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Wikipedia explains "Iambic Pentameter" as:

".... the particular rhythm that the words establish in that line.
That rhythm is measured in small groups of syllables;
these small groups of syllables are called 'feet'.
The word "iambic" describes the type of foot that is used (in English,
an unstressed syllable followed by a stressed syllable).
The word "pentameter" indicates that a line has five of these 'feet.' "


QUESTION: "What is Iambic Pentameter and where does it appear in A Course in Miracles?"

ANSWER:
That's a great question since more and more students are discovering that the a large portion of the Course was written in "Iambic Pentameter."

We begin with an excerpt from "The Rhythm and Reason of Reality: Prose and Poetry in A Course in Miracles:  written by Steve Michael Russell.  The excerpt is actually from the Preface, written by Ray Comeau who has himself written a book, "There Must Be Another Way: Reflections of a Mind Illuminated through A Course in Miracles

EXCERPT


"I have so much gratitude for Steve Michael Russell. With his musician's ear, he heard the underlying rhythm running through the prose paragraphs of Jesus' unworldly masterpiece, A Course in Miracles, and with his poetic sensibilities he saw the blank verse emerging from the prose of the Course."

"While sitting at his computer in the early 90's, reading the Course on his computer screen, he heard the rhythm in the lines, recognized the iambic pattern in the syllables of slack STRESS, slack STRESS, and realized the pattern of five sets of iambs per line. This is iambic pentameter, a poetic convention that appeared in the time of Shakespeare."

~Ray Comeau 


This is an example of iambic pentameter in the Course and illustrated in Steve Michael Russell's book: 


Iambic Pentameter in ACIM


Lee Flynn, a Course in Miracles Society [CIMS] member, has also devoted many years to the study of this meter as it occurs in the Course. It is because of Lee's keen eye and sense of meter that CIMS has been able to include the Lessons from 100 onward in the Daily Lesson Mailing formatted in iambic Pentameter.

Here is an example of the iambic formatted by Lee Flynn:

LESSON 182 
[first stanza]

  This world you seem to live in is not home 

   to you. And somewhere in your mind you know 

   that this is true. A memory of home

   keeps haunting you, as if there were a place

   which calls you to return although you do

   not recognize the Voice, nor what it is

   the Voice reminds you of. Yet still you feel

   an alien here, from somewhere all unknown.

   Nowhere so definite that you could say

   with certainty you are an exile here:

   just a persistent feeling, sometimes not

   more than a tiny throb, at other times

   hardly remembered, actively dismissed,

   but surely to return to mind again.

 

This lesson has also been set to Music by another CIMS member and Musician,

Martin Weber-Caspers, :

♪ ♫ Set to MUSIC by Martin Weber-Caspers ♪ ♫

So in summary, A Course in Miracles is written in Iambic Pentameter from Chapter 27 thorugh 31 and from Lesson 100 through 365.

How miraculous is this incredible feat!


As Steve Michael Russell states in his book,

"The Magnitude and beauty of the Course, simply as a work of literature and without regard to its miraculous content, adequately belie any notion of its human authorship. the divinity of the ideas expressed is beyond question. Certainly the poetic and prosaic forms contained in A Course in Miracles are there because that was necessary for the healing of God's Son, since this is the Holy Spirit's only purpose." 

The Rhythm and Reason of Reality: Prose and Poetry in A Course in Miracles

   Composed by Rev Reja Joy Green ~ editor 

Course In Miracles Society
7602 Pacific Street, Suite 200
Omaha, NE 68114
800-771-5056
cims@jcim.net