Tackling Metrics #5 – Variation and The Meaningful Beat

Ciardi – big surprise, huh? Vital to understanding the metrics of a poem is the balance between the regular meter, the mechanical beat, and the natural stresses of spoken English, the meaningful beat. The stress of the mechanical beat often works against both the natural stresses of spoken English and stresses created by the poem’s [...]

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Tackling Metrics #4 – Controlling Line Speed

again, from Ciardi’s How Does a Poem Mean? Common Metrical Ways to Control the Speed of the Line 1. the more unstressed syllables are brought together between accents, the faster the line will tend to move 2. the more caesuras and the more stressed syllables that occur in a given passage, the slower the pace [...]

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Tackling Metrics #3 – Pattern and Variation

culled, quoted, inspired by, and paraphrased from John Ciardi’s classic How Does a Poem Mean? The mechanical pattern of a poem is the exact, standard, normal beat, as if a metronome were counting out the beats. But poems written in strict mechanical pattern are boring and flat, as is music played strictly by the metronome. [...]

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Tackling Metrics #2 – getting the basics – line lengths

Numbers of Feet in a Line 1 monometer 2 dimeter 3 trimeter 4 tetrameter 5 pentameter 6 hexameter 7 septameter 8 octameter beyond here there be dragons

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Tackling Metrics #1 – getting the basics – beats

Basic Beats iambic / iamb ta-TUM – / natural for two syllable English words unstressed syllable is an 8th note trochaic / trochee TUM-ta /- English words with suffixes often trochaic anapestic / anapest ta-ta-TUM – – / often preposition-article-noun combinations unstressed syllables are 16th notes dactylic / dactyl TUM-ta-ta / – – reversed anapest [...]

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