Comments on All for the Middle Class Now

This poem, “All for the Middle Class Now” has a rhyme scheme aabb ccdd eeff gghh iijj kkll. This rhyme shows that the poem has six stanzas made up of quatrains. Four verses make a quatrain. All six quatrains in this poem have end-rhymes. Quatrains are very popular in English language poetry and they are easy to memorize. The verses in this poem measures three feet that is why, the verses are called trimeter verses.

What is rhyme? Rhyme is a repetition of similar sounds in two or more words and is often used in poetry and songs. Rhyme can also be a poetic genre such as “Rhyming Couplet” and “Nursery Rhymes”. In poetry, internal rhyme or middle rhyme is rhyme that occurs in a single verse, in any of the following situations with examples underlined:

  i)        Involving words in the middle of a verse; for example:

           

            Walks pet dog, leash in hand

                In winter wonderland

           

 ii)        Involving words in the middle of a verse with words at the end of the verse; for example:

            Breeze blows; fantasy grows;

                Body in sub zeroes;                   

iii)        Involving words in middle of verse with words in middle of next verse; for  example:

            Skins, no more sun baking;

               New home in Four Season;

               Mauby-cans pour bourbon.

               
In English Language poetry, the foot is limited to the following six foot types named in Table 1.

Table 1

The scansion of stanza 1 of poem “All for the Middle Class Now” shows various foot types. See examples below:

The iamb is the constituent foot type in this verse; hence this verse is called an iambic trimeter. A foot in this verse is missing. When part of a foot is missing in this way, the verse becomes catalectic. This verse is metrically incomplete because one or two of the ending unstressed syllables is omitted. One may tend to consider the catalysis as a half-foot, but in poetic meter a half-foot is not recognized.

Verse 2 has no iambic foot in it, yet the verse is described as an iambic trimeter verse. This is so because the iamb is the constituent foot shaping English Language poetry. Bear in mind that these are only examples taken from the entire poem. A full scansion of the entire poem would show that the iambic foot dominates. This verse also shows that at the end a foot is missing so the right way to describe this missing foot is that it is catalectic; a half foot is not recognized in metered poetry.

Verse 3 is called an iambic trimeter verse. No foot is missing in this verse. The meter in this verse is precise.

 The iamb is the constituent foot type in Verse 4; hence this verse is called an iambic trimeter verse. The incomplete foot at the end of this verse is catalectic and adds no new measurement to the verse. The verse can only be described as an iambic trimeter verse.

In English language poetry, most poems are written in Qualitative Meter, which relies on a pattern of stressed and unstressed syllables. The iamb is the most common metrical foot in English language poetry. It is called a rising meter because its sound rises from unstressed to stress.

The anapest (ˬ ˬ ̷) is a trisyllabic metrical foot made up of three syllables (unstressed, unstressed, stress). The British spelling is anapaest. It is also known as the antidactylus because the dactyl (̷ ˬ ˬ) has this symbolic pattern in reversed order. Examples as shown below of the anapestic foot are taken from “All for the Middle Class Now”.

The anapest and the dactyl are bouncing meters. In the twentieth century they were very popular in comic verses than for serious poetry. The dactyl and trochee (̷ ˬ) are called falling meters. Their movement falls from a stress to unstressed.

The spondee (̷ ̷) still measures a foot even thought it has one sound that is stressed. The pyrrhic (ˬ ˬ) with one sound that is unstressed still measures one foot. The spondee and pyrrhic are never used as the sole meter of a poem. Wherever the spondee and the pyrrhic are found in the verse, they provide the complementary role of lending emphasis and variety to a meter especially the iambic rhythmic verses of English Language poetry.

Reading the title of the poem, “middle class” brings to the mind the various layers in contemporary society and how such layers (lower income, upper income and super rich) are identified through the earning power prism. To paraphrase this poem the mind extracts from its content the implied theme; for example, it could be, “The Struggles of the Middle Class” others might paraphrase it differently such as; for example, “The Cycle of Life” or any other for that matter. In poetry any implied theme is correct, so long as the analysis is backed up from the content found in the poem’s verses or lines.

“All for the Middle Class Now” has words and phrases which bring into focus an array of phonetic symbolism and sensory images.

Poets incorporate in their poetry, words sounds that tag other words to achieve sounds appropriate to their significance. In the poem, “All for the Middle Class Now” the first stanza, verse 1 says:

Sun glistens through the glazed glass:

Notice the words underlined (glistens, glazed, glass). These words suggest light. These words have the same sound and associated meaning and are examples of phonetic symbolism. Most words with the first consonants gl bring to the mind the notion of light.

Sensory images allow readers to imagine events through the use of the senses. All able people see, smell, hear, touch, taste, have movement or tension, internal sensation, fear, fatigue, thirst and hunger. Sensory images are classified as follows:

Auditory         -           representation of sound

Gustatory        -           representation of taste

Kinesthetic      -           movement, physical tension

Olfactory         -           representation of smell

Organic           -           internal sensation, hunger, thirst, fatigue, nausea

Tactile             -           touch, hardness, softness, wetness, heat and cold

Visual              -           representation of sight

Embedded are these sensory images in the poem “All for the Middle Class Now” as shown in Table 2. Sensory images heighten sensory perceptions into a poem through language, making the words palpable.

Table 2

All for the Middle Class Now
Sensory Images
Stanzas	Verses	Examples	Types
1 1 4 5	1 3 4 3	Sun glistens through the glazed glass; Autumn blooms in November From the dimness of the sun Find new home in four seasons;	Visual imagery
1 3	4 1	Leaves golden brown strike ember... Breeze blows so fantasy grows;	Auditory imagery
2 6	1 1	Trees with skeletal remains, Fresh newcomer from tropics;	Olfactory imagery
2 3 4 4 5 5 5 6	2 4 1 3 1 3 4 3	Standing outside window panes Fondly, playing in the snow... Elderly health in limbo, Now they cuddle and they run Uprooting and adapting; Find new home in four seasons; Mauby-can disses for bourbon Walks the pet dog hand in hand	Kinesthetic imagery
5 6	2 4	Skins no more in sun baking Now, in winter wonderland	Organic imagery
5	4	Mauby-can disses for bourbon	Gustatory imagery
5 6 6 6	2 2 3 4	Skins no more in sun baking In frosty winter’s frolics; Walks the pet dog hand in hand Now, in winter wonderland.	Tactile imagery

The Foot of Iamb

In Table above notice how the symbols for “long and short vowels” in disyllable of the Quantitative Meter equate with the “stressed and unstressed disyllable of Accentual-Syllabic forms in Qualitative meter with respect to the Iamb, the most common metrical foot in English and other languages as well.

The Iamb is called a rising meter because its sound rises from unstressed sound to a stressed sound. The four verses in Stanza 50 of Lord Tennyson’s poem "In Memoriam" provide examples of iambs used in English poetry.

In Memoriam
Stanza 50

1 Be near me when my light is low,
2 When the blood creeps, and the nerves prick
3 And tingle; and the heart is sick,
4 And all the wheels of Being slow.

And show the results from the four verses scanned as follows:

The scansion of these four verses has provided some basic clues as to the structure and form of the verses in the poem. Verses 1 and 3 of stanza 50 make use of the iamb and other foot types but still measures four feet each in Non-Standard Iambic Tetrameter verse. Verse 2 has no iambs but still measures four feet; without any iambs present it cannot be called an Iambic Tetrameter verse, but simply a Tetrameter Verse. Verse 4 is made up entirely of iambs and measures four iambic feet and is rightly called a Standard Iambic Tetrameter verse. The iamb is clearly recognized for its monotonous rhythmic tone (da-dum, da-dum, da-dum); probably the reason why Lord Tennyson mixed iambs with other foot types like the spondee, pyrrhic to shake up the rhythmic flow.

A Standard iambic verse regardless of the length of the foot is a verse containing all its feet made up of iambs.

A Non-standard iambic verse regardless of the length of the foot has the iambs mixed with other foot types for example the, trochee, spondee, dactyl, anapest and pyrrhic. This structure counteracts the metronomic effect by substituting for an iamb another type of foot whose stress is different. The first foot in the verse is the one most likely to change. The second foot is almost always an iamb. This is where the “inversion technique” is used. This technique allows iambic tetrameter verses (and other types of iambic feet, example iambic pentameter) to retain their dominance in spite of being invaded by other foot types. The inversion technique imposes strict compliance in that there must be no compromising on the required length of feet; so an iambic tetrameter must measure four feet, the iambic pentameter must measure five feet, iambic hexameter must measure six feet and so on. Most inversions tend to fall on the trochee.

In the poetic world, no one goes around saying Non-standard and Standard Iambic Tetrameter as the case may be; so long as the verses measure four feet the qualifier is not needed, just simply Iambic Tetrameter, Iambic Pentameter, whatever the case may be is the acceptable term used in poetry analysis.

Attention must be drawn to the fact that in addition to having poems written in classical Hexameter, over centuries English poems have shifted from classical Hexameter to Iambic Hexameter. An example of this shifting is seen in poems written by Michael Drayton and other eminent poets through the ages. Drayton used iambic hexameter couplets way back in 1612 in his “Poly-Olbion”. Here is an example from his works:

Classical English poets have experienced great difficulty in writing poems with Dactylic Hexameter verses. The position taken on this is that English leaves vowels and consonants out from words, thus becoming a problem because the Hexameter relies on phonetics, and sounds always have fixed positions. Several attempts were made in the 18th century to adapt Dactylic Hexameter into English Iambic Pentameter. An example of this is found “Couplets on Wit” by Alexander Pope where he used Heroic Couplets (a pair of rhyming verses written in iambic pentameter) an example is shown in Stanza VI taken from the poem where he use quite effectively iambs in the creation of Iambic Pentameter verses in heroic couplets; and disregarded the use of the Dactylic Hexameter. The Dactylic Hexameter has never been popularly used in English, where the standard meter is iambic pentameter. Take a look:

Couplets on Wit (Stanza VI)

Wou’d you your writings to some Palates fit
Purged all you verses from the sin of wit
For authors now are conceited grown
They praise no works but what are like their own

Have you noticed that in verse 3 of the exampler that the last foot is incomplete, that is, there is a syllable missing? In poetry this is exceptable. What the poet has done is to shift the feeling of the poem, a technique so often used to achieve a certain effect.  So in addition to this verse being an iambic pentameter, it is also a catalectic verse in iambic pentameter. A safe definition for this type of verse probably would go like this: A catalectic verse is a metrically incomplete verse, lacking a syllable at the end or ending with an incomplete foot.

Heroic Couplet

A pair of rhyming verses written in Iambic Pentameter is termed a Heroic couplet. It was so called for its use in the composition of epic poetry in the 17th and 18th centuries. The couplet is formed with the use of two successive verses of poetry with equal length and rhythmic correspondence with end words that rhyme.

Geoffrey Chaucer created the “heroic couplet” easily recognized in his “Canterbury Tales”. A couplet for special purposes, is the shortest stanza form, but is frequently joined with other couplets to form a poem with stanzas of four verses with each verse having ten-syllables. So it is easy to figure out why the “heroic couplet” bears such names as the decasyllabic quatrain also known as the “heroic stanza”, or “heroic quatrain”. Thus, the decasyllabic quatrain consists of four verses with a rhyme scheme of aabb or abab.

Note however, that “heroic couplets are also formed with no stanza divisions, as in Roberts Browning’s “My Last Duchess”. See excerpt of poem scanned below: