How many of you know what iambic pentameter is? Damn, that many… Well, this is for the few who haven’t encountered the beauty that is the English sonnet. First of all, here’s an example of a simple sonnet:

I gaze upon myself and Truth declared
That Time is a mistress, both cruel and vain
No other force can with her be compared
She brings me such joy and she brings me pain

I pray for moments when the light appears
Go swift I bid the clock within my sight
The hours make days and lonely days make years
They flow so slowly in the darkest night

Yes, Time she leaves so much to be endured
But all is forgotten with you beside
Of this, I pray, you must remain assured
For you, I’ll suffer and my time I’ll bide

A while for me the silver bells did chime
I ask you: have I thanked you for your time

This is a moping piece I wrote after a heart-wrenching break-up; in a bout of teen-like angst I tried to convince myself that the moments of bliss were worth the tearing pain. It was horribly incoherent earlier, so I cleaned it up a bit for clarity’s sake. What now? Hey, I know: let’s analyze it!

First of all, the theme is decent. The subject is love and time and yearning and all that jazz – an excellent starting point for a sonnet. You might note that Truth and Time are personifications as well; I don’t recall my literature classes all that well, but I think this is what Romantic poets often did. Wordsworth and Keats spring to mind; I think they often personified natural things like Death, Time, Love, Sun, Booze…okay, not the last one, although I’d wish it. Shakespeare often used personification as well, I think, and that’s why I chose to do the same in my sonnet – why not copy the master, after all?

Another thing to note is the structure. It is fourteen lines long, and follows a classical English sonnet rhyming scheme. In other words, I go by a normal abab cdcd efef gg rhyme; it would be interesting to experiment with a Spenserian scheme, but I fear that I’d have trouble with it. Spenserian sonnets use the rhyming scheme abab bcbc cdcd ee, and since it requires many rhyming words it places much higher demands for an extensive vocabulary.

If you look at the contents of the different parts you’ll note that the abab and cdcd parts are rather depressing and down-ish, while it ends on a high note. This is not a conventional way of structuring a Shakespearian sonnet, so I’m not copying that style completely. According to the link above, it seems that one professor compares “Shakespeare’s sonnets to an argument with three main points, each taking up one quatrain, and a counter to that argument or a conclusion to that argument in the ending couplet.” Instead, I chose to make the first two quatrains the argument which twists around in the third one: that’s where the happy thought arrives. It finally ends in a conclusion – one that is quite different from the beginning. (I can’t recall where I’ve seen examples of it, but I’m sure that other sonnets use this structure as well.)

But there’s more to an English sonnet. The meter, of course! Traditionally, iambic pentameter is used; this is a fancy word for describing lines that are ten syllables long, and have a da DUM da DUM (etc) stress formation. Pentameter indicates a meter with five feet per line, and iambic indicates that the feet are iambs. One iamb is two syllables in this case - da DUM. For example, the word compare forms an iamb: com- is unstressed and -pare is stressed.

If I use Wikipedia’s notation, this means that each line in an English sonnet ought to be like this:

 x   /     x   /    x   /     x   /   x  /
To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield

For fun, I’ll add stress notations to my little sonnet and see how it looks.

x  /   x x   x /    x    /    x  /
I gaze upon myself and Truth declared
  x   /   x  x  /   x     x     /    x   /
That Time is a mistress, both cruel and vain
 x  / x    /    x   x    /  x   x  /
No other force can with her be compared
 x    /    x   x    /   x   x    /    x   /
She brings me such joy and she brings me pain

x   /   x   / x     x    x    /    x  /
I pray for moments when the light appears
 x   /   x  /   x    /    x  x  x   /
Go swift I bid the clock within my sight
 x   /     x    /    x   /  x   /    x    /
The hours make days and lonely days make years
 x    /   x    / x   x  x   /  x     /
They flow so slowly in the darkest night

 x    /    x    /    x   /   x  /  x  /
Yes, Time she leaves so much to be endured
 x   /   x  x  /  x   x    /   x  /
But all is forgotten with you beside
 x  /    x  /     x   x    x /    x /
Of this, I pray, you must remain assured
 x   /    x    / x    x   x  /    x    /
For you, I'll suffer and my time I'll bide

x   /    x  /   x   /  x   /     x   /
A while for me the silver bells did chime
x  /   x    x   x    /     x   /   x    /
I ask you: have I thanked you for your time

Meh. Just look at that! I’m not even close. One of the few lines that are in iambic pentameter is:

x   /    x  /   x   /  x   /     x   /
A while for me the silver bells did chime

But many lines seem to skip a stressed syllable here and there:

 x    /   x    / x   x  x   /  x     /
They flow so slowly in the darkest night

This works pretty well, actually; it still fits in with the stress pattern, and offers some variation. In other places I do stranger things, though:

 x  / x    /    x   x    /  x   x  /
No other force can with her be compared

In itself, this is pretty pleasant to read. It ends in a gallopping sense which is pretty cool; but it wreaks havok with the overall meter since these variations weren’t carefully planned; and the da da DUM is different form of iamb, on top of that.

Overall, this is a pretty awful sonnet. The vocabulary and meter is severely lacking; sure, Shakespeare himself wrote sonnets that definitely didn’t follow the iambic pentameter precisely. But he did it with extraordinary skill, a practiced and noble mind, and a god-like apprehension. (Yes, that was a weak attempt at humour; I’m sure you know your Hamlet.)

I’m glad that I’m better at writing code than writing sonnets.

I am very fond of Baroque music, and-

Watches in dismay as people stop reading

Okay, I’ll start with something more amusing! I guess that everyone’s heard of fibs, or Fibonacci poems? It’s a brilliant form of poetry: following the Fibonacci sequence, each line in the poem must have 1/1/2/3/5/8 syllables respectively. Here’s an example:

Blood
Flows
The pain
Comforts me
How I long for death
Teenage angst is so pathetic

Hey, I’m no poet - I’m just a grumpy bastard. Anyway, note how the last line forms a counterpoint against the rest of the poem; I’ll get to that later.

The fib has become a minor Internet phenomenon, and people have written fibs all over the place. As an amusing bit of info, you can scroll down to the comments in the last link, and note that Gregory K - the first person to post about Fibonacci poems - has left a comment where he mentions that 12th century Sanskrit poetry had a meter based on the Fibonacci sequence. He’s not the inventor in other words; it’s rather silly that it took 900 years for the idea to become widely known again, though. And while I’m on the topic of amusing info, you can note that he mentions Tetractys as well in his post. Anal as I am I had too look it up: it’s a 20 syllable poem consisting of verses where the lines have 1/2/3/4/10 syllables respectively.

Fibs have become very popular, as I mentioned. Guess who’s writing a book on fibs, for example? It probably came to this after the NY Times article that mentioned Fibonacci poetry and showed a pic of the aforementioned Gregory K as well. If you look at the NY Times article you’ll note that they offer an example of an alternative Fibonacci poem; one that adds two lines to the structure:

I
like
to blog.
Frequently.
Theory matters.
Computer science (theory)
is my home and geometric algorithms are
sublime. Let P be a set of points in general position in the plane. Amen.

Now, this is where the fun begins. I would like to claim that the fib above is clever, but absolutely atrocious as poetry. This is what happens when mathematicians start writing poetry! I quote from the article: “For many people, writing one of the poems is a little like solving a puzzle.” What they probably fail to see is that it has potential for beauty as well; mathematical elegance and aestetical qualities can merge, and this is a perfect example of a meter for it.

And with this I have brought us back to my initial statement: I am very fond of Baroque music, and I believe that restrictions is what gives the style its appeal. There is a mathematical beauty in Baroque music, just as there is emotion and aestetic beauty. The restrictions force repetitions, but in turn they bring out flowing variations; the limited cage transmogrifies into the entire world, making the outside irrelevant.

So, what exactly is it that I’m trying to say? I believe that fibs could become so much more if additional restraints were added - stylistic guidelines and restrictions. Take the haiku for instance: the hokku where it originated from had demands for a season word, a combination of elements, a grammatical break and so on. I am pretty convinced that I would appreciate a strict hokku style more than the common free-form haiku found everywhere. I don’t think it’s a coincidence that the sonnet was much appreciated with its strict meter, for instance.

Speaking of the sonnet (and Shakespearian sonnets in particular) they often featured a turn of events – a volta – toward the end, where the build-up of the poem changed into the resolution, and the mood of the sonnet changed. Did you note that my silly Fibonacci poem in the beginning had just that, as well? I tried to add an ironic twist in the last line, and I suspect that fibs in general would benefit from a stylistic change like that.

But then again…

He just won’t shut up
Thinking he knows poetry
Don’t listen to him

On my way to work today I was listening to Stephen King’s third book in the Dark Tower series. As I strolled alongside the rolling hills, accompanied by the raspings of the monotonous voice actor, a sentence suddenly struck me: “Eddie picked Susannah up.” Okay, I admit that the sentence might have been “Roland picked Susannah up,” but Eddie was carrying her later. I didn’t pay close attention. The structure seemed very strange to my ears, either way.

At first I thought that I had encountered a split infinitive; I blame that on my five hours of sleep. Of course it wasn’t – it was a phrasal verb. When I got to work, I had to look up a list of phrasal verbs, to check whether or not it was separable. Indeed it was. And the only reference I could find regarding object placement was that long objects sound better after the particle, and that pronouns must be placed between the verb and the particle.

Susannah is definitely not a long object, so nothing indicates that “X picked Y up” is wrong in this case. Still, it felt intuitively erroneous when I heard it. What to do? Ignore this? Humbly admit that English isn’t my native tongue, so I have no right to comment on what sounds right and wrong? Ha!

Time to bring out the ultimate statistical tool: Google. Languages are fluid and ever-changing, and a good way to find a large set of statistical data is to search for various constructs and compare the results. (I’ve had teachers in Linguistics as well as English grammar who used this method when controversies arose. So I guess it has to have some scientific relevance.)

Here are some interesting results:

• “picked up the knife” = 24 400 hits
• “picked the knife up” = 177 hits
• “picked up John” = 12 500 hits
• “picked John up” = 199 hits
• “picked up Mary” = 488 hits
• “picked Mary up” = 91 hits
• “picked up Susannah” = 1 hit
• “picked Susannah up” = 4 hits

I know that the last result is too small to say anything at all, but I find it ironic that the exact phrase I was questioning is the only one where the “false” example is more popular than the “correct” one. Either way, I guess the general consensus is that objects more often than not ought to be placed after the phrasal verb.

I wonder why Stephen King chose to place it before the particle. As a non-native speaker I can’t say if it brings an emotional change to the sentence. Maybe putting more emphasis on Susannah makes her the center of the action? Or maybe it’s the preferred style for small sentences without following adverbs and whatnot?

Or maybe he just wanted to avoid the idiomatic interpretation that Eddie was picking her up, as in hitting it off with her. Silly bugger. They just killed a guardian! Eddie was covered in dead white worms! Not the most romantic setting, eh? And besides: they were a couple already.

I kid you not. Right now the Swedish championship in poetry is taking place. That’s just wrong in so many ways. And I can’t help but feel that I would’ve loved to participate! I could’ve written a few sonnets aimed at talking trash about the concept of poetry itself. In a hopefully poetic manner.

In a typically pretentious way, they have a slogan along the lines of “you can’t compete in poetry; that’s why we do it.” Not only are they setting up a ridiculous competition – they’re also pretending that they’ve considered the errors of their ways. Even if I try for decades, I won’t reach their level of pretentiousness!

On a positive note, the age of the participants seem to be pretty high; I was sure that this would’ve drawn goths and teen wannabes from all over the country, rather than the slightly elderly people features on photos on the homepage. Maybe the youngsters just hang around the place, commenting on how the older people have no passion; they don’t understand love; they don’t understand pain; they don’t understand youth; they don’t understand age; they don’t understand life; they don’t understand.

I wonder if there’s a world championship in poetry.