On Counting Syllables

In response to our last column we heard from Michael Dylan Welch on the subject of counting syllables. We thought we would share his e-mail with you.

Michael Dylan Welch: I appreciate the fresh perspectives Patricia and Jerry give to the haiku that appear in Geppo. You each bring to light poems that I sometimes failed to notice sufficiently, and I appreciate the dialog that your comments facilitate.

I recently read the latest issue of Geppo (XXIV:4), and was puzzled, however, to read your reference to one particular haiku as having seventeen syllables when I believe it has only sixteen. Here is the poem in question, by Zinovy Vayman (#4178):

Judean hillside

between the barbed wire barbs

a swinging sparrow

The problem words here are ‘‘barbed” and “wire,” and they are worth commenting on for the benefit of Geppo’s readers who choose to count syllables.

Let me start with ‘‘barbed.” A syllable is a unit of sound (not of spelling), thus ‘‘barbed” is correctly counted as one syllable. To clarify the point, consider the word “stacked.” I have seen some writers count this word as two syllables in haiku, yet soundwise it is really “stact,” which, if this were its spelling, I don’t believe anyone would miscount as two syllables. The problem is presumably that some words with the “-ed” ending do gain an additional syllable with this suffix, as in “netted,” so some writers of syllabic haiku may make what I believe is the incorrect assumption that words such as “stacked” and “barbed” are two syllables when they really aren’t. One needs to listen to each word, not just look at them, a valuable insight for all haiku composition, whether syllabic or not.

Now for the word “wire,” which is more of a problem. In some geographical regions of the United States and elsewhere in the English-speaking world, certain diphthongs and digraphs may be pronounced in such a way as to make them sound like two syllables, as in “why-er.” However, such pronunciations are not necessarily standard English, and by definition each of these diphthongs and digraphs is counted as a single syllable/ sound. Furthermore, in deciding such matters when they are in doubt, I would advise haiku writers intent on counting syllables to always tum to a dictionary. Every reputable dictionary not only provides meanings and histories of each word but also indicates the number of syllables, often with a raised dot between independent syllables. In all of several dictionaries I have checked, including printed and online versions, both “barbed” and “wire” are indicated as being one-syllable words. Thus, I humbly submit that the poem referred to as “rendered with grace, poignance, and sorrow in seventeen syllables” uses, in fact, just sixteen.

I would allow, Patricia, that you chose to be gracious in your comment by assuming that the author of this poem may have intended the poem to be seventeen syllables, but I do believe, by the standard and linguistic definitions of a syllable, that it is not.

None of this diminishes the value of the poem, of course, and it remains one of grace and poignance, but I do wish to point out this small matter so that haiku writers who count syllables might be aware of potential problems. Haiku poets are routinely concerned with small details; I should hope, if they count syllables, that consistent and accurate counting be among them.

Patricia J. Machmiller: Michael, thanks for writing. Of course, you’re right. And if this were a contest with rules requiring seventeen syllables, the dictionary would have the last say and, unfortunately, this poem could not be a winner unless the judge were willing to defend choosing a poem that broke the rules of the contest. But this isn’t a contest—it’s poetry and, as you said, I gave the poet the benefit of the “dwell time” inherent in the common pronunciation of the technically one-syllable word, “wire.”