6 Week 6 – Sound
Leigh Hancock and Michelle Bonczek Evory
excerpted from Naming the Unnameable: An Approach to Poetry for New Generations by Michelle Bonczek Evory (license info at end)
Even before you were born, in your watery womb home, your body recognized patterns of sound. It began with the beat of your mother’s heart, the swishing of her blood. Rhythm is primal. It is comforting, and it can be startling. When rhythms break, they wake us. When rhythms extend, we become entranced. Rhythm is integral to poetry and a mark of what poetry actually is. In learning to interpret poetry’s structures and sound patterns, in free verse, our ears attune finely to tone, cadence, pitch, rhythm, and silence. In formal verse, we employ a particular language to help us talk about rhythm.
Meter: Length and Rhythm
In metrical verse, lines can be divided into length and rhythm which we refer to as feet, and each foot’s syllable into a stress. Each foot contains either two or three syllables (see below). You may have seen the symbols used to indicate this: ˘ ΄ :the curve marks an unstressed foot, the slash a stress. In the following words, the first syllable is stressed and the second is not: Tennis. Fiction. Music. In the following words, the first syllable is unstressed and the second is: Unlock. Tonight. Against. Using this method of dividing a poem’s lines into feet and stresses is called scansion.
Metrical Lines
-
- Monometer: A one-foot line: │ Therefore
- Dimeter: A two-foot line │Therefore,│ dolphins
- Trimeter: A three-foot line │Therefore, │dolphins │broke through
- Tetrameter: A four-foot line │Therefore, │dolphins │broke through│ happily
- Pentameter: A five-foot line │Therefore, │dolphins │broke through│ happily │and leapt
- Hexameter: A six-foot line. │Therefore, │dolphins │broke through│ happily │and leapt │into
- Septameter: A seven-foot line │Therefore, │dolphins │broke through│ happily │and leapt │into │daylight
- Octameter: An eight-foot line │Therefore, │dolphins │broke through│ happily │and leapt │into │daylight│in a flash
Metrical Feet
Iamb ˘ ΄ a light stress followed by a heavy stress
- and leapt
Trochee ΄ ˘ a heavy stress followed by a light stress
- dol-phin
Dactyl ΄ ˘ ˘ a heavy stress followed by two light stresses
- hap-pi-ly
Anapest ˘ ˘ ΄ two light stresses followed by a heavy stress
- in a flash
Spondee ˉ ˉ two equal stresses
- broke through
If we put these terms together, we can begin to scan lines:
- Iambic tetrameter:
Whose woods │these are │I think │I know
His house │is in │the vil│lage* though
(Robert Frost from “Stopping By Woods on a Snowy Evening”)
*Note that feet can break in the middle of words.
- Iambic pentameter:
The world │is too │much with │us late │and soon
(William Wordsworth from “The World Is Too Much with Us”)
- Trochaic Octometer:
Once up│on a │midnight │dreary, │while I │pondered,│weak and │weary,
Over │many │quaint and │curious│ volume│ of for│gotten │lore—
(Edgar Allan Poe from “The Raven”)
The art of scansion