I recently encountered McLuhan's concept of tetrads, which present "not sequential but simultaneous facets of media effects" -- that is, "they are right-hemisphere in character, and each tetrad comprises two figures and two grounds in proportion to each other" (McLuhan and McLuhan, 1988, 127).
This led me to re-read R. Buckminster Fuller's section on the tetrahedron in Synergetics, in which he writes:
The tetrahedron occurs conceptually independent of events and independent of relative size. By tetrahedron, we mean the minimum thinkable set that would subdivide Universe and have interconnectedness where it comes back upon itself. The four points have six interrelatednesses. There are two kinds of number systems involved: four being prime number two and six being prime number three. So there are two very important kinds of oscillating quantities numberwise, and they begin to generate all kinds of fundamentally useful mathematics. The basic structural unit of physical Universe quantation, tetrahedron has the fundamental prime number oneness. (1982, 333)In pondering the relationship between tetrads and tetrahedra, I recalled my own previous work on iambic tetrameter, the four-foot line that has sometimes been called "the solemn cadence." I present it here as preface to some sort of hermeneutic, to follow.
The Solemn Cadence
Introduction
Is there some force inherent in a four-foot line of rising meter that lends greatness to poetry written in iambic tetrameter? I want to suggest that there is. Consider this: Despite the preponderance of iambic pentameter in English poetry, a disproportionate number of the poems we call great are written in iambic tetrameter. Consider this: Poets respond to one another in four-footed lines; even Marlowe, for all of his blank verse, is best remembered, both in anthologies and poetic responses, for "The Passionate Shepherd to His Love," written in quatrains of iambic tetrameter. Consider this: Alfred, Lord Tennyson, Poet Laureate, would use the meter in quatrains rhyming abba to produce what may well be the most powerful poetry in the English language: "In Memoriam, A.H.H." How is it that great poetry is so often written in rhymed quatrains of iambic tetrameter?
To seek an answer to this question I will briefly discuss versification in general, then iambic tetrameter and long metered quatrains such as the In Memoriam stanza in particular. I will analyze poetic responses written in iambic tetrameter, then look at what writers in other genres have to say about iambic tetrameter before examining how that meter may be perceived more easily by the brain, thus allowing it to impact the mind more readily.
Background
T.S. Eliot wrote that "the conscious problems with which one is concerned in the actual writing [of poetry] are more those of a quasi-musical nature, in the arrangement of metric and pattern, than of a conscious exposition of ideas" (qtd in Ferguson, Salter, and Stallworthy lxi). The craft of creating this quasi-musical nature is called versification, which consists of four primary components: rhythm, meter, rhyme, and form — each of which contributes to the repetitious nature of poetry. The first component, rhythm, is concerned with the sequence in which emphasized syllables are heard by the human ear. Though there are multiple theories on how many gradations of emphasis are actually perceived, it is safe to say that there are at least two: stressed and unstressed. Thus we may scan a line of language, poetic or not, and note the pattern of stressed and unstressed syllables as in this line by Tennyson:
I held it truth, with him who sings
in which the first syllable of each pair is unstressed, the second is stressed. A regular, that is, repeating pattern of stressed and unstressed syllables produces meter, the recurrence of approximately equal units in a poem's rhythm (lxii). There are four metrical systems used in English poetry: accentual, accentual-syllabic, syllabic, and quantitative — of which accentual-syllabic is by far the most common (lxii). Because I am here concerned primarily with iambic tetrameter, I will discuss only accentual-syllabic meter in this paper, and will not discuss the other three. Accentual-syllabic meter takes as its basic unit the metrical foot, a set of two or three stressed and/or unstressed syllables (lxiii). According to Ferguson, Salter, and Saltworthy, the six possible permutations of metrical feet are:
| Foot | Description |
| Iambic | One unstressed syllable followed by one stressed syllable |
| Trochaic | One stressed syllable followed by one unstressed syllable |
| Anapestic | Two unstressed syllables followed by one stressed syllable |
| Dactylic | One stressed syllable followed by two unstressed syllables |
| Spondaic | Two successive syllables of equally strong stress |
| Pyrrhic | Two successive syllables of equally light stress |
This system of English metrics is not without its detractors, however. Robert Wallace, in his essay "Meters in English," claims there is only one meter, accentual-syllabic, and within that one meter there is an iambic norm. All other variants are the result of feminine endings, the placement of an extra syllable on a line, or decapitation, the omission of the first syllable on an otherwise iambic line. Wallace accepts anapests and dactyls as legitimate substitutions to the iambic norm, but argues that anapestic, trochaic, and dactylic meters do not exist (Baker 4-28). I disagree, as do Ferguson, Salter, and Saltworthy, but here I am concerned only with Wallace's assertion of an iambic norm in English poetry. I believe such a norm is demonstrable beyond debate.
Once the meter is established, a poet may adhere to a specific line length throughout the poem. The most common line lengths in English poetry are:
| Line Length | Description |
| Monometer | One metrical foot per line |
| Dimeter | Two metrical feet per line |
| Trimeter | Three metrical feet per line |
| Tetrameter | Four metrical feet per line |
| Pentameter | Five metrical feet per line |
| Hexameter | Six metrical feet per line |
| Heptameter | Seven metrical feet per line |
| Octameter | Eight metrical feet per line |
Of these fixed line lengths, pentameter is by far the most popular (Ferguson, Salter, and Saltworthy lxv) and is the basis for several important forms in English poetry: blank verse (unrhymed iambic pentameter) and heroic couplets (rhymed pairs of iambic pentameter lines). This brings up another component of repetition in English poetry — rhyme — the concurrence of the last stressed vowel and all speech sounds following that vowel (lxix). While not devaluing the importance of rhyme, I am not going to discuss it at length here because I am concerned primarily with meter, but I do want to discuss rhyme in terms of several forms that I consider paramount in English poetry, especially various forms of quatrains, poetic stanzas of four lines each. Quatrains, whether rhymed or not, are the most commonly used stanzas in English poetry, but themselves fall into several types, based on meter, line lengths, and rhyme scheme. The most common quatrain is the ballad stanza with alternating lines of iambic tetrameter and iambic trimeter, often rhyming abcb or, less commonly, abab. The ballad stanza is epitomized in Samuel Taylor Coleridge's literary ballad, "The Rime of the Ancient Mariner," as well as many of Emily Dickinson's poems. When the second and fourth lines of the ballad stanza are lengthened to iambic tetrameter those quatrains are known as long meter and may be seen in Thomas Hardy's "Channel Firing" (lxxii). Finally, a long meter quatrain rhyming abba is known as the In Memoriam stanza, as it was epitomized by Tennyson's "In Memoriam, A.H.H."
This long diversion into the mechanical elements of poetry is important because each element — rhythm, meter, rhyme, and form — contributes more or less to the repetitive quality of any poem. Even irregular forms or open forms, so called free verse, rely completely on these four components for their prosody, their versification, their rendering of prose into poetry. My argument is that greatness in English poetry is (aside from the poem's subject) largely a matter of strict adherence to short repetitive units, especially the long metered quatrain. In confirmation of this thesis, let us now look at several of the most important poems in the English canon.
Confirmation
In spite of the preponderance of poems written in iambic pentameter, it may be argued that the greatest poems in the canon are all written in iambic tetrameter. I believe greatness in poetry may be measured by the response to a given poem, and that response can be quantified in two major ways: first, the degree to which a poem is anthologized, that is, how often editors of collected works intending to demonstrate the most remarkable specimens of the craft include a particular poem in their anthologies; and second, the degree to which other great poets respond to a particular poem.
It has been said that the three most anthologized poems of their respective eras are "The Passionate Shepherd to His Love" by Christopher Marlowe, "I Wandered Lonely As a Cloud" by William Wordsworth, and "Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening" by Robert Frost. To this list I would add "In Memoriam A.H.H." by Alfred, Lord Tennyson as it is now excerpted in every anthology of poetry and Victorian literature that I have encountered, which are many. This seems somewhat strange when one considers the miles and miles of blank verse that Marlowe wrote, including his many plays, or the many pentameter sonnets of William Shakespeare, or the fact that Wordsworth wrote "The Prelude" in iambic pentameter. How is it that the poems most often anthologized in their respective times are those written in iambic tetrameter? Well, one might suggest that poems written in quatrains of long meter are typically short or easily excerpted, and therefore lend themselves more readily to books of collected works. This may well be true, but I believe there other factors compelling editors to include these poems in their anthologies. First, poems of this form are readily committed to memory. Second, they are set to music more often than other forms. And third, they are often written to memorialize the dead and thus hold a special place in the hearts of editors and their readers. These three factors are not unrelated. As I will soon show, the musical quality of these poems is precisely what makes them easier to memorize, and is also precisely what endears them to editors and readers alike.
The second major way in which poetic greatness may be measured is by the number of responses that other artists make to a given piece of poetry or form. To discuss this, I will first look at several responses to "The Passionate Shepherd to His Love" by Christopher Marlowe, which is included in Appendix A, below.
In "The Passionate Shepherd," Marlowe uses long metered quatrains rhyming aabb to create a pastoral poem in which a mythical universe is set up and everything surrounding the passionate shepherd is imbued with beauty unmatched by anything found on this planet, a place where "shepherds feed their flocks, / By shallow rivers to whose falls / Melodious birds sing madrigals." Sir Walter Ralegh took exception to this view, and took the point of view of the passionate shepherd's love but retained the form when he responded with "The Nymph's Reply to the Shepherd" (Appendix B, below). Ralegh reminds Marlowe that all of these beauteous material things will fade with age, "But could youth last, and love still breed, / Had joys no date, nor age no need, / Then these delights my mind might move / To live with thee, and be thy love." John Donne, possibly the smartest of the English poets, then responds with a complex fishing metaphor (see Appendix C, below) in which the poet is himself ensnared by his love: "For thou thyself art thine own bait, / That fish, that is not catched thereby, / Alas, is wiser far than I." Finally, C. Day Lewis responds to all three poets simultaneously with the second of his "Two Songs" (Appendix D, below). In his caustic critique of pre-World War II reality, Lewis begins with the first two lines of Marlowe's original poem, "Come live with me, and be my love, / And we will some new pleasures prove" but, rather than taking the voice of his love interest, Lewis' narrator remarks on the environment, the "sour canals" by which the couple sits and hopes "to hear some madrigals." It is not time alone that hinders Lewis but the times themselves for "Hunger shall make thy modest zone / And cheat fond death of all but bone — / If these delights thy mind may move, / Then live with me and be my love." Through these four poems, four great poets have led us from a scene of pastoral beauty, through a reminder that beauty fades with age and is in itself a trap, to a world in which there is no beauty whatsoever. And they did it all using long metered quatrains rhyming aabb.
Another poem that recent poets often respond to is Tennyson's "In Memoriam A.H.H." Tennyson uses abba quatrains of iambic tetrameter to create what I believe is the most important single poem in the English language. It is important because of its self-conscious use of memory, in which, ultimately, all poetry takes place. Today, we usually translate the Latin in memoriam as in remembrance, but I believe Tennyson is referring to the first definition of memoria, which is simply memory. Tennyson is not so much remembering his friend Arthur Hallam in the past as he is living with Hallam in his own memory, which is fully alive in the poet's present mind. The relationship between thought and memory is reciprocal. Neuropsychologist J.W. Brown describes it this way:
Thought and memory are different terms for a common process. Thinking is a way of characterizing certain aspects of memory, while remembering is a way of characterizing certain forms of thought. (99)
We see this in the interaction that takes place when Tennyson reads letters from Hallam while in the process of writing "In Memoriam." The poet reflects upon his friend, that is, he engages with that memory, such that "The dead man touch'd me from the past, / And all at once it seem'd at last / The living soul was flash'd on mine [...] but ah, how hard to frame / In matter-moulded forms of speech, / Or ev'n for intellect to reach / Thro' memory that which I became" (XCV). Tennyson reads Hallam into memory, comes to understand that unification of mind — memory and thought — becomes one with his "strange friend" and expresses his thoughts in poetic verse.
It is through poetry, then, that Tennyson extends his memory, which now includes Hallam as well as himself, into perpetuity. Tennyson refers to this potential in section VIII, written near the beginning of the poem's sixteen-year incubation, when he places "this poor flower of poesy" on Hallam's tomb, "That if it can it there may bloom" (VIII). Tennyson is recording his own thoughts and his memories of Hallam. That text becomes a poetic event when an engaged reader encounters it and reads it into memory. The reader can then access and include that memory in future thoughts. Hallam and Tennyson are now one in the reader — past, present, and to be — and it is only through the function of memory that this afterlife can occur.
Recent responses to "In Memoriam" include Craig Arnold's "Ubi Sunt . . . ?" (Appendix E, below), in which the 1999 winner of the Yale Series of Younger Poets eulogizes a deceased poet of his own time. He remarks upon his mentor, a "poet who could smooth / the language like a sheet over / the body of a dying lover, / who made me realize how soothe / meant show the truth." Arnold is talking about craft, the craft of utilizing olden forms to contain ideals that are themselves ageless. After a recent reading of his work, I asked Arnold how he came to choose the In Memoriam stanza for his elegy, especially that particular meter. He said, "I just like the pulse, the way it swings." While I had been hoping for a more academic response, his statement points out the musical qualities of iambic tetrameter, qualities to which I will soon return.
But poets are not the only ones to respond to iambic tetrameter — musicians and novelists, too, have responded in their own ways. In 1916, Charles Hubert Hastings Parry set William Blake's "And Did Those Feet" to music, called it "Jerusalem" and created one of the most popular hymns in the Anglican hymnal. It was even covered by Emerson, Lake, and Palmer and released on their 1973 album, Brain Salad Surgery. In Middlemarch, novelist George Eliot refers to iambic tetrameter as the "solemn cadence" (210). In Tess of the d'Urbervilles, Thomas Hardy refers to the musical qualities of iambic tetrameter when he has Angel Clare recall and ponder a stanza from "In Memoriam" itself:
Leave thou thy sister, when she prays,He had occasionally thought the counsel less honest than musical; but he gladly conformed to it now (201).
Her early Heaven, her happy views;
Nor thou with shadow'd hint confuse
A life that leads melodious days.
Hardy, through Angel Clare, is remarking not only on the cadence of iambic tetrameter, but also on its power to convince, its power to stay in one's memory and its power to influence one's life, a life that takes place, of course, entirely in memory. Edgar Allan Poe also noted the importance of music in poetry when he said:
Contenting myself with the certainty that music, in its various modes of meter, rhythm, and rhyme, is of so vast a moment in poetry as never to be wisely rejected — is so vitally important an adjunct, that he is simply silly who declines its assistance — I will not now pause to maintain its absolute essentiality (qtd. in Baker v).
But if Poe did not feel compelled to discuss the musical qualities essential to poetry, I do. Boomsliter, Creel, and Hastings have studied the relationship of perceiver to perception, and point to findings that "the mind not only 'craves measure,' but requires it in order to have data usable by perception and memory" (200). They go on to describe how that process works in poems as units of expectancy patterns: "When we speak of a stanza as an expectancy pattern we mean that the organization allows us to predict one part from another, and that in fact we do predict. The metrical stanza arouses expectation and then satisfies it. Rhyme often serves to mark the target of expectancy" (203). They go on to discuss the human brain's desire for expectancy patterns in order to make sense of the world:
A brain has a marvelous memory, which works effortlessly, and a very efficient kind of access to what is stored there. But a brain is not a quick processor. [...] We should assume that slowness and confusion of patterns in auditory sequence is normal for a brain. We escape the confusion in speech and music because they are designed for cheating, they are the domain of prefabricated system, based on efficient principles, organized and stored in memory. [...] Rhythmic organization is in the nervous system of the perceiver. It is a tool that he is using to construct a unity, and this tool is used constantly. It is an aspect of syntax that serves organization of meaning in poetry, in daily speech, in music, and in many other activities (205).
We see now that Poe was not merely waxing philosophical in his discussion of the musical qualities of poetry. Musical poetry allows the brain to more easily process the incoming information such that greater meaning may be perceived more easily..
Proposition
Before discussing Milton's versification, Samuel Johnson found it necessary to make the following statement about rhythm in poetry:
However minute the employment may appear, of analysing lines into syllables, and whatever ridicule may be incurred by a solemn deliberation upon accents and pauses, it is certain, that without this petty knowledge no man can be a poet; and that from the proper disposition of single sounds results that harmony that adds force to reason, and gives grace to sublimity; that shackles attention, and governs passion [emphasis is mine] (qtd. in Baker 221).
I suggest that rhymed quatrains of iambic tetrameter, with their shorter lines of even-numbered feet and frequently occurring rhymes are the form best suited for easing the brain's workload when interpreting poetry. They allow the mind to transcend incoming information more readily and reach realms of thought more difficult to attain through other forms. Furthermore, I would assert that the English-speaking human mind has an affinity for iambic tetrameter unmatched by other meters. That is why the most anthologized poems in the language are written in iambic tetrameter. That is why poets so often respond to one another in iambic tetrameter. That is why composers like to set poems written in iambic tetrameter to music. That is why novelists wax poetic over a particular meter...
Counter Arguments
Now, I know there will be those who disagree, especially those with a fondness for sonnets, heroic couplets, or even free verse. It is true, as Annie Finch points out, that "Each of the non-iambic meters, also, has its own character, music, and history, however subtle or intermittent. [And] trochaic poems, from Macbeth's witches to 'The Tyger' to 'The Raven' and even 'Hiawatha' have a history of supernatural and exotic subject matter" (in Baker 61). Which is why I disagree with Wallace when he claims there is no such thing as a trochaic meter. I would point out, however, that of these "The Tyger" is written in trochaic tetrameter, "The Raven" in trochaic octameter (trochaic tetrameter times two with a caesura in each line, most of them punctuated), and "The Song of Hiawatha," (With the rushing of great rivers, / With their frequent repetitions, / And their wild reverberations) is written primarily in trochaic tetrameter. I agree with John Frederick Nims when he says, "Most poetry in English is iambic, like our language itself and like the heartbeat which, months before we are born, first tells us we exist" (in Baker 171). My point is that iambic tetrameter lends itself most readily to greatness.
Conclusion
Iambic tetrameter, especially when housed in rhymed quatrains, sets up and satisfies mental expectancy patterns better than any other meter in the history of English poetry. By better satisfying mental expectancy patterns, long metered quatrains deliver greater information packets, allowing the reader to more easily perceive the integrated symbolic messages contained within them. This is confirmed by looking at the most anthologized poems of all time. It is confirmed by the frequency with which poets respond to one another in this form. It is confirmed by composers, novelists, and essayists. Search your own memory; I believe it will be confirmed there as well.
Works Cited
- Baker, David, ed. Meter in English: A Critical Engagement.
Fayetteville, AR: University of Arkansas Press. 1996. - Boomsliter, Paul C., Warren Creel, George S. Hastings, Jr. "Perception and English Poetic Meter." Publications of the Modern Language Association of America 88 (1973): 200-208.
- Brown, J.W. Mind, Brain, and Consciousness: The Neuropsychology of Cognition.
New York: Academic Press. 1977.
- Eliot, George. Middlemarch.
1871. New York: The Modern Library, 2000. - Ferguson, Margaret, Mary Jo Salter, Jon Stallworthy, eds. The Norton Anthology of Poetry: Fourth Edition.
New York: W.W. Norton and Co. 1996. - Hardy, Thomas. Tess of the d'Urbervilles.
1891. Orchard Park, NY: Broadview Press, 1996.
Appendix A
"The Passionate Shepherd to His Love"
Appendix B
"The Nymph's Reply to the Shepherd"
Appendix C
"The Bait"
Appendix D
"Two Songs (Part II)"
Come, live with me and be my love,
And we will all the pleasures prove
Of peace and plenty, bed and board,
That chance employment may afford.
I'll handle dainties on the docks
And thou shalt read of summer frocks:
At evening by the sour canals
We'll hope to hear some madrigals.
Care on thy maiden brow shall put
A wreath of wrinkles, and thy foot
Be shod with pain: not silken dress
But toil shall tire thy loveliness.
Hunger shall make thy modest zone
And cheat fond death of all but bone —
If these delights thy mind may move,
Then live with me and be my love.
— C. Day Lewis, 1935
Appendix E
"Ubi Sunt...?"
