The Tyrant
There once sat a king on a throne of roots
beneath an old oak tree.
An ancient cat with but one eye
who grinned with devilish glee.
His subjects were mice lined up row upon row
all fighting to bring him a present.
Each hoping their gift would be chosen by him
to avoid a fate cruel and unpleasant.
For each one who failed to present him a gift
that could satisfy his fickle mood
would swiftly be plucked from the fur-covered throng
to fulfill their new role as his food.
One gift in the crowd had caught the king's eye
and he beckoned for it to be brought.
And a young mouse walked up with a water-filled vial
containing a fish that he'd caught.
The king roared with laughter that echoed for miles
while the mouse wrung his paws in dismay.
The king leaned in close with a smile and whispered,
"We're both of us tyrants today."
I'm really trying to get a bead on how well the rhythm translates with other readers and see if there are any aspects I haven't noticed that take away from the fun. Thank you for reading.
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Suicide {Short}
Wasted Air, Rows of Wire, Wasted Arrows
Posted Jan 27, 2018, 7:07 AM UTC
The rhythm is just all over the place for me. I mean, I can kind of see what you were try to go for rhythm and rhyme wise, but I really have to struggle to fit your words into that rhythm.
What it looks like you're attempting is a basic Ballad Form (4+3 alternating beats per line). But many times you're bouncing back and forth between groups of three and groups of two, and it never quite settles down into one or the other. On top of that, even after forcing the groups of three to fit into the rhythmic space of a group of two, the rhythm still doesn't keep to that ballad (4+3) heptametric feel. You've got sections that are shorter by a beat, longer by a beat, and even one that is longer by two complete rhythmic beats. This is really, really shaky rhythm.
Let me see if I can show you how this is scanning.
There once sat a king on a throne of roots [4]
beneath an old oak tree. [3]
It's so important to get the first couplet exactly right, rhythmically, as it sets the tone for the rest of the poem. But already we have rhythmic "variation" on the ballad form. The poem opens with a group of two subbeats "There once". That's called an iamb. But the next six subbeats get grouped into threes with "sat a king" and "on a throne". These are called anapaests. So already, in the first three beats, we have rhythmic "variation". Normally, small variations on the beat are fine, but we haven't even firmly established the beat yet, so it's much much too soon for variants of it. The line ends with another group of two (iamb) with "of roots". That gives us the 4 strong downbeats that we would expect to hear in ballad form, but they are shaky, and do not firmly establish the rhythm.
The next line also has some issues. While it can be arranged into groups of two (iambs), as I've shown above, an equally valid reading could also stress the word "oak", which slows the line down to 4 main rhythmic beats, and also creates a sluggish triple-strong-beat that's called a "mollosus" on the phrase "old oak tree". Technically, this is considered a single foot for the purposes of rhythm, which means your second line can be read as an awkwardly slow 2-beat line instead.
This, combined with the issues in line 1 already show that the rhythm here is on extremely shaky ground. But that's the good part, because there are lines that get even more "variant" from here on.
An ancient cat with but one eye [4]
who grinned with devilish glee. [3]
This pair is actually one of the few couplets that I think work fairly well, surprisingly. But it is not without its issues. Just like line 2, which could be theoretically organized into groups of two (iambs), but suffers from an awkward potential molossus, line 3 could also be read that way at the end, if the reader stresses the word "one". Even worse, there is a third possible reading where the reader stresses "one", but also does not stress the word "but" right before it. In this reading, the reader correctly susses out the fact that "one" is the important word in the sentence – that the line is trying to emphasize the fact that this king has one eye, as opposed to the normal two, and in doing so, creates a group of three subbeats in the words "cat with but" and then finishes with an inverted group of two (trochee) in the words "one eye". If the reader does this, this line contains not 4 main beats, but only 3, shortening it rhythmically. And this rhythm will feel weirdly plausible, given the mixing of groups of two and groups of three in line 1, leading to rhythmic ambiguity because now this line feels simultaneously "right" but also one whole beat too short.
In line 4, there is also the minor issue of the word "devilish". This word technically contains three syllables and is therefore all by itself a group of three subbeats. Most readers will gloss over the third beat, and scan this as a group of two instead, but just in case, this is a great opportunity to use a tool called "syncope" to show that, although the word "devilish" contains three subbeats, you would prefer that it be read as if it had two. This is accomplished by removing some of the letters and inserting an apostrophe where the missing letters of the word should be: dev'lish. It's a small thing, but it helps the flow of the poem significantly when your readers are sure about the way you are grouping the subbeats.
His subjects were mice lined up row upon row [4]
all fighting to bring him a present. [3]
This couplet also works fairly well in isolation, and is the other couplet that I think is the most functional rhythmically. The issue here is that every single group of subbeats is in threes, which, when fit into the larger rhythm of the poem, creates rhythmic ambiguity at the subbeat level.
It's possible, for instance, for a reader to read line 5 with a strong beat on "up" instead of the intended "row", which creates a group of two subbeats in "lined up" (iamb). And this will feel plausible because of the previous bouncing back and forth from groups of twos to groups of threes. But as soon as the reader does so, they will hit a rhythmic stumbling block, because there is no way to continue that line in a rhythm that makes sense after creating an iamb in "lined up". The very next word, "row" is so obviously a strong beat, in the phrase "row upon row", but now that we have a strong beat, we are expecting a weak one, which makes your poor reader end the line lamely with the awkward stress pattern "row upon row", or else back up and have to work to fit the correct subbeat rhythm together.
This is one of the major pitfalls of creating ambiguously, shaky rhythms at the subbeat level. Many amateur writers will fight me tooth and nail if I simply tell them "don't mix iambs and anapaests", as if that is some kind of arcane elitist "rule" that got invented for no reason by academia with MFAs and not a single creative, poetic bone in their body. The truth is that this "rule" exists because poets have noticed that breaking it has unwanted negative consequences for your readers, making them awkwardly slog through your text, trying various rhythms out on your words to see if they can force some kind of rhythmic sense into the poem.
For each one who failed to present him a gift [4]
that could satisfy his fickle mood [4]
In this couplet we see the first real unravelings of the macro rhythm. We still have the rhythmic ambiguity at the subbeat level that I've been speaking about throughout. Line 7 for instance opens with three groups of three on the words "each one who" and "failed to pre-" and "-sent him a". But now, because of the first word in the line "for", all of the beats are actually shifted over by one in the subbeat patterns, creating amphibrachs instead of the anapaests that you had been using. So we actually have "for each one" and "who failed to" and "pre-sent him" and then, at the end, an iamb in a group of two: "a gift".
And from there, the amphibrachs are dropped, never to be seen again. The next group of three has the strong beat back on the final part of the group: "that could sat-". And then the last six subbeats clearly organize themselves into groups of two in "-is-fy" and "his fick-" and "-le mood".
And at the macro level, this causes some real problems. Because now, instead of alternating 4+3 strong beats, which had been the pattern until this moment, we clearly have 4+4 beats in this couplet. This makes line 8 feel one whole beat too long. The place we are expecting the rhyme to fall is where you have the first part of the word "fickle". And "fickle" doesn't rhyme with anything in this poem. So we now have, in addition to rhythmic ambiguity, forced rhyme. This is the death knell for any semblance of adequate rhythm or rhyme in this poem. Right here is where the whole house of cards starts tumbling down.
I could continue on, but I think you begin to see the problem. It begins with a lack of rhythmic certainty at the subbeat level, weaving drunkenly back and forth between groups of three and groups of two, and it results in major catastrophic rhythm at the macro level with readers having to create the rhythm for you, and force rhymes where they feel awkwardly placed.
There are some good aspects to this poem, don't get me wrong. I hope I haven't come across like a ton of bricks. But you asked specifically about its rhythm, and I hadn't seen anyone adequately address that question yet. I hope this has been some help. This poem could be salvaged, with a lot of effort and a lot of editing time. But my honest feeling with this one is just to chalk it up to a learning experience on how not to do rhythm and rhyme, and pay more attention at the subbeat level on your next attempt. You have some good ideas. You just need to fine tune your skill to be able to express them in rhyme.
You're not a ton of bricks, you're a godsend. I'm starting to realize that my way of reading is so naturally anapestic that I just jump back and forth without noticing. For instance I have never in my life read satisfy with an emphasis on -fy, so in my brain "...that could satisfy his fickle mood is three beats.
Although I'm not going to fight you tooth and nail on it, it does seem like it's not so much a big deal to mix and match. Even in "Where the Sidewalk Ends" Silverstein jumps back and forth (and in a lot of his other poems too) but the rhythm is never hard to pick up. I think it has a lot do with natural speaking rhythm. People naturally speak certain words in certain rhythms so while, for instance, the first two lines, might be technically unsound but when you hear someone say "There once sat a king on a throne of roots" the lilt of the voice naturally falls into the iamb, anapest(x2), iamb. (Though even naturally speaking I can see the problem with the "oak tree" line). So it still seems to me that mixing forms doesn't inherently break the rhythm if you're pretty sure someone's going to say it the way you want just by speaking naturally. When I have people read my poems back to me these changes in form tend to be picked up automatically in my experience, but my sample size is also fairly small as far as readers go which is why this feedback is so valuable.
But all that being said, I can see I still need to do some work and even if we don't see eye to eye on some points there were many mistakes you pointed out that I can definitely see I need to work on. Thank you so much!
Ah that makes sense. I think the reason my reading differed in this case was, again, going back to the way English uses stress to emphasize certain words as a grammatic component, and there's no grammatic reason one would need to emphasize his mood as opposed to someone else's mood. If the text were saying something like "to satisfy his fickle mood instead of my own mood", then okay I can see that word being emphasized.
Really? I'm interested, could you link me to one of his poems that does? I would honestly like to see (and maybe dissect) how he accomplished this.
Sure thing, Where the Sidewalk Ends is one of his titular poems and probably the most well known. He pulls off a lot of different things in that poem that I would never have noticed when I was younger.
Huh. You're completely right. Gonna go study that one now and rethink some things. Thanks.