BY JOHN ANSELL
Anapestic pentameter isn’t an amateur rhyme,
It just isn’t a meter we’re meeting a lot of the time:
Neither Auden nor Dryden nor Milton nor Byron nor Keats
Ever fell for its five-footed anti-dactylian beats.
Nor did Chaucer or Spenser or Shelley or Shakespeare or Pope
Seem to think anapestic pentameter offered much scope,
And I guessed for the rest it was grist for the jester at best,
An’ a PEST an’ a PEST an’ a PEST an’ a PEST an’ a PEST!
But on googling to chart anapestic pentameter’s fall,
I discovered no poet of note had employed it at all,
So it’s making its global debut in the Martinborough Star;
As another New Zealander famously sang, how bizarre!
I’m delighted to beat anapestic pentameter’s drum:
Titty-TUM-titty-TUM-titty-TUM-titty-TUM-titty-TUM!
Or ch-CHOO-ch-ch-CHOO-ch-ch-CHOO-ch-ch-CHOO-ch-ch-CHOO!
As the Christchurch Express through the towns of the south used to do.
Anapestic’s the meter where every third beat gets the stress,
Although anapest is a dactylic word — but I digress.
(This word is dactylic cos an is the beat that you stress,
But dactyl’s trochaic; dactylic, I have to confess,
Along with trochaic, is deemed amphibraic, in fact,
And with trochee dactylic and iamb a dactyl, I’m whacked!)
“It’s a clattery meter that’s suited to chattery chat,”
Said the cat in the hat who had sat on the tattered old mat.
Had the cat had a rat on the mat, would the rat attack back
With a RAT-a-tat-TAT-a-tat-HACK-a-cat-RAT-attack-SNACK!?
(If the cat had an uppity yak for a yacketty-yak,
Then the cat, not the rat’d be sat upon flat on the mat.)
Like that cat in Manhattan whose Cadillac flattened his cat:
Kitty-CAT-kitty-CAT-kitty-CAT-kitty-CAT-kitty-SPLAT!
Although not every kitty gets out of this ditty alive,
Still I hope anapestic pentameter beat will survive.
Should a poet detest anapestic pentameter still,
He’s just lacking the patience and probably lacking the skill.
Now we’ve taught you to write anapestic pentameter rhyme,
Let us hope it’s a meter we meet a bit more of the time!
