bornAfrican - The Convergence of Africana

Iambic: An Excursion into Meters in Poetry

Posted June 22, 2007 · Charles O

Idiare considers my Traffic on a Lagos Expressway to have a Soyinkaesque orientation… I agree. It is true that my foray into poetry has generally resulted from a metamorphosis of prose — whittled, re-arranged, the exact words (and no less) selected and sequenced in the exact order (for it is, indeed, an exacting process), to produce the desired poetic effect.

Nonetheless, I am equally fascinated by the Shakespeares and Dickensons of the world, with their structures and strictures… I remember spending a whole class session in a certain Dr. Urbanick’s Humanities course, analyzing, interpreting, dissecting, … cajoling a curious 13-word piece, contemplating its numerous implications and implicit meanings, ascribing an assortment of exotic interpretations and innuendo to it:

Rowing in Eden
Ah, the Sea!
Might I but moor
Tonight in thee

In another instance, I come upon this rather serious banter between the British journalist (and Communist), William Norman Ewer and Cecil Browne…

Says Ewer:

How odd
Of God
To choose
The Jews

And Browne’s riposte:

But not so odd
As those who choose
A Jewish God
But spurn the Jews

So, I decide to try my hands on an iambic (let’s just call it that):

Sounds like a fair enough (and disarmingly simple) question, no? It’ll be interesting to read your response (in poetry, if you’d be so inclined, of course)…

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