Questions tagged [meter]
Questions about determining and representing the meter of a poem, a practice called scansion.
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What is the metre in the Scotch dialect of Thrawn Janet by Robert Louis Stevenson?
What is the metre of this specific part of dialect: e.g is it iambic, trochaic, spondaic, anapaestic, dactylic?
Fifty years syne, when Mr. Soulis cam’ first to Ba’weary, he was still a young man––a ...
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"America for Me" - too regular metre?
I'm reading this older book called Poetic Meter and Poetic Form by Paul Fussell. In a chapter called "Metrical Variations", a part of a poem is cited as an example of overly regular metre. ...
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How does one count syllables in medieval Galician-Portuguese poetry?
I'm trying to figure out how to count syllables in medieval Galician-Portuguese cantigas. I've tried to find it in the book A poesía lírica galego-portuguesa by Giuseppe Tavani, which I found in my ...
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What is "epic caesura" in French "chansons de geste"?
I'm reading the book La chanson de geste by Jean Rychner. In a certain passage, the expression "epic caesura" ("césure épique" in the French original) appears, which I don't ...
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Scanning Langston Hughes' "The South"
Here's the poem "The South" by Langston Hughes scanned by me (a non-native English speaker):
The lazy, laughing South
With blood on its mouth.
The sunny-faced South,
Beast-strong,
Idiot-...
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In metrical poetry, what is equal timed?
In metrical poetry, what is equal timed (isochronous)? Is it:
the foot, or
the ictus, stressed syllable, in a foot, or
something else, or
nothing in particular?
user5641
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Scanning "Whan that Aprill with his shoures soote"
How would you scan the first line of The Canterbury Tales:
Whan that Aprill with his shoures soote
This blogger says that it's an iambic pentametre line with a headless initial foot and a feminine ...
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How do we divide syllables when scanning a poem?
In this line from Donne's A Valediction: Forbidding Mourning,
It leans and hearkens after it
I would scan it this way:
It leans and hear-kens af-ter it
However, my dictionary says that hearken is ...
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How to scan Wyatt's "They flee from me"?
I was told in my class that "They flee from me" is written in iambic pentameter, except for line number 6 in the second stanza in iambic tetrameter. However, some lines in my textbook have ...
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Iambic pentameter and mono syllables [closed]
I am studying poetry structure and I am focusing on iambic pentameter at the moment.
From what I have read, there are 10 syllables per line and 5 stressed and 5 unstressed syllables. It goes ...
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Is there a difference between Russian and English speaking cultures in the sense of rhythm when reciting poetry?
It may a vague question, but I haven't found any data on this myself.
I am Russian and I've heard a lot of reading of Russian poetry, since my childhood (poetry reading by heart is a staple assignment ...
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How do I analyze the stress/unstress in this Stephen King based novel?
Many of the jinni lines follow a stressed/unstressed sound pattern
The author talks about this in the ending. What does this mean exactly?
Here are some sequential lines from the jinni I would like ...
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What's the meter of "Song of Young Girl" by William Lang?
What's the meter of the poem "Song of Young Girl" by William Lang? The first three stanzas are:
Softly I walk through the forest
The owl sleeps in the thicket
I hear the voice of the lake ...
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What meter are "I lik the bred" poems in?
I'm trying to determine the meter of "i lik the bred" poems:
"i lik the bred" is a series of short poems about a domesticated cow written by British author Sam Garland, better ...
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How blank verse is “closest to the natural rhythms of English speech”? [duplicate]
I was reading a book and in that it was written
Shakespeare has used this poetic form (the blank verse) skillfully in his dramas because it is closest to the natural rhythms of English speech, and ...
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Etymology of "iamb", as a genre and a type of metre
An excellent verbose answer says that:
Etymologically, the word iambos is related to the Greek word for cripple, with the short syllable representing the lame leg and the long the strong one. ...
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Were English poets of the sixteenth century aware of the Great Vowel Shift?
The Great Vowel Shift was a series of changes in the pronunciation of English vowel sounds, marking the dividing line between Middle English and Modern English. A wholesale shift of sounds took place ...
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How to figure out if something is iambic pentameter?
I have an assignment where I have to write a Shakespearean sonnet for my professor (who is very strict about the formatting of the assignment). Are there any ways/tricks in which I can figure out if ...
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Resources for determining the meter of a line in Shakespeare
Most of Shakespeare's plays are written in iambic pentameter, which is part of what makes the verse so powerful. However, due to differences between different manuscripts of the text, and words ...
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How to scan the "Clark" poem from "One Fish, Two Fish"?
One of my favorite things about Dr. Seuss's One Fish, Two Fish, Red Fish, Blue Fish is the combination of rhyme and rhythm or meter in its poems. I think I've found satisfying rhythms for reading all ...
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How does this song lyric "Simple and Clean" scan?
From the English version of "Simple and Clean" by Utada Hikaru:
When you walk away
You don't hear me say
Please, O baby, don't go
Simple and clean is the way that you're making me feel ...
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What evidence is there for the "recession of accent" theory?
In the late 19th and early 20th century, there was a theory that certain oddities in the rhythms of Shakespeare and other early modern English poets could best be explained by recession of accent.
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What is the rhythm of the line 'I want a hero, an uncommon want'?
What is the rhythm of the following line from the start of Byron's Don Juan?
I want a hero: an uncommon want,
Is it iambic or trochaic? It's a tetrameter and not a pentameter that I am aware of. ...
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What is the meter of the poem "Snow" by Louis MacNeice?
I'm struggling to find the meter in which the poem "Snow" is written. I know that Shakespeare's poetry was written in iambic pentameter.
So far, I've read that the poem "Snow" has a rough meter, and ...
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What is the metre of "High Waving Heather" by Emily Bronte?
I really like "High Waving Heather" by E. Bronte:
High waving heather 'neath stormy blasts bending,
Midnight and moonlight and bright shining stars,
Darkness and glory rejoicingly blending,
...
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Can three unstressed syllables constitute a substitute foot in Shakespeare?
While trying to ascertain the accentuation of certain names in Shakespeare, by analyzing lines of verse where they occur, I encountered a couple of lines that I was tempted to scan with a substitute ...
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Confused about the meter and rhythm of Ulysses by Tennyson
Ulysses is written in iambic pentameter. There are a few spondees and trochees thrown in for good measure, but I'm confused in some places, like here:
I cannot rest from travel: I will drink
Life ...
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How can prose be musical?
Prof. Brooks Landon, U. Iowa, Ph.D. U. Texas at Austin. Building Great Sentences: How to Write the Kinds of Sentences You Love to Read (Great Courses) (2013). p. 142
...
user175
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What is the metrical style of Hungarian poetry?
While reading about Hungarian poetry, I came across the claim that:
pure syllabic/quantitative metre is very rare = Hungarian, Greco-Roman ‘időmértékes’ metre
I don't know what "pure syllabic/...
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Why did iambic pentameter become so 'standard' in classical English poetry?
Iambic pentameter is probably the most prevailing and widely used meter in classical English poetry, and it's the 'standard' form of verse in many forms of poetry such as sonnets. From Wikipedia (...
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Significance of rising/falling meter
If I am analyzing a poem and I realize that it has rising meter, what does that say about the poem. Like do happy tone poems have rising meters whereas sad poems have falling meter?
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Analysis of a self-written stanza in terms of meter?
A long time ago I used to write poetry, and there was one particular stanza that has always stuck with me and seemed inherently rhythmic, but I’m not familiar with the relevant terminology and so I’m ...
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'meter' vs. 'rhythm': How do their meanings in poetry differ from those in music?
'meter' and 'rhythm' are termed in poetry and music. So what are their parallels? Their differences?
Source: Listening to Music (2013 7 ed, but ∃ 8 ed) by Yale Prof. Craig Wright:
[p. 463] meter: ...
user175
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How does anacrusis simulate a ship's pushing back from dock?
[ Source : ] Interestingly, anakrouein or anacrusis is also found in Greek poetry, where the first syllable is not accented. Being the sea-faring people as they were, starting a poem with anacrusis ...
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Meter and number of syllables per line in "The Raven"
After reading some analysis of "The Raven", I've become confused about how syllables are counted. For example, in the second line:
Over many a quaint and curious volume of forgotten lore
A few ...
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A break in the 5-7-5-7-7 meter?
So I was reading about Waka poetry and then about the tanka meter, when I came across several poems by Ono no Komachi and Narihira. The ついにゆく poem from Narihira has 8 syllables rather than 7 in the ...
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Scanning the line "And every spirit upon earth" in Thomas Hardy's "The Darkling Thrush"
In the Thomas Hardy poem "The Darkling Thrush", one line seems to scan quite jarringly compared to the even iambic meter of the others:
The land's sharp features seemed to me
The Century's corpse ...
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Why did the alexandrine become the "natural" metre for French verse drama, whereas English renaissance drama adopted the iambic pentameter?
We previously had a question asking Were all of Shakespeare's plays fully in iambic pentameter?, but of course, it wasn't just Shakespeare who used iambic pentameter; it became the prevalent metre in ...
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Why isn't Coleridge's line about trochees missing an unstressed syllable?
Samuel Coleridge wrote this really fun poem, Metrical Feet: Lesson for a Boy, that names and gives examples of the various types of metric feet. I've included a copy and scanned the poem to make the ...
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Why do the witches in Macbeth rarely speak in iambic pentameter?
Shakespeare is pretty well known for writing in iambic pentameter. One important exception to this are the witches in Macbeth, who speak in everything from trochaic meter:
Double, double toil and ...
user111
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Is there a name for a version of trochaic tetrameter with lines of 8|7|8|7 syllables?
Is there a name for the meter used in Clementine:
Drove she ducklings to the water
Every morning just at nine
Struck her foot against a splinter
Fell into the foaming brine
Or in Schiller's Ode to ...
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How does scansion work in Arabic poetry?
I was reading about Arabic poetry on Wikipedia, and specifically the description of scansion:
The rhymed poetry falls within fifteen different meters collected and explained by al-Farahidi in The ...
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Do rap lyrics require metrical feet in English with long and short syllables?
I finally got a round to checking out Straight Outta Compton and it got me thinking seriously about metric feet in English poetry, and English poetry in general.
It's long been my suspicion that one ...
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Should there be a trochee in the second to last line of Thomas Hardy's "The Oxen"?
I'm working through the website For Better for Verse, and I'm currently working on a scansion of Thomas Hardy's "The Oxen". The last verse looks like this:
"In the lonely barton by yonder comb
...
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Do English language poems actually have feet?
The question Catalectic trochaic tetrameter or acephaleous iambic tetrameter? Scanning "Kubla Khan" describes an interesting case when the placement of feet has no effect on the ...
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Are there any gender-neutral alternatives to the phrase "feminine ending"?
A feminine ending is a line in verse where the last syllable is slack. For example, the first four lines of Hamlet's famous "to be or not to be" monologue all have feminine endings.
To be, or not ...
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Catalectic trochaic tetrameter or acephaleous iambic tetrameter? Scanning "Kubla Khan"
I'm currently teaching myself to scan, and I'm practicing with Coleridge's "Kubla Khan" at the moment. You can read the entire poem online. I've arrived at line 32: "Floated midway on the waves;" and ...
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How to scan Robert Frost's "For Once, Then, Something"
I just read a fascinating blog post titled "Frost, Hendecasyllabics & For Once, Then, Something". The blog post describes the challenges of scanning Robert Frost's poem "For Once, Then, Something" ...
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Why did Shakespeare write in iambic pentameter?
Shakespeare is incredibly famous for writing a lot in iambic pentameter.
But why did he choose to write in this specific style of having ten beats and 5 stressed syllables per line? Considering it ...
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How does Shakespeare's iambic pentameter work with Original Pronunciation?
In school, students are often taught about iambic pentameter via Shakespearian examples. These, however, were based on the Received Pronunciation (RP) reading of Shakespeare's works. In reality, ...
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