The problem with Craft books like Grammar books that preceded them is, they focus on the mechanics of writing without starting from a focus on what the writer wants to say. Burns noted that types of poems used types of metrical patterning, this post will borrow from Kipling's poem 'to a boy' to look at what metres say
Trochee ( stress, unstressed) trips, says Kipling, , so my imagining is this would convey 'being in love', 'joyous about something' etc
Spondee (stress, stress) solemn, stalks, says kipling. For me a spondee asserts, creates a finality as in 'so there'
Iambs ( unstressed, stressed) march says kipling. For me they also convey a horses gallop, steam engines rhythmic chugg, sounds of mechanical engines. That these sounds are rarely heard these days is why a large number of people now don't know what an Iamb is.
Three feet metre
Anapest (unstressed, unstressed stressed), leaps and bounds says kipling . Fry gives an example of the metre as ' in a spin' and 'understand' which shows the two moods that I think anapests capture.
Dactyl (stressed, unstressed unstressed) Fry gives word example 'agitate'. Spinning pool also says what the metre captures.
Amphibrychys ( unstressed, stressed, unstressed) hastes with a stately stride says Kipling. The loss of statecraft in the modern world males Fry example immoral more pertinent.
There are others read Fry's Ode Less Travelled p120 for them.
When starting to write you start with the story. Stories create rhythms, the point to this post is to consider how sound arrangement along a line augments meaning. Do you agree? Does the different metres above mean different things to you.
The biggest problem with what I am writing is that accents change stresses of a word. I find Auden difficult because I can't create an Oxford accent in my head.
Interested in your comments. Please write if don't agree at all oe else I will keep filling up this thread.
True, and it's very important in Russian poetry too. I guess the most used meters are anapest and iamb. It also depends somehow of the language used.
BTW, the Anglo-Saxons seem to have a great sense of rhythm (look at the limericks for ex). And look at the rhythm in this (long) poem of Robert W. Service (The Cremation of Sam McGee):
"Now Sam McGee was from Tennessee, where the cotton blooms and blows.
Why he left his home in the South to roam 'round the Pole, God only knows.
He was always cold, but the land of gold seemed to hold him like a spell;
Though he'd often say in his homely way that 'he'd sooner live in hell'. (etc.)
I find it great !
I'd like this thread to stay alive. Since posting it I discovered that Kipling revamped S T IColeridges poem to his son. More interestingly I read in a book called 'Patterns in Poetry' by LL J Blake from 1962, the meter is only one aspect of rhythm. Rhythm creates poems mood ( hopefully recreates the mood of the poet). He quotes Day Lewis 'meter is like a tide pulsing regularly underneath; the speech rythym is a less regular movement, like ripples on the surface. Rhyme can be arranged in patterns but it shoulD create an echo effect.
I have been reading complete works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge and the first part of the poem he wrote to his son. Kipling took it and amended it for his son.
I feel lost sometimes, when writers discuss the mechanics of metre. I understand how it's supposed to work but when I put pen to page, I lose it. I love when people who understand metre, read poetry (like Adam) and capture the rhythm.
I love this post (sorry bit late to the party) ... I agree with how rhythm can change meaning. I played with this in one poem which was about a domestic abuse situation but I used rhyme and pattern that I would normally use for a funny poem and it gave the poem urgency and build tension while had I chosen a story poem form it would probably have been sombre and silent The problem is I am still trying to get my head around stressed and non-stressed it's challenging enough to write in English to begin with! 😂
And most of my English I learned in Scotland so I don't have any other English accents in my head, so my writing might sound very different in your head as you don't have the Scottish twang in it.
Oh it would be interesting to hear how people with different accents read a poem
This is a really great post, Yvonne! The fun really starts when you start considering what forms are traditionally written for. For example, the Shakespearean Sonnet. I’m sure most are aware that traditionally these are considered love poems. But what if you strip it of the flow of iambic and threw in, say, Dactyl. It is described here to give an “agitated” tone… what does that then become?
It’s all a fun game!