Edna's Name's Feet
Now, don't ask me about this info if you run into me down at the Dollar Store or up shingling the pumphouse, because without my books and Google, I won't remember any of it. But every now and then I haul out my trusty The Complete Rhyming Dictionary Revised, edited by Clement Wood and revised by Ronald J. Bogus (believe it or not!), and turn to the front section called The Poet's Craft Book. This contains info that you can find in any halfway detailed book about versification, and I'm sure it's all quite Googlable. And we are all supposed to remember large wads of it from high school, too, though I retain about 4%, on a tip top day with no migraine phosphenes and high vim.
I'm speaking of what is called in this book "The Technique of Versification." It's that sub-basement of English 201 that uses words like meter, accent, iambic, anapestic, dactylic, dyspeptic, and so forth.
It seems everyone's in a perfect choir of disharmony regarding the definition of poetry and even the definition of verse. But for the sake of analyzation, most folks agree that it's convenient to break up the meter of a rhythmically structured sentence into what are called "feet." Why are they called feet? Who knows; the body analogy seems to stop there. Be that as it may, the Rhymezone (rhymezone.com) definition of "foot," pertinent to this discussion, is "A group of 2 or 3 syllables forming the basic unit of poetic rhythm." (Note how ironic that we're talking about meters and feet in the same system.) This is all a part of what is called "prosody," which should be the study of prose, but, of course, it isn't. Prosody is "The study of poetic meter and the art of versification." It comes from Greek stems which mean "Sung to instrumental music," which does connect it nicely to the supposed musical underpinnings of this column. (There's growing opinion that songs existed first, and poetry only came a while later.) I couldn't find a word for the study of prose. I wouldn't be surprised if it were versody. Or maybe it's Prozac.
But prosody is the study of versification, which is the form or metrical composition of a poem. Metrical, besides being a discontinued diet milkshake product, is an adjective meaning the rhythmic arrangement of syllables. Meter, the noun form, besides being what you put quarters in for six seconds of parking, is the accent in a metrical foot of verse. Foot is a group of two or three syllables forming the basic unit of poetic rhythm.
It's pretty simple until you start accumulating all these words that pile up like junk mail. First you read that a metric foot can only have one accented syllable, but can have one or two unaccented. Then you find out about the SPONDEE, which has TWO accented syllables, so right away things are in disagreement with themselves. Be that as it may, here are the basic feet:
A Feminine syllable is one lone unstressed syllable. I assume a masculine syllable is one lone stressed syllable. An IAMBIC foot has two syllables -- unstressed, stressed -- as: "the DOG." A TROCHAIC foot has two syllables -- stressed, unstressed -- as: "DOG food." A DACTYLIC foot has three syllables -- stressed, unstressed, unstressed -- as: "DOG for sale." An ANAPESTIC foot has three syllables -- unstressed, unstressed, stressed -- as "on the COUCH." An AMPHIBRACHIC foot has three syllables -- unstressed, stressed, unstressed -- as "the DOG's fault." A SPONDAIC foot, or spondee, has two stressed syllables, as: "WOOF! WOOF!"
If you draw a sawtooth line across a page, it can be seen as either a parade of W's or M's, depending on how you look at it. Same sort of thing is true with Metric Feet. "the BOY with a DOG" can be seen as "the BOY · with a DOG" (iambic · anapestic) or "the BOY with · a DOG" (amphibrachic · iambic).
So it's a formal system but at the same time arbitrary and confusing. And wait until you get into such deeper matters as the aphaeresis which is an ecthlipsis, which, in turn, is a metaplasm.
But what got me going on this trudge was my reading about the remarkable Edna St. Vincent Millay. She was really something, but it's her name that grabbed me, because it sounds so much like a waltz. I'll waltz down the Appian Way / With Edna St. Vincent Millay. Is your name a waltz? Technically, according to prosody, the dactylic foot would be the waltz foot: a stressed syllable followed by two unstressed syllables. Edna's name is best described (in my book) as two dactylic feet (ED na saint VIN cent mil) followed by a lone stressed syllable (masculine, I guess) LAY. So it's not a total waltz name, but there are lots of great 100% waltz names out there: Jennifer Aniston. Benjamin Harrison. Eleanor Roosevelt. Ellen Degeneres. Romeo. Pamela Anderson. Gilligan. Ludwig van Beethoven (if you stress the LUD more than the WIG). Gilbert and Sullivan. Bullwinkle. Donovan. Englebert Humperdink. Mr. and Mrs. Potato Head. Leadbelly.
There are lots of dactylic-trochaic (BOOM-ta-ta, BOOM-ta) names, which are hard to dance to, being in 5/4 time: ED-mund fitz-GER-ald. Salvidore Dali. Conan O' Brien. Charleton Heston. Dorothy Parker. Though usually when you say a bunch of these in a row, you stick in a blank syllable and give it a dactylic feeling: Salvidore Dali, pause, Dorothy Parker, pause, Edmund Fitzgerald, blub...
Or maybe you're 100% legitimately trochaic. There are far more trochaic (BOOM-ta) names than waltz names. I call them POLKA names because of the 2/4 beat: Basil Rathbone. Sammy Davis Junior. Pocahontas (Polka-hontas?). Elvis Presley. Sam and Janet Evening. Lyndon Johnson. Richard Nixon. Jimmy Carter. Annie Oakley. Little Richard. Johnnie Carson. Uncle Remus. Ingrid Bergman. Arthur Conan Doyle. Penny Marshal. Davy Crockett. Bigfoot. Flipper. Lassie. Robert Downey Junior. Frank Sinatra. Eldridge Cleaver. Beaver Cleaver. Helen Keller. Herbert Hoover. Carry Nation. Tina Turner. Yoko Ono. Paul McCartney. Oprah Winfrey. Isaac Newton. Alan Alda. Paris Hilton. Warren Beatty. Sonny Bono. Noah. Maharishi Mahesh Yogi. Mata Hari. David Bowie. Homer Simpson. Billy Crystal. Farrah Fawcett. Charles Nelson Reilly. Trigger. Frida Kahlo. Isadora Duncan. Aesop. Adam. Grandma Moses. Bunny Rabbit. Peter Paul and Mary. Woodie Guthrie. Peggy Seeger. Steve Gillette and Cindy Mangsen. Cathy Fink and Marcy Marxer. Matt Watroba. John McCutcheon. Gordon Lightfoot. Cisco Houston. Bobby Dylan. Whither Zither.
Sources:
The Complete Rhyming Dictionary Revised. Edited by Clement Wood, Revised by Ronald Bogus. Doubleday.
RhymeZone: Online at rhymezone.com