Translated, the Latin word ictus means beat. Beyond
saying that, one ventures immediately into a treacherous no-man's-land
of prosody. For English poetry, the two words are synonymous, and refer
to the pattern of recurrent emphases that define a line's length. Thus
we may speak of iambic pentameter as a "five-beat line." In that case,
the word means much the same as "stress," except that it is common to speak
of iambic pentameter lines as having more than five stresses, as in Byron's
celebrated "Roll on thou deep and dark blue Ocean, roll!" Of that line,
one could argue that it still retains a five-beat structure because of
the established template within which it takes its place. One can even
hear beats where no syllable is present to carry the beat (see unrealized
beat). To describe a poem in terms of its beats is to treat it
as something close to music--or even to rap songs or cheerleading routines.
Some poems demand this kind of interpretation--in terms of beats rather
than feet or syllables, as in the opening of this one by e. e. cummings's,
where "feet" would have to include one to three syllables:
/ /
/
/
anyone lived in a pretty how town
/ /
/
/
(with up so floating many bells down)
/ /
/ /
spring summer autumn winter
/ /
/
/
he sang his didn't he danced his did.
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