Suturing alliterative verse into terza rima

I wrote Deep-Step and Twice-Mortal in terza rima.

I wanted, though, to fit alliterative verse into the poem.

I did this in two ways, laid out below. I have tried to make this post readable, but it is inevitably one for the sickos. I apologise if I lose you in the metrical weeds.

1. Alliterative-verse passages

One character in Deep-Step and Twice-Mortal speaks in alliterative verse, modelled on Old English alliterative verse. She also crops up in Kin-Bright, speaking in the same form! People go on for a long time in the underworld. Or, perhaps, the poet who wrote Deep-Step knew some form of Kin-Bright. Or, perhaps, vice versa. Without some textual-critical heavy-lifting, we can but wonder.

In any case, how to situate alliterative verse within surrounding terza rima?

I could just have plonked the alliterative verse in there without reference to its surroundings. In the past, I've tended to take that approach when writing alliterative-verse passages that slot into surrounding blank verse. I also took that approach when writing alliterative-verse passages to slot into rhyme royal.

But terza rima seems to me to emphasise continuity much more than blank verse or rhyme royal do. As a reminder: terza rima progresses through linked tercets rhyming aba bcb cdc ded efe et cetera. The rhyme link chaining stanza to stanza matters.

I stepped back, and asked myself what the driving principles of terza rima might be. One, as noted, is continuity. Interlace also stood out to me. In terza rima, you never hear an adjacent rhyme, except perhaps at the end of a chain, when the poet might tie things off with a closing couplet.

Therefore, I wondered, might I tie the first line of an alliterative-verse passage to the rhyme inherited from the middle of the prior terza rima stanza? Then, at the end of the alliterative-verse passage, I might rhyme the second-to-last line of alliterative verse with the following terza rima stanza.

Since I avoid pendant rhyme, that means the first and penultimate lines of the alliterative-verse passage must end on lifts/beats, not dips/offbeats.

At this point, the inventory of options in alliterative verse started to constrain my choices. Very crudely, one composes alliterative verse in an Old English style by selecting each half-line (a-verse or b-verse) from one of Sievers's 'five types':¹

• A: /x/x
• B: x/x/
• C: x//x
• D: //\x
• E: /\x/

…where / represents a lift, x represents any number of syllables combined in a dip, and \ represents half a stress (I know, I know!).

Old English alliterative verse favours falling lift-then-dip patterns, not rising dip-then-lift patterns. In the list above, three of the five options end in a dip (x) and only two end in a lift (/). Moreover, Sievers's types are lettered in order of frequency. Falling A types usually outnumber rising B types; C types and D types, which end falling, outnumber E types, which end rising.

Since I like to try to keep Sievers Type E half-lines in the a-verse, that meant the second and penultimate lines of the alliterative-verse passage would have to have Sievers Type B (x/x/) b-verses.

Schematically, for the diagram sickos, this's what I had to attempt:

x/x/x/x/x/ a-rhyme
x/x/x/x/x/ b-rhyme
x/x/x/x/x/ a-rhyme

'?? | Type B ending on b-rhyme
?? | ??
…
??| Type B ending on c-rhyme
?? | ??.'

x/x/x/x/x/ c-rhyme
x/x/x/x/x/ d-rhyme
x/x/x/x/x/ c-rhyme

Does this work? Well, it works for me. I'll find out whether it works for anyone else when the poem comes out.

Not all alliterative-verse passages in Deep-Step go on for a long time. In one case of short speech, I felt I had to form a terza rima stanza out of alliterative-verse lines.

In the draft as it stands, this looks something like this:

Mourn-queen murmured, | ‘Will you move to withdraw,
scathe-harping skean?² | Great skill you have showed
but I shall win ever, | lacking weakness or flaw;

subtle sound-stream | against your siege has flowed.’

Two normal terza rima five-beat lines follow to fill out a stanza. This is somewhat forced, but I like it. Though I might revise some parts, e.g. 'win ever'!

To have three b-verses in quick succession risks losing some of the unpredictability that characterises Old English alliterative verse. Or maybe this repetition isn't a risk, maybe it just makes it more like later Middle English alliterative verse, with its quite set b-verse patterns! In any case, I've tried to mitigate that risk somewhat by making the a-verses vary.

The last line of this speech can almost be assimilated into a five-beat rising line, with the second half line scanning x/x/x/ (with x representing a single offbeat) rather than x/x/ (with x representing a dip containing any number of syllables). Maybe I have failed in leaving the felt tension here between the alliterative-verse lines and the surrounding rising five-beat lines, or maybe this is fruitful.

2. Half-lines at the head of the blank verse line

When I write rising five-beat lines--or 'iambic pentameter', if you insist--I restrict metrical variation to the first part of the line.

That's because I like lines which signal their closure by growing more metrically orthodox towards their ends. I find this habit especially helpful when writing run-on lines, particularly given that plenty of my readers haven't had much practice reading poetry. One day I must write up a defence of what some would call metrical monotony.

Back in the blank verse for Kin-Bright, I wrote headless lines (/x/x/x/x/, with no opening offbeat), and lines with an inverted first beat (/xx/x/x/x/). In Deep-Step I've added another option: certain types of alliterative-verse half-line.

Specifically, I've been writing lines that begin with a Sievers D or E type.

• 'loon-haunted lakes, from which no shades escape'
• 'Hands harm-battered, left without a friend'
• 'aim-clouding urge all other thought surpassed'

I decided I would keep the alliteration over the first two beats, as it might help readers hear what's going on.

I also decided not to worry about whether or not the line's second part should start with an offbeat: if you listen closely to the middle example above, you'll hear that it's a syllable shorter than normal because it doesn't have such an offbeat (//\x/x/x/). I think that, in reading, the syntactic break after 'battered' fills this role happily enough (//\x,/x/x/).

Perhaps there're other ways to integrate alliterative-verse passages into surrounding terza rima. I'd be interested to hear suggestions!

I hope to release Deep-Step and Twice-Mortal at some point within 2026.