Class Recorder Notes
9-19 Emma Sheldrick
2 new things on the lit haiku site
- Resources
- Poetic devices
Rhythm and Rhyme
- Lines with seven feet are heptameter not septameter.
- Blank verse – unrhymed iambic pentameter (even without rhyme,
writers still kept meter)
- Meter, rhythm, sound devices are used in order to achieve their
purpose of meaning. - “Rhythm has meaning”
Scanning a line (scansion): marking each syllable above the word
Ex:
U / U
/
U
/ U
/ U
/
But soft what light through yonder window breaks
In The Waste Land:
- Line 1 of the Waste Land – stressed, unstressed – trochaic
- Lines 19-20 – starts trochaic then into iambic. (There is a repetition of
meter throughout the poem)
- Line 18 and 8
o Random rhythm to them
o In this section, the rhythm of the lines goes back and forth
(some are rhythmic, some are random)
o Jeong-a: Perhaps the rhythm is reflecting what’s going on in the
poem (shifting back and forth to different places and people,
not ever staying in one place)
- Line 111-122
o Peter: Breaks up the meter as much as he can (since the
speaker is going crazy, the meter is falling apart)
o Cacophony
o Jeong-a: Slips in and out of rhythm
- Line 128–130: 20s song
It’s ok to observe things in poems and point them out, even if you can’t
think of any connections or reasons for them.
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-
Rhythm of the Waste Land is syncopated and jazz like – Reflects the
time that it was written (syncopation a variety which are in some was
unexpected which makes an off-beat tune or place of music. Used
frequently in jazz movement).
Lines 203-206:
o All stressed, triples, seem iambic near the end.
o Reca: the speaker is going to a river and remembers all the
death and the war. Onomatopoeia for sounds of the river.
o Patrick: Myth of Philomel - myth that it’s a forced sound.
Mentioned later on as well.
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Eliot mixes formal writing and rhyming techniques. Uses other sound
techniques to create a unity in the poem (consonance, assonance,
alliteration, etc.).
Line 235 – 238:
o Sonnet form
o Even though he rejects all romantic forms, he puts a sonnet in
there.
o Jae Hyun- Disapproves of sonnets, so tries to put something
that should’ve been love, but isn’t, into sonnet form. It creates
irony.
Eliot replaces rhyme with repetition in the beginning of the poem.
(Repeats words like rock, shadow, only, and ing words).
Lines 182
o Rhyme (song, long, hear, ear), stop rhyme throughout the
stanza, then starts again near the end (year, hear, bring,
spring…).
o Kat: He could be jarring the writing to help focus the more
jarring images
o He also uses a repetition of syntax and phrases
 Ex: “hurry up please it’s time”, “there is not even”
o Repetition of images
 Ex: “there is no water”
o He uses “DA DA DA” which is then reflected again later on in
the poem as “datta, dayadhvam, damyata”.
End-stopped line – read at the end of the line (phrase)
Enjambment – a line that’s meant to be read through to the next line without
stopping
Caesura – break in mid-line
For next class: Pick out certain lines in your passages to use as examples to
discuss with your essay.
Reflection:
This class was interesting for me because I’ve never really studied about
rhythm and the different effects it has on a poem. It never really occurred to me
that rhythm could have an impact on the text, so when we started discussing the
ways it affects the meaning of the poem I was intrigued. The one example that
really stood out to me was the idea that the rhythm in the Wasteland is always
changing to possibly give the effect of the constant changing in speaker and
scenery. Once that was mentioned in our class discussion, it didn’t really affect
the way I understood the poem and how I looked at it, but it did make me truly
appreciate the ingenuity of this poem and Eliot’s dedication to his work.
Going over these different kinds of rhythm in detail did help me a lot since
I’ve never really bean taught the different meters in class so that little bit of
review helped clear up what the different meter mean and therefore will allow
me to look at poetry in more detail.