new style

I didn’t run today because of rain
but deny strongly it was ’cause of pain
that dogged my hips and knee so much last May
and left my marathon in disarray

Notice anything yet? That’s right, no more prose, finely-crafted or otherwise, today I’m experimenting with the medium of poetry, or poesy as you might say if you were the kind of kid who got beaten up on the play-ground.

This has been inspired by a lovely book by Stephen Fry with, ironically for such a well written book, a name that is possibly the worst pun this side of Fleet street, The Ode Less Travelled. But, moving on:

Another story caught my eye today
Cockroaches, pigeons in a restaurant
in Chinatown. I’m terrified to say
I’ve had lunch there a few times and I thought
“it’s not so bad” (including Peking Duck
cooked in a kitchen smothered in black muck).

Whooo, this is hard work, this verse business. If you have some experience with this stuff, you’ll recognise the two snatches of doggerel above as iambic pentameter, admittedly of a fairly low standard and arguably slumping into the trochaic late in the piece.

Poetry, as you might expect from a pastime mostly concerned with words, has some wonderful jargon. It’s far better than running with its “intervals” and “fartlek” (ugly word). How about this:

alexandrine: A line of iambic hexameter, typically found in English as the last line of a Spenserian Stanza or similar pentametric verse arrangement

So now you know. Also:

anacreontics: Short-lined (often seven-syllable trochaics), celebrating erotic love, wine and pleasure.

and

ictus: the unit of stress within a foot

Use them at your next party, I’m sure you’ll impress your friends and acquaintances. Just be careful - ictus isn’t about your actual foot. It’s a poetic term.

It’s all very exciting. Tomorrow I might try something in the heptameter vein, or possibly hexameter or even haiku. Perhaps even some Gerard Manley Hopkins-style sprung rhythm, although I’ll probably only manage about one post a year, and that would be pretty much unintelligible.