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 Poetry: May 03, 2017 Issue [#8264] |
  Poetry This week: The Rhythm of Blank Verse Edited by: Kate - Writing & Reading   More Newsletters By This Editor   1. About this Newsletter 2. A Word from our Sponsor 3. Letter from the Editor 4. Editor's Picks 5. A Word from Writing.Com 6. Ask & Answer 7. Removal instructions 
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Blank verse flows well from common speech, and works to free the muse poetic either in passion or reflection (meditation). There is no end-rhyme pattern but there is an internal metric beat. Think how you tap your fingers to the downbeat of a familiar tune. Yes, as all poetry, perhaps more so, blank verse must be spoken aloud to feel the rhythm or passion of extended sentences and to hear the internal patterns or rhymes. Consider the plays of Shakespeare, Milton's poems (Paradise Lost) and the lyric poetry of Emily Dickinson, Robert Frost (Mending Wal). 
Blank verse does not have ending rhymes (for the most part) and can be composed of any amount of feet (rhythmic pattens) but are most familiarly the iambic pentameter. That is two beat syllables soft and hard, iAM iAM iAM iAM iAM (iamb 5 times in a line). And you will find, as in natural speech, other meters interspered - as inflection or exhortation occurs. 
Blank verse, as opposed to free verse, however, does have a dominant meter - most often the iambic pentameter noted above, but if you read aloud (as all poetry needs to be read to be heard), then as in speech, you will find an occasional emphatic three-syllable beat anapest (I'm a PEST, I'm a PEST) or contemplative dactyl {DAC ty lic, DAC tyl ic), or troche (two consective syllables either stressed or unstressed). Blank verse also works with a contemplative or meditative dactyl downbeat. The naming of the meter and beat is defined by the main thread that's conveyed to the senses while reading aloud.
Blank verse, as the sonnet, is generally focused on an image and a contemplatie theme to resolve the image. Unlike the sonnet, however (other than no end-rhyme), there is not a strongly defined turn (volta) or summation. If such is present, it's more subtle in blank verse.
Blank verse traditionally does not have end rhymes AND the images conveyed are not ended in each line. The verse focuses on a longer, more detailed contemplation and ejambment carries through to the next line, to stop where the thought or image would naturally conclude, while maintaining the rhythm into the next pentameter (using pentameter as an example (5 two syllable beats, for example, per line). Then, in the next 'line' you will find a stop in the form of a period or comma, before beginning the next thought. That's enjambment for you word sleuths
Although there is not customarily end-rhyming in blank verse, internal rhyme - within a line or to tie together an enjambed thought - often serves to focus an image.
}Rhythm and cadence is also conveyed in blank verse by use of assonance - repeated vowel sound within a line or enjambed image, and alliteration - repeated consonant sounds within said line or enjambed image.
