INTRODUCTION TO POETIC FORM:
STRUCTURE, RHYME SCHEME, AND METER
STRUCTURE: # of stanzas and # of lines per stanza
Two lines: couplet
Three lines: tercet
Four lines: quatrain
Five lines: cinquain
Six lines: sestet
Seven lines: septet
Eight lines: octet/octave
RHYME SCHEME: the pattern of rhyming words at the end of each line of a poem.
The rhyming pattern is indicated by using letters (e.g.: ABAB CDCD).
Feminine Rhyme: Lines rhymed by their final two syllables (e.g. “gunning”
and “running”). Both the penultimate and the final syllables are stressed.
E.g.: You broke my KNICK-KNACK/ Now I want a TIC-TAC
Masculine Rhyme: Lines that rhyme with one stressed syllable.
E.g.: Violets are BLUE/And I love YOU
METER (a.k.a. verse): The measured pattern of rhythmic accents (stressed and
unstressed syllables) in poems.
Scansion: the analysis of verse into metrical patterns, identifying the type of
metrical foot and the amount of feet per line
Free Verse: Poetry without a regular pattern of meter or rhyme.
Blank Verse: Non-rhyming iambic pentameter (meter without a rhyme
scheme)
Types of Metric “Feet”:
Iambic foot: unstressed + stressed ex-CEPT (rising)
Trochaic foot: stressed + unstressed FOOT-ball (falling)
Anapestic foot: unstressed + unstressed + stressed com-pre-HEND (rising)
Dactylic foot: stressed + unstressed + unstressed BLUE-berry (falling)
Spondaic foot: stressed + stressed KNICK-KNACK
Pyrrhic foot: unstressed + unstressed
“When the” and “and the” are pyrrhic feet in the following sentence:
“When the BLOOD PRICKS and the NERVES PRICK”
Number of Metric Feet (per line):
monometer
dimeter
trimeter
tetrameter
one foot
two feet
three feet
four feet
pentameter
hexameter
heptameter
octameter
five feet
six feet
seven feet
eight feet
Can you scan the poem/song excerpts and determine the meter through
the magic of scansion?
The morns are meeker than they were,
The nuts are getting brown;
The berry’s cheek is plumper,
The rose is out of town.
--Emily Dickinson
Bats have webby wings that fold up;
Bats from ceilings hang down rolled up;
Bats when flying undismayed are;
Bats are careful; bats use radar;
--Frank Jacobs, “The Bat”
You know that it would be untrue,
You know that I would be a liar,
If I was to say to you
Girl, we couldn’t get much higher.
Come on, baby, light my fire.
Try to set the night on fire.
--Jim Morrison, “Light My Fire”
Consider the structure, rhyme scheme, and meter of the following
sonnets:
My Mistress’ Eyes are Nothing like the Sun—William Shakespeare
My mistress' eyes are nothing like the sun;
Coral is far more red than her lips' red;
If snow be white, why then her breasts are dun;
If hairs be wires, black wires grow on her head.
I have seen roses damasked, red and white,
But no such roses see I in her cheeks;
And in some perfumes is there more delight
Than in the breath that from my mistress reeks.
I love to hear her speak, yet well I know
That music hath a far more pleasing sound;
I grant I never saw a goddess go;
My mistress when she walks treads on the ground.
And yet, by heaven, I think my love as rare
As any she belied with false compare.
When I Consider How My Light is Spent-- Petrarch
When I consider how my light is spent,
Ere half my days in this dark world and wide,
And that one talent which is death to hide
Lodged with me useless, though my soul more bent
To serve therewith my Maker, and present
“My true account, lest He returning chide;
"Doth God exact day-labor, light denied?"
I fondly ask. But Patience, to prevent
That murmur, soon replies, "God doth not need
Either man's work or His own gifts. Who best
Bear His mild yoke, they serve Him best. His state
Is kingly: thousands at His bidding speed,
And post o'er land and ocean without rest;
They also serve who only stand and wait."
Sestina by Elizabeth Bishop
September rain falls on the house.
In the failing light, the old grandmother
sits in the kitchen with the child
beside the Little Marvel Stove,
reading the jokes from the almanac,
laughing and talking to hide her tears.
She thinks that her equinoctial tears
and the rain that beats on the roof of the house
were both foretold by the almanac,
but only known to a grandmother.
The iron kettle sings on the stove.
She cuts some bread and says to the child,
It's time for tea now; but the child
is watching the teakettle's small hard tears
dance like mad on the hot black stove,
the way the rain must dance on the house.
Tidying up, the old grandmother
hangs up the clever almanac
on its string. Birdlike, the almanac
hovers half open above the child,
hovers above the old grandmother
and her teacup full of dark brown tears.
She shivers and says she thinks the house
feels chilly, and puts more wood in the stove.
It was to be, says the Marvel Stove.
I know what I know, says the almanac.
With crayons the child draws a rigid house
and a winding pathway. Then the child
puts in a man with buttons like tears
and shows it proudly to the grandmother.
But secretly, while the grandmother
busies herself about the stove,
the little moons fall down like tears
from between the pages of the almanac
into the flower bed the child
has carefully placed in the front of the house.
Time to plant tears, says the almanac.
The grandmother sings to the marvelous stove
and the child draws another inscrutable house.
Do Not Go Gentle into That Good Night by Dylan Thomas
Do not go gentle into that good night,
Old age should burn and rave at close of day;
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
Though wise men at their end know dark is right,
Because their words had forked no lightning they
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Good men, the last wave by, crying how bright
Their frail deeds might have danced in a green bay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
Wild men who caught and sang the sun in flight,
And learn, too late, they grieved it on its way,
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Grave men, near death, who see with blinding sight
Blind eyes could blaze like meteors and be gay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
And you, my father, there on that sad height,
Curse, bless, me now with your fierce tears, I pray.
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
Elegiac Poem
Mission
You and your group members will write a 12-line elegiac poem, mourning the death
of any character of your choice from the literary canon (so long as the character dies
in the text).
Elegy Definition
In general, an elegiac poem refers to any poem that serves as a eulogy.
Elegy Meter and Form
A classical elegiac poem, first composed by the Ancient Greeks, has a very particular
structure. The poem is written in rhyming couplets of dactylic hexameter. This is the
same meter as classical epic poetry; thus, its nickname is “heroic hexameter.”
Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey as well as Virgil’s Aeneid are written in heroic hexameter.
Dactylic “feet” are comprised of one stressed syllable followed by two unstressed
syllables, producing the rhythmic effect of “DA-da-dum.” To get a feel for this kind
of meter, read the lines from Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds, which is written in
dactylic tetrameter (four “feet” per line):
PICture your SELF in a BOAT on a RIVer with
TANgerine TREE-ees and MARmalade SKI-iies.
Since the classical elegiac poets would allow “spondees” (two stressed syllables) in
the place of dactylic feet, the classical style is difficult to emulate. For example, a
dactylic hexameter line could be comprised of five dactylic feet and a spondaic foot
(two stressed syllables), as shown in the first line of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow’s
“Evangeline”:
THIS is the FORest primEVal the MURmuring PINES and the HEM-LOCKS.
To complicate things more, during the Romantic Era, poets like Thomas Gray,
William Wordsworth, and Samuel Taylor Coleridge freed the elegy from its rhythm
and rhyme scheme, reinventing the word “elegiac” to mean any poem written in the
memory of the dead (without the heroic hexameter and rhyming couplets
requirement).
Here is an excerpt from Thomas Gray’s 1751 “Elegy Written in a Country
Churchyard” written in iambic pentameter instead of heroic hexameter (and no
couplets either):
Here rests his head upon the lap of Earth A
A youth to Fortune and to Fame unknown. B
Fair Science frown'd not on his humble birth, A
And Melancholy mark'd him for her own. B
Special Guidelines for Your Elegy’s Meter and Form
I would like your 12-line elegy to either stay true to the classical form by
incorporating the heroic couplet rhyme scheme (AABBCCDDEEFF) or spice it up
with the rebellious Romantics’ rhyme scheme variation (ABABCDCDEFEF). I
would like you to play around with dactylic meter to engender the evocative “waltzlike” rhythm, but the amount of feet per line is up to you!
Love Sonnet
Mission
Your group’s mission is to write a 14-line love sonnet to any character from the
literary canon… in traditional Shakespearean sonnet form.
Sonnet Meter and Form
Sonnets are poems with 14 lines that are structured into three four-lines stanzas, also
known as quatrains. Every sonnet ends in a couplet; the couplet usually summarizes
the significance of the poem’s theme(s).
Each line of a sonnet is written in iambic pentameter; thus, each line has five “feet.”
An iambic “foot” is a combination of an unstressed syllable with a stressed syllable,
producing the rhythmic effect of “da-DUM.”
The rhythm of a line in iambic pentameter is…
“da-Dum-da-DUM-da-DUM-da-DUM-da-DUM”
The rhyme scheme of a sonnet is as follows:
ABAB CDCD
EFEF GG (Three quatrains and a couplet at the end)
Here is a famous Shakespearean sonnet example:
Let me not to the marriage of true minds A
Admit impediments. Love is not love B
Which alters when it alteration finds, A
Or bends with the remover to remove: B
O no! it is an ever-fixed mark C
That looks on tempests and is never shaken; D
It is the star to every wandering bark, C
Whose worth's unknown, although his height be taken. D
Love's not Time's fool, though rosy lips and cheeks E
Within his bending sickle's compass come: F
Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks, E
But bears it out even to the edge of doom. F
If this be error and upon me proved, G
I never writ, nor no man ever loved. G
Thematic Haiku
Present a thematic message from a novel of literary merit through the terse lines of a
traditional haiku.
A haiku is a Japanese form of poetry, consisting of seventeen syllables partitioned in
three metrical phrases of five, seven, and five.
Deep within the stream
The huge fish lie motionless
Facing the current.
--James W. Hackett
In the amber dusk
Each island dreams its own night
The sea swarms with gold.
--James Kirkup