It’s February, Valentine’s, the month of luuuuuv….so let’s talk a little poetry, shall we? This week we will discuss one of my favorite forms of poetry, the heroic couplet. Heroic couplets were once the epitome of poetry. If you had to read Chaucer’s
The Canterbury Tales….you’ve read heroic couplets. Poets used this form not just for “regular” poetry, but for social commentaries, arguments, political dissertations…anything and everything you could think of was put into heroic couplet form. It’s name was even derived from the distinguished and lofty subject matter often contained in it’s verses. This form of poetry was immensely popular until around the late 19th century. Nowadays, it is very rarely seen, which is, in my humble opinion, a crying shame. So, what are heroic couplets? And how on earth would you go about writing one?
What are they?Simply put, a heroic couplet is a pair of rhyming lines, usually written in iambic pentameter.
Elements:1. Must have pairs of rhyming lines.This is fairly straight forward. The rhyme scheme would be aabbccddee…In other words, your first and second lines will rhyme, the third and fourth lines will rhyme, the fifth and sixth, and so forth.
For example, let’s look at a few lines from one of my favorite poems, Anne Bradstreet’s
The Author to Her Book…
Thou ill-formed offspring of my feeble brain,
Who after birth didst by my side remain,
Till snatched from thence by friends, less wise than true,
Who thee abroad, exposed to public view…
As you can see, the first two lines end in a rhyming pair, as do the third and fourth lines, and so on until the end of the poem. Heroic couplets have been historically used for epic poetry. They tend to be very long. But they don’t have to be. A poem can be any length.
2. The meter is usually iambic pentameter.The meter of a poem is its rhythm. In order to find the meter of a poem, you “scan” it for how many stressed and unstressed syllables each line has. Then you add them up. Because heroic couplets are usually written with ten syllables in iambic pentameter, each line must have five stressed syllables per line (penta = five….therefore “pentameter”).
For example, let’s look at another line from,
The Author to Her Book. I will italicize the stressed syllables…
Thou
ill-formed
offspring
of my
feeble
brainAs you can see, there are five stressed syllables.
Now, where does the iambic part come in? Well, the pattern of the stresses determines whether a poem is iambic or something else. To be iambic, the syllables of a poem line must follow a pattern of unstressed/stressed. Let’s look again at our line…we’ll put the unstressed syllables in red and the stressed syllables in blue.
Thou ill-
formed offspring of my feeble brainSo, because this line has a pattern of one unstressed syllable, followed by one stressed syllable, and there are five stressed syllables per line, this poem is written in iambic pentameter. Now, poems aren’t always written with every line following this pattern exactly. Sometimes and extra syllable or two will be thrown in here or there, but look for the overall or dominant pattern.
Heroic couplets are usually written in iambic pentameter, but can sometimes be written in tetrameter. Tetra = four….so this would mean that instead of each line having five stressed syllables, they would have four.
Here are a couple handy chart to help make it a bit easier to keep straight:
• One = monometer
• Two = dimeter
• Three = trimeter
• Four = tetrameter
• Five = pentameter
• Six = hexameter
• Seven = heptameter
• Eight = octameter
For the chart below, ~ = unstressed and / = stressed
~ / = iambic
~ ~ / = anapestic
/ ~ = trochaic
/ ~ ~ = dactylic
/ / = spondaic
3.Heroic couplets also allow for a caesura A caesura is a strong pause that breaks up a line of verse in the middle of the line.
For example, another line from the same poem by Anne Bradstreet…
I washed thy face, but more defects I saw…
The comma denotes where the caesura occurs.
There are other exceptions and occasional rules, as well as additions to these simple rules that modern heroic couplets have adapted, but the easiest way to spot (or write) a poem in the heroic couplet form is to have pairs of rhyming lines, written in iambic pentameter.
Here is a simple two liner just off the top of my head….
I went to see the dentist for my tooth,
Because I had no fluoride in my youth…
Okay, so it’s not great :D but you see what I mean. It’s really not as hard as it sounds, although finding the right rhyming pairs to express what you want to say can be difficult sometimes :D But really, the English language is full of iambic pentameter phrases…it’s natural to our way of speaking.
Did
you go
to the
dentist
yester
day? = iambic pentameter
Well,
call your
mom and
ask if
we can
play. = iambic pentameter
And they even rhyme :D Heroic couplets are wonderful, beautiful, and memorable….the rhyming couplets and the rhythm of the lines are made to be remembered. Try writing your special someone a heroic couplet poem for Valentine’s Day – or try one just for fun and leave it in the comments section. I’d love to see your masterpieces!! I’ve posted the full Anne Bradstreet poem before, but I’ll post it again here. It really is a very humorous piece…Anne’s feelings toward her work I know are shared by many writers I know!
The Author To Her BookThou ill-formed offspring of my feeble brain,
Who after birth did'st by my side remain,
Till snatched from thence by friends, less wise than true,
Who thee abroad exposed to public view,
Made thee in rags, halting to th' press to trudge,
Where errors were not lessened (all may judge).
At thy return my blushing was not small,
My rambling brat (in print) should mother call.
I cast thee by as one unfit for light,
The visage was so irksome in my sight,
Yet being mine own, at length affection would
Thy blemishes amend, if so I could.
I washed thy face, but more defects I saw,
And rubbing off a spot, still made a flaw.
I stretched thy joints to make thee even feet,
Yet still thou run'st more hobbling than is meet.
In better dress to trim thee was my mind,
But nought save home-spun cloth, i' th' house I find.
In this array, 'mongst vulgars may'st thou roam.
In critic's hands, beware thou dost not come,
And take thy way where yet thou art not known.
If for thy father asked, say, thou hadst none;
And for thy mother, she alas is poor,
Which caused her thus to send thee out of door.
