My friends, my fellow Dopers, hear my tale; about a certain trend I’ve lately noticed. It seems that everywhere I chance to read, I see and hear a certain rhythmic pattern. The words arrange themselves in groups of five – or, not the words, instead the beats therein. An alternation, stressed and unstressed sound, resolves each sentence into verse iambic. This pattern seems inherent to our tongue; no wonder Shakespeare made such hay with it. The iamb is perhaps a universal; the group of five (pentameter), convention; ten syllables (allowing for some license) make up a managable English phrase.
I am no poet; I don’t need to be. This meter seems to flow most naturally. So play along with me, and try to write / your sentences and phrases in this thread / in this same way, a five-beat iamb group – and we might find another Shakespeare here. No rhyme (unless it happens of itself), no strict adherence (any more than Will had) to counting syllables; the beat’s the thing. Just five of them in every phrase or sentence. Now let the “poetry” (it’s not) begin.
A topic? What you had for breakfast’s fine, or who you saw on public transportation. It doesn’t really matter for my purposes. Just write like this, and let what happens, happen. Or how 'bout this: your topic could well be / a reference to your post-count; start with me: on this, my sixteen hundred sixty-sixth, I pause to recollect the famous fire / in London of that year; it blazed for days.
(Apologies to anyone with training / in arts poetic, or iambic verse. I’m just a hack who’s not attempting much; a little fun is all I seek today. The rest of you, who never wrote in verse, may find it’s easy and surprise yourselves.)
I can’t write for crap/ My life is a lie/ Spacing out all day/ Participating?/ Ha like that is me/ My brother annoys me/ My parents nag me/ We have no food here/ I’m starving to death/ I did a speech today/ I really thinked I sucked/ Time to end this now/ Good bye, goodbye now/
:dubious: Like that?[hijack] Hey can anyone write sonnets? [/hijack]
I think that what the OP specified, is that the beats count out to number five. Why? you might ask, why not? my guess would be, that that would be the thought of the OP.
As far as reason and as far as rhyme, suppose you like to write and have the time, then that provides a way to realize one’s motivation for this exercise.
Methinks some posters flounder in this meter. It takes a bit of work to get it right. But soon the converts to this thread will hasten. Could Spotting be far off? I speculate.
I sometimes find myself thinking this way when long hours I have spent reading dear Will. His rhythms tend to pound inside my brain making my thoughts adhere to their command. I find it very interesting to hear skilled actors reading lines from Shakespeare’s plays and speaking them as if the sentiments were the casual language of daily life.
Because I like the sonnets best of all,
My posting seem to flow the way they do
Counting ten beats for each completed thought
With lines combining into groups of two
This thread seems like an admirable fad…so now I will recount the day I had: I woke and lay about with nought to do, then took a walk and bought some clothes and shoes. Then, wishing I had laid more hours abed / sat in the park and napped a bit, and read. I do not know quite where the hours flew…and now it’s time for bed–Can it be true?!
I know that this is bad, but what the heck? I beg that you’ll excuse this silly dreck.
Inherent? Maybe not, but very common. Just now, I visited the BBC. I meant to search for headlines in our mold, but didn’t have to search for very long. Their leading story has a headline thus: “Rumsfeld ‘deeply’ sorry for abuse.” And just below, another story leads: “Big powers wary over Sudan crisis.” It’s true one sometimes has to fudge a little, and drop or add a syllable at the ends, but Shakespeare, Chaucer, other greats have done it; poetic license justifies the fudge.
I thank you all for your delightful posts. So sorry for the nosebleeds and the 'roids.