Jim Morrison Quotes (Author of Wilderness) Interactive Quiz on Meter. Seamus Cooney, English Test your grasp of terms and your ability to identify meters by name. It's worth pointing out that what you're learning here is merely a bit of terminology or jargon and the ability to apply it accurately. Naming meters is not the same as being sensitive to effects of rhythm in poems. Good readers who can hear what they're reading will respond to the poet's effects even if they lack the terms to name them.
Still, it's worthwhile to be able to discuss effects. I hope to add another quiz which will invite choices of a more subtle kind, between more and less expressive ways of scanning (i.e. hearing) lines of poetry. Do this quiz often enough so you gain confidence. You can also, to test your memory, see this quiz without suggested answers. Memorize Coleridge's mnemonic lines to help you with the names of the feet. Trochee trips from long to short. "Long" and "short" are terms drawn from the metrics of Latin quantitative verse. Rhythm, Meter, and Scansion Made Easy. Rhythm, Meter, and Scansion Made Easy I created this page as a quick reference for my students when studying rhythm.
The sources I cited below were very helpful, especially X.J. Kennedy's book. rhythm: the pattern of stressed and unstressed syllables in a line.meter: the number of feet in a line.scansion: Describing the rhythms of poetry by dividing the lines into feet, marking the locations of stressed and unstressed syllables, and counting the syllables. Thus, when we describe the rhythm of a poem, we “scan” the poem and mark the stresses (/) and absences of stress (^) and count the number of feet. In English, the major feet are: Iambic and anapestic meters are called rising meters because their movement rises from unstressed syllable to stressed; trochaic and dactylic meters are called falling. Spondee and pyrrhic are called feet, even though they contain only one kind of stressed syllable. A frequently heard metrical description is iambic pentameter: a line of five iambs.
Answers. For Better for Verse | An interactive learning tool that can help you understand what makes metered poetry in English tick. Line and Meter. SyllabusCraft of Poetry Home The line is the "bottom line. " The sine qua non. If you ain't got line, you ain't got that swing. Swing being POETRY. Or at least verse. Verse is cadenced language cut up into lines, and poetry is profound verse -- verse with layered multi-meanings as well as accumulated mega-meanings. One of the differences between the modes of prose and verse is that the first doesn't break into lines and the second does. When you combine or intersect the idea of lines with the notion of meaning, you end up with two kinds of lines: the enjambed line and the endstopped line.
Look at it this way: there are sentences and there are lines. But suppose you were to pit the movement of the sentence against the movement of the line? Think back to science class: two sine waves of different frequencies -- sometimes they enhance each other, sometimes cancel. An endstopped line is where the movement of the sentence works with the movement of the line. Or the closing lines: -- Vince Gotera.
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