go at producing our own:I haven’t time to take your call right now,So leave a message when you hear the tone.

In both examples each line contains a single thought that finishes with the line . This is called end-stopping , which we could mark like this.The woods decay, the woods decay and fall.I haven’t time to take your call right now.

The iambic pentameter would be a dull dog indeed if that were all it could do.

I have already included (in Poetry Exercise 1 ) a couplet from Wilfred Owen where the meaning doesn’t stop with the line, but RUNS ON through to the next:If you could hear, at every jolt, the blood Come gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs

No end-stopping there. The term used to describe such a running on is enjambment , from the French enjamber to stride, literally to get one’s leg over…His mother was a learned lady, famed For every branch of every science known.BYRON: Don Juan , Canto I, XSo threatened he, but Satan to no threats Gave heed, but waxing more in rage replied:MILTON: 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. 7You’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 hidProgressive, 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, famedFor every branch of every science known.So threatened he, but Satan to no threatsGave 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?

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

THE 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 bloodCome 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

READ 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 issueWill 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 Sir Smile, his neighbour. ¶ Nay there’s comfort in’t,Whiles other men have gates, ¶ and those gates opened,As mine, against their will. ¶ Should all despair That have revolted wives, ¶ the tenth of mankind Would hang themselves. ¶ Physic for’t there’s none.