30 Poems in 30 Days: A Brief Glossary of Meter
September 12, 2007 by J.C. Hewitt
This is Day 9 of 30 Poems in 30 Days
Terms You Should Know
In order to have an intelligent discussion of meter, it is necessary to set forth a few preliminary definitions. These should be enough terms to get us started. You might also want to read the WRC article Rhythm and Stress by Gwyneth Box.
Poetic Meter: Word choices that create a pattern of sounds, stresses, word lengths, syllables, or beats that are repeated to create a line of poetry. In English the focus is generally on stresses and beats, but all patterns make for possible meters and other languages often focus on different types of patterns.
Beat: The smallest reducible part of a meter, such as a syllable.
Foot: A repeated unit of meter – usually two, three or four beats.
Stressed Syllable: The syllable a speaker emphasizes in speech. Shown here in Capital letters: CARpet, RABbit, oPEN, PATsy. Stressed syllables are also called long syllables.
Unstressed Syllable: The syllable a speaker demphasizes in speech. Shown here in lowercase letters: CARpet, RABbit, oPEN, PATsy. Unstressed syllables are also called short syllables.
Additional Terms
Amphibrach: A foot that consists of a stressed syllable between two unstressed syllables. This meter is most commonly seen in limericks. There ONCE was a HAPpy young PASTor.
Anapest: A foot that consists of two unstressed syllables followed by a long syllable such as Double UP double DOWN.
Choriamb: A foot that consists of four syllables: stressed,-unstressed,-unstressed,-stressed such as FIGHT for your RIGHTS.
Dactyl: A foot that consists of a stressed syllable followed by two unstressed syllables. HAPpily
Dimeter: A meter that consists of two feet.
Elegiac Meter: A meter that consists of two lines (a couplet) the first in dactylic hexameter and the second in dactylic pentameter.
Heptameter: A meter that consists of seven feet
Hexameter: A meter that consists of six feet
Iamb: A foot comprising an unstressed syllable followed by a stressed syllable such as TYrant. This is the most commonly used foot in English poetic meter.
Iambic Pentameter: A meter that consists of five feet of iambs. This is the meter common to sonnets, epics and Shakespearian plays.
Molossus: A foot that consists of three stressed syllables such as SHORT SHARP SHOCK.
Octameter: A meter that consists of eight feet
Pentameter: A meter that consists of five feet
Tetrameter: A meter that consists of four feet
Trimeter: A meter that consists of three feet
Trochee: A foot that consists of a stressed syllable followed by an unstressed syllable such as PLAYpen.
Today’s Assignment
Write a poem using a specific meter. The meter can be of your own choosing or even your own making, as long as you put a pattern into place. As always, feel free to post your poem in the comment section of this post.
Today’s Recommended Poet
Diane Lockward is a poet, teacher and an active blogger. Her poetry is feminine and feminist. She is smart and funny. Here poetry probes the politics of family, motherhood and food with affection and a bit of exasperation.
What Feeds Us
Eve’s Red Dress
You might also want to read her blog enries about voice vs. tone here and here.
Stopping Dogs on a Starry Night
Whose dogs are these that bark all night
Then man next door who sleeps all day
He does not hear them when he’s away at work
I toss my pillows right and left
The pity is that I’m not deaf
I turn the lights on in the yard
When out of sleep I have been jarred
Now silence greets the starry night
The moon above shines still and bright
These dogs are foolish moon-mad pups
I know for sure they’ll not shut up
So cotton in my ears I stuff
One things for sure I’ve had enough
I’ve earned the hours ahead for sleep
I’ve earned the hours ahead for sleep
The Versifier Never Sleeps
As candles melt along the sands of time
And poets suffer just to find a rhyme
Others grin at silver lining’s cloud
Though death be known upon her sullen shroud
Where grace lies calm when she is almost dead
And in her hand lay books that she has read
Of writer’s words that only she could see
And songbird’s cry that sounded like a plea
Of moments gone with every passing whim
And cruel intention makes a fool of him
A passerby will quickly look away
And promise to give help some other day
As hands outstretched beseeching a bequest
From heaven sent or hell that never rests
Mental armor growing all the while
While narrow-minded fools promote a smile
Such quiet ways are known to those who try
When weary mouths and hearts will never pry
Fervent poet will not find an end
With pen in hand and sorrow as a friend
Was it not clear when lovers wake and weep?
That never does a versifier sleep…
Connie- Loved your poem! Made me LOL! Been there far too often….
Complications and Opportunities
My mother fell and bruised her ribs
One more in a line of setbacks
We have learned to absorb
Some time had passed between bad news
Enough for us to think we were
Almost back to normal
Steps from bed to walker to cane
Steady over the summer months
But now each breath a task
Each breath a reminder that she
Has so much ground left to regain
Before we can relax
She is knitting potholders now
Working on her fine motor skills
But still mostly sleeping
She does not eat enough and she
Gets lightheaded dizzy fuzzy
Which is what made her fall
Nearly a year since this began
Such a long list of things gone wrong
So much to overcome
We get closer to fine and we
Look at how much we have been through
How much we have to lose
We still have time to give to this
We can still reach recovery
But slow so slow it goes
Sorry, folks – I promise you I have written lots of serious metrical verse in my time, but just now seem to be stuck on the silly stuff.
DISILLUSION
She said, “I’m craving chocolate at present,”
which seemed to us a very strange remark -
as if it were the whimsy of a moment,
and of no moment whether light or dark.
“You,” I said, “are no true chocoholic.”
The others nodded fervently and long.
I must confess I felt quite melancholic.
I’d thought she was a soul-mate. I was wrong.
“I hope you soon get over it,” I told her
but she was deaf to irony and scorn.
It would have been a waste of time to scold her.
Deficiencies like hers aren’t made but born.
There but for the grace … let’s show compassion.
She’ll never know the taste of true delight,
our unabating, unregretted passion,
that serotonin bliss with each new bite.
[...] 9th assignment from 30 poems in 30 days… A brief glossary of [...]
I chose Sapphics. Did you know that they are very hard?
SAPPHICS OF THE DEEP
Clams without teeth stopper their jaws and bind the
Currents; white flotillas of paper beach on
Tideless shores; I walk through convention, silenced,
Greeting the grey men.
Speaking nothing, language reduced by empty
Habit; sounds now mindless, unmade, like boats that
Drift in shallows, seeking no stormfront, sighting
No more the giants.
Leashed what once was swollen with Gods and Jung and
Darkness; thick, primordial waters made of
Words like squid, electric and phosphorescent
Colours in ink moved.
Well, dear cm, thank you for this. I had never heard of Sapphics before, and it was time I did! I’ll be having some fun experimenting with this form at some stage, and I believe you that it’s hard.
Your poem is amazing, quite different from what we have seen of you here so far, and with such depth and power. Well, your work always has depth and power, but this is in a different way, driven by the metre as much as the subject matter. And oh, those last two lines – gorgeous, I could sink my teeth into them!
Dear friends, I know how to use various metres, but tend to forget which is called what (except of course the iamb, which we all know). For others who are in the same boat, I thought I’d share this little verse which someone once gave me. It’s useful as it also indicates the most appropriate ways to use different metres. (I’m sorry, I don’t know the author, but I believe it was quoted in “About Literature” by Sue Woolfe and Sue Hampton, Macmillan 1984.) I include the way I personally note metre:
. = unstressed syllable, / – stressed syllable.
Memorise this verse (or keep it handy!):
Iambic feet are firm and flat
And come down heavily like that.
././././
Trochees dancing very lightly
Sparkle, froth and bubble brightly.
/./././.
Dactylic daintiness lilting so prettily
Moves about fluttering rather than wittily. /../../../..
While for speed and for haste such a rhythm is best
As we find in the race of the quick Anapest.
../../../../
Connie: The poem felt a little flat. I think the form was to rigid for you to say what you wanted. Thats one of my concerns with meter. It forces too many compromises.
Sandra: Way to mock Iambic Pentameter!
Rosemary: “serotonin bliss” I know it well.
CM: That is a very challenging form. Too hard for me. I think the challenge is to keep the form but move past the formal tone. Then you might create a minor revolution.
It’s a parody of Stopping by the Woods on a Snowy Evening, Robert Frost
Well, there’s not much else to say about it, it is what it is. I love “foolish moon-mad pups.”
Oh, so it is! Fancy us missing it.
Ha ha, one way and another, thanks to cm who hates him, we are all having a fresh look at Frost!
I love that phrase about the pups too.
I think something went wrong with fourth line in typing it up. Surely “at work” should be start of a new line, which should also have a few more words?
Rosemary, you are right — I lost a line: let’s make it read beginning with the fourth line –
He does not hear them loudly howl
When in the dark they cry and growl
This works for the meter, I may make another stab at it later for rhyme, I quit like this one — oh me, I’ve used dark again . . . .
Yes but here it’s a noun – that’s different.
[...] 30 Poems in 30 Days: A Brief Glossary of Meter [...]
[...] 30 Poems in 30 Days: A Brief Glossary of Meter [...]
Date Night
At last, by the pool,
we found each other,
like how in New York
we kept meeting by
the Alice statue.
We sat in the dark
with our take out food,
exhausted but still
so deeply in love.