Blank Verse

Blank verse is unrhymed iambic pentameter: ten syllables to a line, unstressed then stressed, five beats, and no rhyme at all. It belongs with metre rather than with the fixed forms, because it keeps a strict measure while giving up rhyme, where free verse gives up both. The measure is what you hear. Because nothing has to rhyme, a sentence is free to run past the end of the line (enjambment), so blank verse can sound like a person speaking while still being counted. Milton used it for Paradise Lost, Shakespeare for most of his plays, Wordsworth for 'Tintern Abbey', Frost for 'Mending Wall'; in Caribbean poetry Derek Walcott took it up again in Omeros. Distinguishing characteristics - Five iambic feet to a line, unrhymed. - Enjambment and mid-line pauses do the work that rhyme does elsewhere. - Variation is heard against the steady beat: an inverted foot at the start of a line, a reversed foot, an extra unstressed syllable, a caesura. - Too regular and it drones; too loose and the measure is gone. A brief original example, written for this platform The kettle takes its time; the window holds a grey that will not lift before the light. I set the cup down on the painted wood and hear the day arrive without a fight. Nothing is asked of me yet but to wait, the room and I agree to keep it slow. How the example works The first line pauses mid-line at the semicolon, so the sentence crosses the break, and it is still ten syllables. The third line is a plain iambic line. The fifth opens with an inverted foot, NOTH-ing is ASKED, which is the usual way to stop a passage sounding like a metronome. No line rhymes, and none needs to. Exercise to try Write twelve lines of unrhymed iambic pentameter about a room you know well. Read them aloud and tap the beats: every line should give ten syllables and five taps. Then rewrite the same passage as free verse and read both aloud. Decide, honestly, which version the material wanted. Revising it Read aloud, always. Check for rhyme that crept in by accident, since two half-rhyming line endings are heard as a rhyme that fails. Check that no line has been padded to reach ten syllables; the giveaway words are 'O', 'did', 'so' and 'that'. Vary the position of pauses, because if every line ends with a full stop the verse reads as prose cut into lengths. Keep one or two lines deliberately irregular and leave the rest steady.