Blank Verse (Unrhymed Iambic Pentameter)
Don't let the name fool you. Blank verse doesn't mean there's nothing going on. Blank verse is made up of unrhymed lines in iambic pentameter. Now, you can probably guess what "unrhymed" means, but the iambic pentameter part might be less obvious. Let's dig deeper, shall we?
Iambic pentameter is used to describe the rhythm at work in each line. Iambs are made up of one unstressed syllable and one stressed one, and sound like this: daDUM. Try saying "allow" out loud and you'll hear an iamb in action. The pentameter part just refers to how many feet (or beats) make up the line. In this case it's five ("penta-" = five)—five iambs to a line in iambic pentameter.
Blank verse is the glue that holds this poem together. The iambic pentameter ensures that the rhythm of the lines is steady as an old freight train. And while Heaney definitely gets a little funky with some poetic sound effects (we'll discuss this further in "Sound Check"), the regularity of blank verse keeps the train from running off the track.
But don't mistake regularity for being boring. Rules, Heaney knows, are made to be broken (or in this case, bent). One of the most common variations in blank verse, and one Heaney uses in this poem, is inversion. That means instead of the second syllable of the foot being stressed, the first gets the stress. Usually this happens at the beginning of the line, as in line 15:
Swimming tadpoles. Miss Walls would tell us how
Notice how the stress comes at the beginning of the line, then it goes back to normal with the second syllable of each foot stressed for the rest of the line. It's just enough variation so the regular rhythm doesn't take on a droning quality. Poetry is supposed to sound musical, after all, not like this guy.
Finally, we just couldn't let you go without mentioning line 21. Just look how small that guy is. This poem is organized as one, long stanza, but in this case this little two-word line signals a break between the young, exuberant, interested speaker and the older, more nervous and freaked-out speaker. So, even as the rhythm and the music of the poem are humming along, Heaney's form is giving us subtle clues as to how content is organized.