Explaining my poem: "Deborah, My Lynne"

You might wonder what "Iambic Pentameter" is all about and why "Deborah, My Lynne" meant a lot to me. I have been on eternal expedition into the world of poetry, its rules, its design and all. Poem, to me, is a medium where I can vent my inner desires, frustrations and to understand and enjoy other poems as well. I learned to redefine how I do poetry and realized what true poet meant by "A poem is not a poem without metering".

What is metering? Metering is complicated for most deaf individual, because to pronounce a word in voice is often our major weakness. The definition of 'metering' from http://thefreedictionary.com is:

"The measured arrangement of words in poetry, as by accentual rhythm, syllabic quantity, or the number of syllables in a line."

Metering a word is all about accents and syllables. I am going to use the word "tomorrow" as an example in how we define metering. To pronounce "tomorrow" it is To-mor-row, which is 3 syllables. Now that is how we meter a word.

There are various types of metering i.e. trimeter, tetrameter and so on. They simply meant limited number per line, for instance, pentameter means 5 feet per line. Feet mean 2 syllables per meter and for pentameter, 10 syllables per line. For example in Sonnet 18 here is the excerpt from Shakespeare who, amongst other poets, is a master in what we call "iambic pentameter":

"Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?
Thou art more lovely and more temperate"

Now let us analyze this using scansion, the method to find metering in a line of poetry. I will separate them using the pipeline character (|) as follows:

Shall I | com-pare | thee to | a sum | -mer's day?
Thou art | more love | -ly and | more tem | -per-ate

Notice that there are two syllables in each feet separated by pipeline character? Do you notice that there are 5 feet per line? That is how we define a "pentameter". Now what about iambic? Iambic is a foot that contains an accent of non-stressed followed by stressed syllable i.e. da DUM. Now let consider this example as "iambic pentameter" where words in bold is stressed accent:

da DUM | da DUM | da DUM | da DUM | da DUM (10 syllable or 5 feet)

"da" is non-stressed and "DUM" is stressed, try pronouncing it vocally. Now let us go back to Shakespeare's Sonnet 18 verse:

Shall I | com-pare | thee to | a sum | -mer’s day? (10)
Thou art | more love | -ly and | more tem | -per-ate (10)

This point of view made me realize the importance of pronouncing a word as mentioned in most dictionary books. I started to research on how words are pronounced by asking hearing friends, they taught me to depend on dictionary books or online. Sometimes it can be tricky and having hearing friend can help a lot to practice how I redefine my poetry. So I decided to practice writing poetry by writing my wife a poem.

Ah, "Do you love me?" you say? Bleeding heart
of that I cherish doth my love impart!
Abysmal fire is burning deep within
a dream of you, O Deborah my Lynne.

An ocean billows sunny days and then,
Reflecting shiny waters back of when
our sparkling romance that our love have been!
I always love you, Deborah, my Lynne.

Now let me show you how my poem is metered:

Ah, "Do | you love | me?" you | say? Bleed | -ing heart (10)
of that | I cher | -ish doth | my love | im-part! (10)
A-bys | -mal fire | is burn | -ing deep | with-in (10)
a dream | of you, | O Deb | -o-rah | my Lynne. (10)

An o | -cean bill | -ows sun | -ny days | and then, (10)
Re-flect | -ing shi | -ny wat | -ers back | of when (10)
our spark | -ling rom | -ance that | our love | have been! (10)
I al | -ways love | you, Deb | -o-rah | my Lynne. (10)

I hope that I defined poetry in a way you can understand and to better understand poems by Shakespeare and other poets. There are also different metering i.e. trochee, dactyl, trimeter, tetrameter and so on.

Now, I wonder, what about ASL? Can we do the same way using ASL? How do we do metering in ASL? What is “non-stressed” and “stressed” of a word in ASL? Let us explore in that aspect together, creating our own poetry in ASL that CAN do metering the same way true poets do their poems!