The Measured Emotion of Metered Verse

Staring dejectedly at my Odyssey monologue on Saturday, I focused on a single thought; I made a mistake. In making my earlier decision to write my monologue in metered verse, moving away from the powerful poeticism of extemporaneous storytelling, which I had manipulated successfully for my Twilight: Los Angeles, 1992 project, I had instead used what now seemed like an unfamiliar, rigid structure. Instead of taking a risk with this impersonal format, I wrote half of a new monologue, in free prose, before considering whether it worked more effectively. Reading both drafts, I saw that the first, while formal, did a better job in total of presenting my character than the second. In my panic, I had underestimated the impact of metered poetry simply because the unfamiliar format presented a possible risk; my fixed mindset had made me think that, without evidence (in the form of a grade) proving that I could use this new style of poetry and achieve success on my project, I needed to resort to my “tried and true” style. In actuality, the only way for me to know whether I could be successful using the metered poetry required that I commit fully to the new structure and do my best to incorporate literary elements into the piece, and even if I did not receive an outstanding grade, I would have experimented with different literary choices, their benefits, and their downsides and move forward with an improved understanding of which stylistic choices I felt most comfortable with.