Prosody: Metre

The prose poems in this chapbook reference metre in a number of ways. The opening prose poems reference particular feet in their title, and in their use of stressed and unstressed syllables as long and short paragraphs. For example, the word ‘Siren’ is a trochee (stressed followed by unstressed syllable) and the prose poem ‘Siren Trochee’ contains a long paragraph followed by a short paragraph. Other prose poems imaginatively recreate metre or feet, including headless metre and free verse.
The sequence, Final Words in Hotel Rooms uses the same number of lines as the indicated metre: so, for instance, ‘Hotel Rival Octameter’ has eight sentences in its body paragraph. The extra line of dialogue which concludes each prose poem in this sequence creates a sentence in a specific metre – such as trochaic octameter.
In addition to these more formal constructions, the references to feet – anatomical as well as otherwise – in addition to allusions to pulses and beats are included to draw attention to the complex timing associated with all poetic language, so much more intricate than a simple metre’s metronome-like regularity. In this way, while this chapbook attempts to play with the more formal elements of metre and apply them ludically, it is invested in illustrating the ways in which prose poetry turns on its own rhythmic strategies to challenge the notion that “metrical rhythm is the privilege of verse alone.”