Dactylic hexameter: good for what ails you

I spent last weekend in Saskatoon at the Saskatchewan Writers’ Guild‘s annual fall conference. Among the events was a joint reading by two renowned Canadian writers, science fiction author Robert J. Sawyer and poet George Elliot Clarke.

It should surprise no reader of my column that I generally prefer readings by SF writers to readings by poets. I have even been known to repeat the comment of Robert Heinlein’s famed science-fictional character Lazarus Long that “A poet who reads his verse in public may have other nasty habits.”

But I’m not really against poetry readings–just bad poetry readings. George Elliot Clarke’s reading was a good poetry reading, and thus both interesting and entertaining. And, it turns out, it may even have been good for his health.

German physiologists reported this summer on an experiment that found that reciting lines from Homer’s Odyssey results in a greater synchronization of cardiovascular and respiratory responses. Normally they’re only rarely synchronized: rhythmic fluctuations in blood pressure take place naturally in 10-second-long cycles (called Mayer waves), whereas spontaneous breathing usually takes place at a rate of 15 breaths per minute. Getting those two cycles in sync may lower blood pressure and boost lung function–healthy for everyone, and especially helpful for heart patients.

The physiologists, led by Dirk Cysarz of the Herdecke Community Hospital and Institute of Mathematics at the University of Witten/Herdecke, chose Homer’s Odyssey for a very poetic reason: its meter.

The Odyssey, in common with many other ancient epic poems, is written in hexameter–six “metrons” or “feet” (rhythmic units) per line. More specifically, much of the Odyssey (and its companion, the Iliad) is written in dactylic hexameter. A dactyl is a collection of three syllables, the first long, the other two short. An ideal line of dactylic hexameter, then, consists of six feet, each of which has three syllables. In practice, it’s hard to keep this up, so it’s considered acceptable to replace some dactyls with spondees, which are feet with two long syllables.

I can sense your eyes glazing over. Perhaps an example is in order. This is the one all my references seem to use:

Down in a | deep dark | hole sat an | old pig | munching a | bean stalk.

This works out to

dactyl | spondee | dactyl | spondee | dactyl | spondee

but is still considered dactylic hexameter.

The researchers chose this form of poetry, seldom used by English-speaking writers, because one of the collaborators on the project, speech therapist Petric Von Bonin, had extensive experience with it and thought they might get good results from it. As well, there are historical accounts of Greek choruses and audiences reciting more than 10,000 lines of hexametric poetry without pausing. If it hadn’t been somehow enjoyable to do so, no one would have stuck it out. Finally, the researchers had a German translation of the Odyssey that maintained the poem’s hexameter.

They team had 17 healthy subjects, average age 43, take part in three different sessions, always at the same time of day. In each session, the subject performed a different exercise: reciting hexameter (repeating back phrases read to them by a researcher), controlled breathing at six breaths per minute (one breath per Mayer wave, in other words), or spontaneous breathing. All three exercises were done both while at rest and while exercising. The subject’s heart rate and airflow were recorded simultaneously.

The results were unambiguous. As the subjects recited Homer’s poem, their breathing rates slowed and became more synchronized with their heart rates. Controlled breathing had the same effect (though not quite as pronounced)–but the subjects found the poetry recitation enjoyable, whereas they found controlled breathing exercises boring. During spontaneous breathing, there was little synchronization at all.

This isn’t the first study to find that recitation can affect physiology. Previous research has examined the effects of reciting the Rosary devotion–“Hail Mary”–and the “OM” yoga mantra. Both also reduced respiration levels to six breaths a minute, and their ability to achieve that result may explain their popularity, just as hexameter’s ability to do so may explain why ancient Greeks were willing to recite 10,000 lines of it at a sitting.

The effect was only found if the poetry was read carefully, with every line syllable carefully pronounced and a quiet breath taken after every half line.

In other words, good poetry reading is beneficial, bad poetry reading is not.

That’s good news for George Eliot Clarke…at least, if he ever takes up writing dactylic hexameter.