Why, asks a friend, attempt tetrameter?
 Because it once was noble, yet
 Capers before the proud pentameter,
 Tyrant of English. I regret
 To see this marvelous swift meter
 Deamean its heritage, and peter
 Into mere Hudibrastic tricks,
 Unapostolic knacks and knicks.
 But why take all this quite so badly?
 I would not, had I world and time
 To wait for reason, rhythm, rhyme,
 To reassert themselves, but sadly,
 The time is not remote when I
 Will not be here to wait. That's why.

Guest poem sent in by a contributor who wishes to remain anonymous:

Seth’s ‘The Golden Gate’- labelled “The Great Californian Novel” by Gore Vidal, was inspired by Pushkin’s Eugene Onegin, and like Pushkin’s work, is constructed with sonnets set end to end. Within 690 rhyming tetrameter sonnets, Seth weaves a satirical romance describing the stories of young professionals in San Francisco throughout their quests and questions to find, then deal with, love in their own lives as well as each others’.

I still recall how, years ago, when I’d first got hold of The Golden Gate, I’d put in an all-nighter as I read what was my first exposure to modern verse. Alternating between spartan and rich, wicked and funny, this racy novel made me realize how beautifully verse can lend itself to describing even the most mundane and monotonous travails of everyday life in the most delightful fashion.

Martin adds

This is a delightful defense of the tetrameter, a verse form that, as Seth notes, has lost out to the pentameter in the arena of ‘nobility’. As Derek Attridge points out¹, iambic pentameter is practically the only metre that isn’t expressible as a variant of the “natural” 4x4 metre (four lines of four beats), and thus distinguishes itself as more “intellectual”. To this has been added the weight of tradition and association, so that today a pentametric poem by its mere form biases the reader towards taking it more seriously - indeed the “tyrant of English”.

Besides “Eugene Onegin”, Seth’s book reminds me of Byron’s “Don Juan”. There is the same effect of brilliant, polished verse that nonetheless can give the impression of being dashed off in an odd moment - an ever-present vein of authorial joie de vivre and sheer fun that leavens the unusual weight of a novel written entirely in metrical verse.

Links

Biography

http://www.emory.edu/ENGLISH/Bahri/Seth.html

For more on the ever-popular tetrameter:

http://www.tetrameter.com/seth.htm

Eugene Onegin:

http://www.pushkins-poems.com/Yev001.htm