Alexandrine, hexaverse and hexameter - Suzette Richards's Blog

Alexandrine is a name used for several types of verse line with related metrical structures. Most of which are ultimately derived from the classical French alexandrine.

The line’s name derives from the use in Medieval French Roman d’Alexandre of 1170, although it had already been used several decades earlier in Le Pèlerinage de Charlemagne. The foundation of most alexandrines consists of two hemistichs (half lines) of six syllables each, separated by a caesura (a metrical pause or word break, which may or may not be realised as a stronger syntactic break).

However, no tradition remains this simple. Each applies additional constraints (such as obligatory stress or non-stress on certain syllables) and option (such as a permitted or required additional syllable at the end of one or both hemistichs). Thus a line that is metrical in one tradition may be un-metrical in another.

In English the hemistich is replaced by hexaverse, meaning half lines of 6 syllables each. Thus ending with the traditional 12 syllables per verse. (Verse means both a single line, or a stanza in poetry.)

The number of metrical feet in a line is described as follows:

· Dimeter—two feet

· Trimeter—three feet

· Tetrameter—four feet

· Pentameter—five feet

· Hexameter—six feet

· Heptameter—seven feet

· Octameter—eight feet

In practice, the alexandrine can be found in the design of many poetic forms, for example, the Suzette sonnet:

· The couplets are iambic hexameter [*/|*/|*/—*/|*/|*/], and include an internal rhyme scheme. Mid-line punctuation is optional—replaced by conjunction.

For the contest, Eidolon

You may include iambic or trochaic hexameter if you wish, but it is NOT MANDATORY. The French alexandrine usually (not always) includes meter, but it is different to the English meter that usually embraces the iambic and occasionally the trochaic.

In my alexandrine couplet I employed iambic hexameter:

Thalassophile (poetrysoup.com)

HEXA means 6. Therefore, for the single perfect rhyme: iambic hexameter is */|*/|*/|*/|*/|*/; and for the syllabic rhyme: trochaic hexameter is /*|/*|/*|/*|/*|/*. Remember that for the contest only use polysyllabic words for the rhyme schemes, rhyming the 6^th and 12^th syllables in each line per the prescribed formula – see the contest page for the full details.

I hope that this blog has clarified some confusion in the minds of some poets as to what is meant by hexameter in the description of the alexandrine here at Poetry Soup and elsewhere.

The quickest way to succeed is to start now and figure it out as you go. You can't learn to drive in a parked car.

Happy quills!

Suzette