Syllables 3, 2, 1 - How to teach poetry

How to teach: English - Chris Curtis 2019

Syllables 3, 2, 1
How to teach poetry

I underestimated the value of looking at the rhythm of poetry for many years. The language, for me, took priority. Look at this simile. Isn’t it interesting? Look at this word. Isn’t it powerful? I neglected the full complexity of the poem: it isn’t just a collection of words. It is a collection of finely tuned words positioned in a meaningful way to be appealing, moving or jarring when read. All too often we focus on the linguistic rather than the aural elements as these are incredibly complex.

I tend to draw attention to the use of syllables first. At a later stage, I will introduce stressed and unstressed but, initially, I focus solely on the number. I ask students to spot where the poet uses words of three syllables. To simplify, I talk about the threes, twos and ones. Take ’Song’ by Christina Rossetti:

Song

When I am dead, my dearest,

Sing no sad songs for me;

Plant thou no roses at my head,

Nor shady cypress tree:

Be the green grass above me

With showers and dewdrops wet;

And if thou wilt, remember,

And if thou wilt, forget.

I shall not see the shadows,

I shall not feel the rain;

I shall not hear the nightingale

Sing on, as if in pain:

And dreaming through the twilight

That doth not rise nor set,

Haply I may remember,

And haply may forget.17

The majority of words are one syllable with the occasional two-syllable word along the way. There are only three words in the whole poem with three syllables: ’remember’, ’nightingale’ and ’remember’ (again). In simplistic terms, you have to put more effort into reading those words, and so place more emphasis on them. All these words end a line, which adds to the rhythmic effect. They also break the rhyme, which is inconsistent. The writer is drawing our attention to these words. So the question I ask students is: why?

The voice wants to be remembered. The rhythm makes that clear. Although the verses end with ’forget’, we are drawn to ’remember’ in the previous line. Why is attention drawn to the ’nightingale’? A nightingale is a common literary symbol of the connection between love and death. A nightingale can also be a symbol of happiness or sadness. It is drawing our focus towards this symbolism. When students begin to look at poems from a syllabic point of view, they can really investigate the use of patterns.

Take the following lines from ’Song’:

When I am dead, my dearest,

Sing no sad songs for me;

I love the use of syllables here, and it is relatively simple to get students to see what is happening rhythmically. Sometimes, I work with a class to present the rhythm differently. For example:

1 1 1 1, 1 2,

1 1 1 1 1 1;

Why does the poet end with a two-syllable word on line 1? Could it be to show the importance of the ’dearest’? She could easily have used the noun ’love’ but chose ’dearest’ instead. I also like the use of single syllables to create pace, almost reflecting the desire not to dwell on death. The use of one-syllable words draws attention to the simplicity or positivity of the situation. I could spend ages looking at syllables and often do. Usually, this involves me banging on tables while chanting the lines.

Then we get on to stressed and unstressed syllables. Deciding whether a word is stressed or unstressed is a nuanced thing and it is all down to the sound it makes in relation to others. A slightly louder or longer sound compared to the words around it. Often, we refer to a heartbeat to depict stressed and unstressed syllables; dee (unstressed) dum (stressed), dee (unstressed) dum (stressed), dee (unstressed) dum (stressed). I like to have an example on the board to compare other lines with. The following is from Act 1, Scene 3 of Macbeth:

Time and the hour runs through the roughest day.

Time/and/the/hour/runs/through/the/rough/est/day.18

When a worked example is visible, students can both see (bold equals stressed words) and hear the stressing of the words. It also means that they have a point of comparison. Does your line match the example on the board? Of course, the example here is in iambic pentameter, the most common form of meter we teach at GCSE. Although stresses can change, the example gives them a starting point. Students can see that the likelihood of the word ’the’ being an unstressed word is high. I might go even further and give them a list of commonly stressed and unstressed words to aid their understanding.

A colleague of mine, Fiona Folan, adds an extra dimension by using names to make it a bit more personal.

Sha-ron

Ke-vin

Chris-to-pher

Fi-o-na

She uses this to introduce students to the trochee19 and then gets them to see what happens when the stress is changed to a different syllable, introducing the iambus.20 It works because students are so used to their names and the familiarity heightens their understanding.

Sha-ron

Chris-to-pher

I have also found it useful to present the words on the page differently. So, our line from ’Song’ goes from this:

When I am dead my dearest

To this:

 I dead dear

When am my est

It’s the separation of words/syllables that is important. Why are some stressed and others not? We could say that the stresses help to assert the bluntness of the poem. There’s no euphemistic approach to death here; the word ’dead’ is used bluntly and is also stressed. This heightens the realistic attitude towards death that the voice has. If this was a text message, the word would be in capitals, with an emoji thrown in for good measure.

Focusing on syllables helps students to see the patterns at the heart of poetry. Meaning originates from so many different sources and techniques. Forget this and you neglect the masterplan behind the language.