Dilemma

I have been facing a dilemma these past few days. I have been working on a rhyming, children’s story and have just realised that I have absolutely no idea about meter. In fact, I am not even sure how to spell it, is it metre or meter? Right, I have just looked it up and here is the definition. Meter refers to the rhythm of a poem. This isn’t the same as rhyme, even though the words have the same root. Rhythm refers to the sound of each line of poetry, not just the last sound, and meter is a way of counting or identifying the system of rhythm used.

I have learnt that meter has patterns, with stressed and unstressed syllables appearing in an orderly way.

This new-found knowledge all came about last Thursday, when I attended a morning tea with local writers. This group had met a couple of times already, but this was my first attendance. I was asked to share with the group a bit about my writing and was the first to do so. I pulled my two published books from my bag and passed them around, then I also included my poem, which was the last piece I had been working on. Had I gone later in this discussion, I would have realised that producing my books was probably not the thing to do and certainly not an unfinished manuscript. But I am pleased that I did because that produced the glaring hole that I have in my knowledge about poetry.

We did not learn about stressed and unstressed syllables at school and I was reasonably good at the subject.

 As my poem reached two highly-skilled writers further down the table, I watched them frowning and commenting to each other. I leaned over and saw what looked like morse code on my paper – a series of dots and dashes. ‘’No this isn’t right,’’ one said, pointing to my use of the word ‘mum’. ‘’Mother would work in its place, but you probably wouldn’t want that,’’ I was informed.  ‘’You need another word here.’’

 ‘’Would ‘his mum’ work,’’ I asked?

‘’Not really.’’

At that point, I was unable to see what the problem was. This poem is one I started 30 years ago. It is a true story about my son Jason, and his fateful roller coaster ride, when he was a boy. I originally wrote it as part of a creative writing course I partook in, back in the 1990’s. Five years ago, I resurrected it, thinking it might be a poem I could publish and asked my niece if she would be interested in illustrating it for me. She was.

I have worked and reworked the verses, substituting words to try to get the feel and rhyme I wanted. Lisa produced a few illustrations for me and I submitted the story to one publisher about a year ago. I was told its lack of rhythm and meter was one reason it was rejected. A couple of weeks ago, Lisa informed me that she was intending to finish the illustrations this winter. I immediately pulled my poem back out and worked more on making the verses flow.

On our trip back from the writer’s get together, I asked my friend to explain what these women were trying to tell me and decided it must have been that the number of syllables differed from verse to verse. So, I set about correcting this, spending hours, making each line uniform, with seven syllables each.

Yesterday, I took my poem to my friend across the road and I asked her to read it aloud. My problem is that I am over familiar with it. I know automatically where to stress words. Listening to it, people have thought it sounds great, but when reading it, comment that words are missing. I wanted to see how this new consistency affected someone’s ability to read the story.

I was not expecting her feedback. I had thought she would say that it was either easier to read or harder. Instead, she informed me that she didn’t like this new version.

‘’The joy is missing,’’ she said.

The penny dropped for me. I had just made this story sterile. It was all the same, line after line, seven syllables.

The awareness of meter had been dawning on me too. I now understand what these women at the group were referring to. There should be a pattern with short and long syllables. Perhaps a short then a long, repeated, or the other way around. And of course, there are variations. Going back to my earlier example, I had unknowingly used a pattern of long, short syllables in the previous verse and now I was turning that around. My whole poem lacks rhythm and meter, I see that now.

But my dilemma came, about whether to also revert back to my old version of the poem, the one that contained the joy. I have done so, back to my verses with uneven syllables and no meter and rhyme. I have retained some of the newly written verses though. Through my first rewrite, I wasn’t changing the content of the verses, just the words, as I didn’t want to muck up the illustrations.

I am too familiar with this poem, that is my problem. I can’t tell that I need another word here and there. Am I an idiot for going with my gut? Basically, I am ignoring the advice I have been given. But I also feel comfortable with the version I am submitting. Surely, that is the bottom line, isn’t it?