I read Jessica Hornik’s poem “Evening, Lake St. Catherine” in the latest National Review (August 14, 2023). I wish I could reprint it (here it is behind a paywall if you subscribe,) but she’s getting a well-deserved payday and that’s a good thing. It’s a wonderful poem about the highlights of a day folding in towards a moment of reflection or relaxation.

The shape of it is interesting. I’ve been reading about poetic form and function with just enough understanding to make hedged observations. Reading too much into things is a toy I brought with me, but couple that with some gleenings from a well written book, and I’m practically an expert, or the nearest you’re likely to find on the subject in my kitchen at this moment.

The poem is thirteen lines of blank verse set in couplets excepting the last standalone line. The opening line is eight syllables and the next is seven. Then seven then eight, then seven then eight or nine depending on how you pronounce “chocolate.” Nine/seven, five/eight, eight/four, and all alone a ten. There doesn’t seem to be regulation but it follows a mostly iambic music with breaks and me not knowing if a dropped stress is a concession to sense or if she’s shifted to a three syllable foot here and there. Or is it free verse and I’m seeing pieces where there’s a whole? I lack a fluency I wish I had.

I have this issue all the time when reading something that breaks a simple repeated meter. if I see un-st/un-st/un-st/un-st in the first line I say “Iambic tetrameter. If the next line gives me un-st/un-st/un-st/un, what is that? Is that three iambs with an unattached or dropped syllable? Two iambs with an un-st-un foot I looked up so I could call an amphibranch? Is this something poets don’t care about or shrug at?