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Creative
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Being aware of internal
structure makes reading
poetry much more
fulfilling, even if it’s
only a bit of
rudimentary structure.
It’s like anything –
wine, for example.
Knowing something about
wine helps you
appreciate it more.
Poetic meter consists of
units known as “feet.”
Of course, regular
everyday speech also
consists of “feet.” A
“foot” is made up of one
or two lightly stressed
syllables and one
heavily stressed
syllable. English and
American poetry has four
basic combinations of
“feet.”
Maybe they’re called
feet because people beat
out a pattern or rhythm
with their feet when
clogging or tap dancing.
Some steps are heavy and
others are light. Some
are soft and others
sharp. Such beats create
the rhythm of the dance.
Poetry is the same; the
beats can be carefully
counted to achieve the
overall rhythm. You can
tap out the beats of a
poem with your fingers
to figure out the meter.
The first of the four
basic combinations of
feet is called the
“iamb” and its pattern
is light-heavy, or
short-long. This means
it’s an unstressed
syllable followed by a
stressed syllable, and
it sounds like “da-DUM.”
An example of an iamb
would be a word such as
without, believe or
decay, and this kind of
meter is called
“iambic.”
The opposite of an iamb
is known as a “trochee”
and it’s called
“trochaic meter.” The
trochaic foot pattern is
heavy-light, or
long-short, which means
it has one stressed
syllable followed by one
unstressed syllable, so
it goes DUM-da. Some
examples are turtle,
starlight and whisper.
The next kind of foot is
an “anapest” with three
syllables, and a pattern
of light-light-heavy, or
short-short-long.
Anapests have two
unstressed syllables
followed by a stressed
syllable and they sound
like “da-da-DUM.”
Anapestic meter includes
phrases such as “to the
sea,” and “And his
cohorts were gleaming in
purple and gold.”
The fourth basic foot is
called a “dactyl” and
it’s known as “dactylic
meter.” It’s the
opposite of an anapest,
having three syllables
with a pattern of
heavy-light-light, or
long-short-short. It has
a stressed syllable
followed by two
unstressed syllables and
sounds like “DUM-da-da.”
An example would be “out
of the,” or “This is the
forest pri -meval. The
murmuring pines and the
hemlocks” (from Henry
Wadsworth Longfellow’s
poem Evangeline.)
Another example of
internal poetic
structure is the number
of feet in each line of
poetry. One foot is
known as monometer; two
as dimeter, three
trimeter, four
tetrameter, five
pentameter, and so on.
The iamb is the most
common foot in American
and English poetry
because its pattern is
the most similar to
ordinary speech. The
meter Shakespeare wrote
in, iambic pentameter,
is the most common verse
line in English and
American poetry, with
five iambs per line. “To
be, or not to be, that
is the question,” is a
good example.
Although the four meters
described above are the
most basic meters, there
are others such as the
“spondee,” long-long and
the “pyrrhus,”
short-short. In addition
there’s a “tribrach,”
short-short-short, an
“amphibrach,”
short-long-short, a
“bacchius,”
short-long-long, a “cretic,”
long-short-long, an “antibacchius,”
long-long-short, and a “molossus,”
long-long-long. The
names themselves are
wonderful! And
these are the techniques
poets and creative
writers use with
everyday words to
produce magic and
beauty.
Editor - Ray Corbett |