Reasons Why Poetry Might Be A Ninja II

This week's Monday Musing will discuss...

Reasons Why Poetry Might Be A Ninja

Part Two: Iambic Pentameter AKA the rhythm of your life.

(If you missed Part 1, you can click here.)

Oh yeah, it was high time for a Ryan Gosling meme up in here.

Yes, today is the day that I'll be adding to my very highly-researched theory that poetry is actually a ninja. Or rather, (as stated in Part) it is composed of hundreds of tiny word ninjas who hack into your life without you realizing it. The first post discussed idioms, or the sneaky ways we end up using figurative language in our every day lives. Today, we'll be talking about a far more sneaky and underhanded way poetry has of hacking into your everyday life: iambic pentameter. 

"What?!" you say indignantly, "how could you, the poet who couldn't write in iambic pentameter even if Shakespeare were tap-dancing on her nose, say that iambic pentameter sneaks into our mouths and hacks our lives?"

"Well," I would tell you with a know-it-all smirk on my face, "probably because your heart beats in iambic pentameter and it is most natural for English speech patterns---in fact, Shakespeare probably used it because that's just how people talk."

"Oh," you say. YEAH, OH. Iambic pentameter just smacked all the sass right out of you with its ninja-skills. 

(via beta3.clker.com)

Boom. Shit just got real.

Now, iambic pentameter is not easy to write poetry in, but there's a reason everyone wants to---when you do it right, it sounds natural to the ear. It's a rhythm you can settle into because it flows. But do you know when it flows? Not on a page. It flows when it's read aloud. Because our speech patterns aren't always grammatically correct, they don't always make sense on the page, and we don't always realize when something sound hella awkward until we read it out loud at an event and cringe inside.  So, for all its faults when you're reading a play---which isn't even meant to be read, unless you're an actor memorizing lines---it sounds absolutely thrilling when it's read well. You might not not what those dudes in the puffy pants are saying, but DAMN IT ALL if it doesn't stir something in your dark, technology-obsessed modern soul. It's partly why Shakespeare is so relevant today, hundreds of years after the fact.

So, yeah. NINJAS.

(via http://xkcd.com/79/)

SEE. The doesn't even sound weird to you, does it?!

Now that that's all out of the way, let's talk nuts and bolts. 

Make sense? Now, here's what you can do with all of this information:

1. You can take your knowledge of iambic pentameter and apply it to sonnets. To get started, check out Emily's handy post on the form.

2. You can casually address people in iambic pentameter and see if anyone notices. Be a maverick.

3. You can write a poem in iambic pentameter, and it doesn't have to be a sonnet. See what the difference is if you take the same poem and re-write it paying no attention to iambic pentameter. You can also do this exercise by re-writing a famous sonnet and seeing what happens. 

4. Use this pick-up line:

And then tell me all about how it went.