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The World Premiere of Anapestic Pentameter

March 19, 2018 March 2018 No Comments

BY JOHN ANSELL

Anapestic pentameter isn’t an amateur rhyme,

It just isn’t a meter we’re meeting a lot of the time:

Neither Auden nor Dryden nor Milton nor Byron nor Keats

Ever fell for its five-footed anti-dactylian beats.

Nor did Chaucer or Spenser or Shelley or Shakespeare or Pope

Seem to think anapestic pentameter offered much scope,

And I guessed for the rest it was grist  for the jester at best,

An’ a PEST an’ a PEST an’ a PEST an’ a PEST an’ a PEST!

But on googling to chart anapestic pentameter’s fall,

I discovered no poet of note had employed it at all,

So it’s making its global debut in the Martinborough Star;

As another New Zealander famously sang, how bizarre!

I’m delighted to beat anapestic pentameter’s drum:

Titty-TUM-titty-TUM-titty-TUM-titty-TUM-titty-TUM!

Or ch-CHOO-ch-ch-CHOO-ch-ch-CHOO-ch-ch-CHOO-ch-ch-CHOO!

As the Christchurch Express through the towns of the south used to do.

Anapestic’s the meter where every third beat gets the stress,

Although anapest is a dactylic word — but I digress.

(This word is dactylic cos an is the beat that you stress,

But dactyl’s trochaic; dactylic, I have to confess,

Along with trochaic, is deemed amphibraic, in fact,

And with trochee dactylic and iamb a dactyl, I’m whacked!)

“It’s a clattery meter that’s suited to chattery chat,”

Said the cat in the hat who had sat on the tattered old mat.

Had the cat had a rat on the mat, would the rat attack back

With a RAT-a-tat-TAT-a-tat-HACK-a-cat-RAT-attack-SNACK!?

(If the cat had an uppity yak for a yacketty-yak,

Then the cat, not the rat’d be sat upon flat on the mat.)

Like that cat in Manhattan whose Cadillac flattened his cat:

Kitty-CAT-kitty-CAT-kitty-CAT-kitty-CAT-kitty-SPLAT!

Although not every kitty gets out of this ditty alive,

Still I hope anapestic pentameter beat will survive.

Should a poet detest anapestic pentameter still,

He’s just lacking the patience and probably lacking the skill.

Now we’ve taught you to write anapestic pentameter rhyme,

Let us hope it’s a meter we meet a bit more of the time!

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