Seduce Readers into the “Zone”!
© 2009, 2015, by Leland Jamieson
(This is fairly long. It’s fairly deep stuff. Don’t let it distract you from sending your poem in the comment box. Do that first, and then come back to this. Print it for future reference. Adapted, with additions, from Chapter 7 of my book, How to Rhyme Your Way to ‘Metaphor Poems.’)
With nearly a century and a half of various expressions of free verse in American poetry behind us, it is pertinent for the poet-to-be to ask, “Why, in the 21st Century, compose by line, or in meter, or in rhyme? Is this a reactionary throw-back to the 19th Century?”
At the risk of over-simplification, I will summarize in my own words, to the extent it is pertinent to our subject, recent scientific thinking on the effects of line, meter, and rhyme in poetry with regard to their impact on the human brain.
This is in part a precis drawn from a rather long technical paper, “The Neural Lyre: Poetic Meter, the Brain, and Time,” by Frederick Turner and Ernst Pöppel. It is found in a collection of essays, New Expansive Poetry, edited by R.S. Gwynn (Story Line Press, 1999).
What does a study of 18 different languages, including Ancient Greek, Celtic, Chinese, English, French, German, Hungarian, Italian, Japanese, Latin, Slavic, Spanish, Uralic — plus those of Zambia and New Guinea and others less well-known in the west — show they all have in common? All utilize, in their most memorable poetry, lines that are a similar length in elapsed time when spoken.
On the one hand, the line length in all these languages does not exceed the elapsed time that the conscious mind consumes as it speaks, grasps, and understands the line’s content within what is called the “present moment of hearing.” On the other hand, the line is not so short that it allows other thoughts to intrude into the unconsumed “present moment of hearing.” The biological or “neural length” of this interval is roughly 3 seconds.
It is no accident that Iambic Pentameter, five stresses spoken over ten syllables, is so well established in English. Iambic Tetrameter, four stresses over eight syllables, is also well established, as is four-stress English Ballad meter. Why? Pentameter takes on average 3.3 seconds to speak, Tetrameter 2.4. These are congruent with lower frequency brain waves associated with the brain’s heightened creativity in the 3-second “present moment of hearing.”
When reading metrical end-rhymed poetry aloud we are drawn in by the underlying (subtle, not overemphasized) metrical auditory rhythm (ta-TUM, ta-TUM, ta-TUM) as well as by periodic true end-rhymes. Scientists say the brain is driven by them. These auditory rhythmic drivers measure out each “present moment of hearing.” They bring about a cooperative feedback loop across the corpus callosum between the (reasoning-and-word) strength of the left hemisphere and the (feeling-and-image) strength of the right.
When the right and left hemispheres are united in this feedback loop, we experience our world more holistically (whether as poets composing a poem, or readers of it, or listeners to it). This is especially true for experience we consider ambiguous, contradictory, or multiple in its meanings. Purely analytic left-brain thinking alone cannot accomplish this holistic integration for us.
Metrical end-rhymed poetry helps us make sense of the world with all its contradictions at a depth prose cannot. Free verse, even with its rhetorical rhythms, fails as deeply as prose. The reason? Both prose and free verse lack regularly recurring auditory drivers (regular subliminal ta-TUMs and true end-rhymes) which create the low frequency brain waves. It’s these brain-waves that achieve the feedback loop and effect the optimum integration of the two hemispheres, or entrainment in the “poetry zone.”
To repeat, and add a third element: First is the underlying rhythm of meter, an auditory driver. Second is the recurring rhyme-sound images that mark turnings at the ends of three-second lines, also auditory drivers. Now add the Third: The lyric voice with its contrapuntal and interpretative speech-stress. These three join forces subliminally. Together they harness for the reader the power of the whole brain. They enable it to become entrained, and thus to experience poetry at its deepest levels because the brain is in the “zone.”
Thus, meter, line, and rhyme are far from just a throwback to a prior era (whether the 18th Century, or Shakespeare’s time, or the time of the Ancient Greeks and Romans). Composing by line, in meter, and in true ear rhyme (neither slant rhymes, nor blank verse) makes the most time-proven and universal poetry for one simple reason. According to the scientific evidence available to us, it creates a three-fold structure enabling speech to entrain the human brain, and therefore access it most holistically, in the “zone.” The same phenomenon puts the poet in the zone when composing the poem.
Every musical group today has a drummer. Why? To seduce the listeners to the dance. Shouldn’t your poetry have the music of rhyme, the beat of the drum, and seduction into the “zone” for your reader? And for you, the poet? For me, the answer is “Yes!” And "Yes!"
Leland
Oh, yes! Speaking of “the dance,” go to the next post and read to the end.
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