Poetry: Prose-To-Verse Workshop Exercise. Taking a passage, turning it into iambic pentameter and making it into your own Custom Essay

Prose-to-Verse Workshop
A passage from Sir Thomas North’s translation of Plutarch’s Life of Marcus Antonius:
the poop whereof was of gold, the sails of purple, and the oars of silver, which kept stroke in
rowing after the sound of the music of flutes, hautboys, citherns, viols, and such other
instruments as they played upon in the barge. And now for the person of her self: she was
laid under a pavilion of cloth of gold of tissue, apparelled and attired liked the goddess
Venus, commonly drawn in picture; and hard by her, on either hand of her, pretty fair boys
apparelled as painters do set forth god Cupid, with little fans in their hands, with the which
they fanned wind upon her. Her ladies and gentlewomen also, the fairest of them were
apparelled like the nymphs Nereids (which are the mermaids of the waters) and like the
Graces, some steering the helm, others tending the tackle and ropes of the barge, out of the
which there came a wonderful passing sweet savour of perfumes, that perfumed the wharf’s
side, pestered with innumerable multitudes of people. Some of them followed the barge all
along the river’s side; others also ran out of the city to see her coming in. So that in the end,
there ran such multitudes of people one after another to see her, that Antonius was left post
alone in the market-place, in his imperial seat to give audience.
Shakespeare’s “translation” of the above passage in Antony & Cleopatra, Act II, Sc 2, 198-225
(Enobarbus speaking):
The barge she sat in, like a burnished throne
Burned on the water. The poop was beaten gold;
Purple the sails, and so perfumed that
The winds were love-sick with them. The oars were silver,
Which to the tune of flutes kept stroke, and made
The water which they beat to follow faster,
As amorous of their strokes. For her own person,
It beggared all description. She did lie
In her pavilion—cloth of gold, of tissue—
O’er-picturing that Venus where we see
The fancy outwork nature. On each side her
Stood pretty dimpled boys, like smiling Cupids,
With divers-coloured fans whose wind did seem
To glow the delicate cheeks which they did cool,
And what they undid did . . .
Her gentlewomen, like the Nereides,
So many mermaids, rended her i’th’ eyes,
And made their bends adornings. At the helm
A seeming mermaid steers. The silken tackle
Swell with the touches of those flower-soft hands
That yarely frame the office. From the barge
A strange invisible perfume hits the sense
Of the adjacent wharfs. The city cast
Her people out upon her and Antony,
Enthroned i’th market-place, did sit alone,
Whistling to th’air, which but for vacancy
Had gone to gaze on Cleopatra too,
And made a gap in nature.
Translate the following passage, the first paragraph from Don DeLillo’s Libra, into blank
verse, changing or adding whatever words you like. You might even change the third-person
perspective (he) to first person (I).
This was the year he rode the subway to the ends of the city, two hundred miles of track.
He liked to stand at the front of the first car, hands flat against the glass. The train
smashed through the dark. People stood on local platforms staring nowhere, a look
they’d been practicing for years. He kind of wondered, speeding past, who they really
were. His body fluttered in the fastest stretches. They went so fast sometimes he thought
they were on the edge of no-control. The noise was pitched to a level of pain he
absorbed as a personal test. Another crazy-ass curve. There was so much iron in the
sound of those curves he could almost taste it, like a toy you put in your mouth when
you are little.
Notice how the first sentence is already very close to iambic pentameter:
This was | the year | he rode | the sub | way | to
the ends | of the ci | ty, two hun | dred miles | of track.
This basically passes as blank verse, with a very common variation in the first line (the opening
trochee “This was”) and two variations in the second (the anapests “of the ci-” and “-ty, two
hun-”).
Generally, you should strive to keep your varied feet in each line down to two, so that
the majority of the five feet (at least three) are exact iambs. If you have more varied feet than
regular feet, you won’t establish a metrical pattern—you won’t be writing blank verse, in other
words, but free verse, or what Frost called “loose blank verse.”
You might make the above two lines more exact like this
This was the year he rode the subway to
the ends of New York City, hoarding miles
of track. . . .
But remember, just because a line is more metrically “exact” does not mean it is better
rhythmically. Rhythm is not the same thing as meter. Think of meter as the mathematical grid
underneath the line—an abstraction. “Rhythm” is the living flesh of the words through which
the “meter” pulses like a heartbeat. Or to put it another way, “rhythm” is the actual, living music
through which the “meter” marks time like a metronome.
Useful Terms
iamb: unstressed syllable/stressed syllable, i.e. “about”
trochee: stressed syllable/unstressed syllable, i.e. “batter”
anapest: unstressed syllable/unstressed syllable/stressed syllable, i.e. “a surprise”
dactyl: stressed syllable/unstressed syllable/unstressed syllable, i.e. “Higgledy”
spondee: stressed syllable/stressed syllable, i.e. “slow time”
iambic pentameter: metrical line consisting of five iambs (ten syllables)
feminine ending: extra unstressed syllable at the end of an iambic line

You can place an order similar to this with us. You are assured of an authentic custom paper delivered within the given deadline besides our 24/7 customer support all through.