Bangor Daily News Bangor, ME, July 9th, 2007
The whippoorwills used to drive me mad at night. Or lull me to sleep. I can't remember anything in between, it was so long ago. In bed I heard them repeat their name over and over in the dark, relentlessly, one phrase: Whip-poor-will. Whip-poor-will. Whip-poor- will. Whip-poor-will. Whip-poor-will. Whip-poor-will. Whip-poor- will.
It's a three-note song. In poetic meter, three syllables pronounced together in this pattern are called a cretic, or amphimacer - an unstressed syllable between two stressed syllables. (English lends itself to iambs - two-syllable patterns of one unstressed and then...
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