FINALLY REVEALING MY SUPER INSANE & BIZZARELY SPECIFIC HIDDEN TALENT. THIS IS THE REAL ME U GUYS

Below is a brief, simple explanation of the rhythmic form in which I am speaking for the duration of this video. But you really don’t have to read it if you don’t care! You can definitely just watch me apply the Salt New York Creme Tints and get my life. Next video will be free verse LOL

my robe: https://rstyle.me/+KCfJDo7LIrt8OfIfNV_O_g
Salt New York: https://saltnewyork.com/

ABOUT THE FORM
Iambic pentameter is a traditional rhythmic structure for a line of poetry. In the simplest terms, an iambic pentameter line contains ten syllables which alternate between soft and strong, beginning with a soft syllable. For example, the first line of this video, “Okay you guys, we’re really doing this,” has ten syllables:

o kay you guys we’re real ly do ing this

and the natural emphasis of the first syllable (o) is soft compared to the natural emphasis of the second syllable (kay), which is strong:

o KAY

and it goes on like that, alternating soft-strong, soft-strong, for the whole line:

o KAY you GUYS we’re REAL ly DO ing THIS

This is not because of how I pronounce the words, but rather because of the natural emphasis of the words. In this video, I am speaking in iambic pentameter by choosing and arranging words on the fly so that their natural emphasis creates this rhythm. That is why I wasn’t able to say certain things in the way that I usually do—there are many words and arrangements of words that simply do not support the form. I couldn’t even utter the phrase “iambic pentameter” in the video, because humorously, those two words together have a natural rhythm which deviates dramatically from the form they describe.

SOFT ENDINGS, SUBSTITUTIONS AND INVERSIONS
This rhythmic structure (soft-strong, soft-strong, soft-strong, soft-strong, soft-strong) is the blueprint for iambic pentameter, but writing or speaking in this rhythm does not mean adhering to the blueprint syllable for syllable in every single line. Effective, fluid, “healthy” iambic pentameter includes some lines that are perfectly iambic (like the above example), and other lines that are mostly iambic, but with some slight variation. Sometimes the variation comes in the form of an eleventh syllable—another soft syllable added on to the end of the line. Sometimes the variation comes in the form of a “substitution” or “inversion” (for example a strong syllable where a soft one should be, or soft-strong where strong-soft should be). In this video, I used all types of iambic lines (strict, soft-ending, lines with substitutions, and lines with inversions), but I tried not to substitute more than once per line very often.

Lastly, speaking in iambic pentameter lines does not mean that each sentence is only ten syllables long. Many of my sentences in this video are longer than a single line of iambic pentameter. When I was talking, if a sentence ended in the middle of a line, I started the next sentence in the middle of the line, too, right where the first sentence left off. For example:

I like to start by putting down the shimmer
and then I like to blend it with a brush.
I always like to blend things with a brush—
with these, I feel the finger application
initially is how you get the product
to soften, to apply the best, but then
I go in with a brush. Into the pan
and on my cheeks, after they’re softened up.

You can see that of these lines, three of them have the soft extra syllable at the end (the lines ending with the words “shimmer,” “application,” and “product”). There are also some substitutions:

- the word “to” in “to apply the best” is a soft syllable where a strong one would usually be;
- the line “I go in with a brush, into the pan” includes a substitution (the word “in”) and an inversion (the word “into”);
- in the final line here the word “after” is a strong-soft inversion of the soft-strong that would usually go there.

So of the roughly eighty syllables that eight lines of iambic pentameter contain, here nine of them are slight deviations from the blueprint. This amount of deviation keeps the meter lively and natural without actually departing from it.

If you’d like to read an actual poem in this form (unrhymed iambic pentameter, which is technically called “blank verse”), I recommend “Birches” by Robert Frost: https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/44260/birches

You can also check out the published work linked on my website: http://www.hannahlouiseposton.com/poems Almost all of my poems incorporate iambic pentameter. If you are particularly interested in this meter, I recommend “The Hunter,” which is in blank verse, “Fear of Horses” which is a traditional villanelle (iambic pentameter with a rhyme scheme and a repetition constraint), and “Grand Central Station” which is an exceedingly unusual traditional sonnet in that there are very few metrical substitutions.

more about the form: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iambic_pentameter

Thank you for watching!

Видео FINALLY REVEALING MY SUPER INSANE & BIZZARELY SPECIFIC HIDDEN TALENT. THIS IS THE REAL ME U GUYS канала Hannah Louise Poston