The Sounds of Poetry
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Rhythm in Poetry
Meter
Free Verse
Rhyme
Alliteration and Onomatopoeia
Practice
Rhythm in Poetry
Like music, poetry is based on rhythm—the
alternation of stressed and unstressed sounds that
makes the voice rise and fall.
Rhythm in Poetry
Poetic rhythm can take the form of
• meter
a strict rhythmic
pattern of stressed
and unstressed
syllables in each
line
• free verse
a loose kind of
rhythm that sounds
like natural speech
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Meter
In metrical poetry, stressed and unstressed
syllables are arranged in a regular pattern.
Listen to this excerpt. Which syllables are
stressed in each line?
˘ mountain
’
˘ mists,
’
˘ ’ ˘ at
’ our
˘ voice
’
The
condensing
˘ ’ the
˘ moon,
’
˘ spread
’ their
˘ snowy
’ ˘ flakes,
’
Under
had
˘ the
˘ keen
’ ice
’ shielding
’ ˘ our
˘ linkèd
’ ˘ sleep.
’
From
from “Prometheus Unbound” by Percy Bysshe Shelley
’ = stressed syllable
˘ = unstressed syllable
Meter
Marking the stressed (′) and unstressed (˘)
syllables of each line is called scanning a poem.
˘ mountain
’
˘ mists,
’
˘ ’ ˘ at
’ our
˘ voice
’
The
condensing
˘ ’ the
˘ moon,
’
˘ spread
’ their
˘ snowy
’ ˘ flakes,
’
Under
had
˘ the
˘ keen
’ ice
’ shielding
’ ˘ our
˘ linkèd
’ ˘ sleep.
’
From
from “Prometheus Unbound” by Percy Bysshe Shelley
Varying the meter
Meter
Metrical poetry is made up of metrical units called
feet. A foot consists of at least one stressed
syllable and usually one or more unstressed
syllables.
Five Metrical Feet
Single-Word Examples
iamb
˘’
insist
trochee
’ ˘
double
anapest
˘ ˘ ’
understand
dactyl
’ ˘ ˘
excellent
spondee
football
’ ’
Meter
Quick Check Identify the dominant metrical foot
in these lines: iamb, trochee, anapest, dactyl, or
spondee.
Tell me not, in mournful numbers,
from “A Psalm of Life” by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
I am monarch of all I survey;
from “The Solitude of Alexander Selkirk” by W. Cowper
When wasteful war shall statues overturn,
from “Sonnet 55” by William Shakespeare
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Free Verse
Free verse is poetry that does not have a regular
meter or rhyme scheme.
Never, in all your career of worrying, did you imagine
what worries could occur concerning the flying cat.
You are traveling to a distant city.
The cat must travel in a small box with holes.
—from “The Flying Cat” by Naomi Shihab Nye
Because it is “free” of metric rules, free verse
sounds more like prose or everyday speech than
formal poetry.
The Imagists
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Rhyme
Rhyme is the repetition of the accented vowel
sound and all subsequent sounds in a word.
Listen to this excerpt. What words rhyme?
A slumber did my spirit seal;
I had no human fears:
She seemed a thing that could not feel
The touch of earthly years.
from “A Slumber Did My Spirit Seal” by William Wordsworth
Rhyme
The chiming sounds of rhyme
• punctuate the poem’s
rhythm
• give the poem
structure
• make the poem
easier to remember
Rhyme
End rhyme is rhyme that occurs at the ends of
lines.
This knowledge, from an Angel's voice
Proceeding, made the heart rejoice
—from “The Pilgrim’s Dream” by William Wordsworth
Internal rhyme is rhyme within a line.
The sails at noon left off their tune,
—from “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner” by Samuel Taylor Coleridge
Rhyme
Rhymes may be exact or approximate.
• In an exact rhyme,
the words rhyme
perfectly.
heart—start
flicker—thicker
ordering—bordering
• In an approximate
rhyme, the sounds
are similar but not
exactly the same.
light—late
whisper—winter
bays—waves
Rhyme
Quick Check
All suddenly the wind comes soft,
And Spring is here again;
And the hawthorn quickens with buds of
green,
And my heart with buds of pain.
Identify the
exact and
approximate end
rhymes in these
stanzas.
My heart all Winter lay so numb
The earth so dead and frore
That I never thought the Spring would
come
Or my heart wake any more.
—from “Song” by Rupert Brooke
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Alliteration and Onomatopoeia
Alliteration is the repetition of consonant sounds
in words that appear close together.
Listen to this excerpt. What consonant sound is
repeated?
A long, long yellow on the lawn,
A hubbub as of feet;
Not audible, as ours to us,
But dapperer, more sweet;
from “A long, long yellow on the lawn” by Emily Dickinson
More about alliteration
Alliteration and Onomatopoeia
Onomatopoeia is the use of words that sound
like what they mean.
Listen to this excerpt. What word is an example
of onomatopoeia?
Here the water went down, the icebergs slid with gravel, the
gaps and the valleys hissed
from “Prairie” by Carl Sandburg
Alliteration and Onomatopoeia
Quick Check In this excerpt, find at least two
examples of alliteration and onomatopoeia.
I shall come near your window, where you look out when
your eyes open in the morning,
And there I shall slam together bird-houses and bird-baths
for wing-loose wrens and hummers to live in, birds with
yellow wing tips to blur and buzz soft all summer,
from “Broken-face Gargoyles” by Carl Sandburg
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Practice
As in ancient days, when poetry was
not written but only spoken or sung, poetry today
is addressed to the ear. You can’t really say that
you know a poem until you’ve heard it read aloud.
• Choose one of the poems you’ve read in this
chapter (or any favorite poem), and read it
aloud to yourself and then to a partner or a
small group.
• Then, write a paragraph or two discussing the
poem’s rhythm, rhyme, or other sound
effects.
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The End