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Vassar Miller’s “Light Reading” Vassar Miller’s “Light Reading” is a classic Shakespearean sonnet. The poem is iambic with alternating rhyming lines and culminating with a revealing couplet. The metric pattern in “Light Reading” is predominately iambic pentameter although the majority of the lines do not contain exactly ten syllables. On average, each line has about eleven syllables, which typically conclude with a feminine ending. The opening line contains twelve syllables and also has an anapest. The first seven lines of the poem all have a feminine ending, giving each of these lines an additional syllable. The eighth line seems to be the most irregular in the sonnet. This line opens with a trochee and further complicates with two names, “Flash Gordon and Buck Rogers”. The stresses in these names gives the eighth line a spondee and an anapest. The line then concludes with another trochee. Lines ten and eleven both begin with two iambs but switch to trochees. Line ten in particular ends with a masculine ending in order to remain pentameter with the rest of the poem despite consisting of only nine syllables. Finally, two perfect lines of iambic pentameter make up the poem’s concluding couplet. The iambic pattern is not the only defining feature of the Shakespearean sonnet; all sonnets follow a specific rhyme scheme. Shakespearean sonnets contain three sets of four lines that alternate rhymes. A rhyming couplet then follows these twelve lines. Not all the rhymes within “Light Reading” are perfect rhymes, however. The poem contains three pairs of half rhymes. “Units” from line one and “minutes” from line 3 compile the first half rhyme since they do sound extremely similar to one another. The second half rhyme lies in line two (Ripper) and line four (dinner). The vowel sounds match but they are not completely rhyming. Finally, lines nine and eleven, with “kitchen” and “lichen”, respectively, comprise another half rhyme set in the poem. The words look the same phonetically but vary greatly in pronunciation, making this pair the last half rhyme of the sonnet.
Approximate Word count = 1312
Approximate Pages = 5.2
(250 words per page double spaced)
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