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Introduction to Poetry
Introduction to Poetry
Versification
The mechanical process of poetic composition is called versification. A single line of poetry is called a verse. Versification depends upon two main factors: (a) the stress if syllables, (b) the number of stressed syllables to a line.
Rhythm
Each verse in a poetic composition is characterized by a uniform, measured movement which results from the regular recurrence of stressed and unstressed syllables. This characteristic, the essential quality of all verse, is called rhythm. Let us observe the difference in the movement of the two lines that follow.
And the sheen / on their spears / was little stars / on the sea
Tell me / not in mournful / numbers
Each line, we notice, is divided into four groups of syllables. In the first line there are three syllables in each group; in the second group, two syllables. Each group of syllables is called a foot.
Kinds of Feet
The kind of a poetic foot is determined by (1) the number of syllables in the foot and (2) the position of the stressed syllables. The four principle kinds of feet in English verse are the following.
The iambic foot, consisting of an unstressed syllable followed by a stressed syllable, is represented thus: \/ - . The following line contains iambic feet:
\/ - \/ - \/ - \/ -
And then my heart with pleas ure fills
The trochaic foot, consisting of a stressed syllable followed by an unstressed, is represented thus: - ^. The following line is composed of trochaic feet:
- \/ - \/ - \/ -
Shake your / hains to / earth like / dew
The anapestic foot, consisting two unstressed syllables followed by a stressed syllable, is represented thus: ^^-. The following line contains anapestic feet:
\/ \/ - \/ \/ - \/ \/ - \/ \/ -
For the moon/ never beams/ without bring /ing me dreams
The dactylic foot, consisting of a stressed syllable followed by two unstressed syllables, is represented thus: - ^^. The following line is composed of three dactylic feet with a trochaic foot at the end.
- \/ \/ - \/ \/ - \/ \/ - \/
Slowly the / mist o’er the / meadow was / creeping.
Variations in Rhythm
Certain variations in rhythm are likely to be found in verse, and unless we are prepared for them verse may seem irregular and confusing. Often a line may contain two or more different kinds of feet. Though a line frequently contains different kinds of feet, one kind usually predominates and gives its name to the line, as in the following iambic pentameter line:
Admit / impe / diments. / Love is / not love.
Kinds of Verse
Different lines contain different numbers of feet. The number of feet in a line determines its meter, or measure. English poetry includes the following eight kinds of lines:
Monometer line (one foot)
I trust
Dimeter line (two feet)
The wild / winds weep
Trimeter line (three feet)
The au / tumn time / has come
Tetrameter line (four feet)
When first / my way / to fair/ I took
Pemtameter line (five feet)
The lone / and le /vel sands / stretch far / away
Hexameter line (six feet)
This is the / forest pri / meval: the / murmuring / pines and the / hemlocks
A verse is named according to the number of feet it includes and the kind of foot that predominates. In describing a line, therefore, we should first tell the rhythm, or kind of feet, and then, the meter, or the number of feet, thus: iambic pentameter, trochaic tetrameter, dactylic hexameter, anapestic tetrameter, and so on. Read the following lines, the first two being iambic pentameter, the last four dactylic dimeter.
The cur- / few tolls / the knell / of par- /ting day,
The low- / ing herd / wind slow- / - ly o’er / the lea.
Roll ye on / stead-I-ly;
Stead-I-ly / grow;
Swif-ter and swif-ter roll!
Who stays ye / now?
Scansion
The whole process of indicating the rhythm and the meter of a line of verse is called scansion, or scanning. To scan a line is to divide it into its constituent feet, to mark the stressed and the unstressed syllables, to count the number of feet and state their kind. Scansion is a mechanical process, but it is useful in helping us to appreciate the work of a poet. Poets, besides being spiritually gifted, are skiiled in metrical composition.
Rime
When we come to consider groups of lines, we are brought immediately to the subject of rime. Rime may be defined as similarity of sound between words, especially words at the ends of lines. A perfect rime requires that the following conditions regarding riming words be fulfilled.
1. The vowel sounds bearing the verse stress should be the same.
2. The consonant, if any, preceding the vowels should be different.
3. The consonant sounds following the vowels should be the same.
The following groups of words meet these conditions and constitute perfect rimes.
Park greet play be make fate
Lark meet pay sea break late
Such groups as the following are sometimes rimed, but they are not perfect rimes:
Blood dove pen
Wood move been
Such identified sounds as the following are not considered as rimes:
Weigh rain break scene
Way rein brake seen
Alliteration
Alliteration refers to the repetition of consonant sounds at the beginning of words of within words, particularly in stressed syllables. It can be used to reinforce meaning, to unify thought, or simply to produce a musical effect, as in
Grim and greedy the gruesome monster
Couplets and Stanzas
A group of two consecutive riming lines is called a couplet. The commonest from of couplet is the iambic pentameter, often called the heroic couplet, or simply the riming couplet. It is prevailing form of verse in the works of Alexander Pope and several other 18th century writers. It is illustrated by the following lines from Coleridge:
Swans sing before they die ---- ‘twere no bad thing
Should certain persons die before they sing.
A group of more than two riming lines is called a stanza. There are a great variety of forms of the stanza in English verse, but we need consider only a few in this brief discussion. A common form is the ballad stanza, made up of four iambic lines, alternating tetrameter and trimester, as follows:
I put my hat upon my head
And walked into the Strand,
And there I met another man
Whose hat was in his hand.
Rime Scheme
It may be well at this point for us to learn the way of indicating the arrangement of the rimes in a stanza. Such an arrangement is called the rime scheme. It is indicating by the first letters of the alphabet, and the same letter is used to represent rimes, or riming words. Thus the preceding ballad stanza would be represented as follow: abcb, the b’s denoting the rime. Hereafter rimes will be indicated by means of the rime scheme.
The foregoing stanza is an example of the quatrain, of stanza of four lines riming alternately (abdb or abab). Besides quatrains, there are stanza of three, five, six, seven, eight, and nine lines.
Blank Verse
A great deal of verse does not contain any rime at all/ rhythm is essential to verse, but rime is not. Most of Shakespeare’s works are not in rime. The term blank verse is used loosely to designate any unrimed verse, but strictly the term should be used in reference to iambic pentameter lines only. The following blank verse lines are from Wordsworth’s “The Prelude”:
Thus far, O Friend! did I , not used to make
A present joy the matter of a song,
Pour forth that day my soul in measured strains
That would not be forgotten, and are here
Recorded; to the open fields I told
A prophecy: poetic numbers came
Spontaneously to clothe in priestly robe
A renovated spirit singled out,
Such hope was mine, for holy services.
My own voice cheered me, and far more, the mind’s
Internal echo of the imperfect sound;
To both I listened, drawing from them both
A cheerful confidence in things to come.
Free Verse
Free verse may be defined as rhythmical poetry composed without regard for meter or rime. The following lines from Walt Whitman illustrate free verse.
Sing on there in the swamp,
O singer bashful and tender, I hear your notes,
I hear your call,
I hear, I come presently, I understand you,
But a moment I linger, for the lustrous star
has detain’d me!
The star, my departing comrade, holds and detain me.
The Sonnet
The sonnet is a complete poem consisting of fourteen iambic-pentameter lines. It includes two distinct types: the Italian, or regular, and the English, or Shakespearean. The Italian sonnet consists of two parts: the first eight lines constitute the octave, which is composed of two quatrains; the last six lines form the sestet. The rime scheme of the regular, or Italian, sonnet is abba abba cde cde, or the sestet may rime cdc dcd. The rime scheme of the English, or Shakespearean, sonnet is abab cdcd efef gg. The couplet at the end is felt to emphasize the thought or the emotion expressed in the preceding lines.
The following sonnet by Longfellow, called “Nature”, is a good example of the Italian, or regular, form:
As a fond mother, when the day is o’er, (a)
Leads by the hand her little one to bed, (b)
Half willing, half reluctant to be led, (b)
And leave his broken playthings on the floor, (a)
Still gazing at them through the open floor, (a)
Not wholly reassured and comforted (b)
By promises of others in their stead, (b)
Which, though more splendid, may not please him more; (a)
So Nature deals with us, and takes away (c)
Our playthings one by one, and by the hand (d)
Leads us to rest so gently, that we go (e)
Scarce knowing if we wish to go or stay, (c)
Being too full of sleep to understand (d)
How far the unknown transcends what we know. (e)
The English sonnet is exemplified by Shakespeare’s “Sonnet 18”:
Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day? (a)
Thou art more lovely and more temperate: (b)
Rough winds do shake the darling buds if May, (a)
And summer’s lease hath all too short a date: (b)
Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines, (c)
And often is his gold complexion dimmed, (d)
And every fair from fair sometimes of declines, (c)
By chance of nature’s changing course untrimmed, (d)
But thy eternal summer shall not fade, (e)
Nor lose possession of that fair thou owes ; (f)
Nor shall Death brag thou wander’s in his shade, (e)
When in eternal lines to time thou growest. (f)
So long as men can breathe, or eyes can see, (g)
So long lives this, and this gives life to thee. (g)
Figurative Language
A poet makes imaginative use of words to produce a desired effect not only through rhythm and sound but also through meaning. Any language that goes beyond the literal meaning of words is called figurative language. The various devices of figurative language are called figures of speech. The most common figures of speech are simile, metaphor, hyperbole and personification.
Simile
A simile involves a direct comparison, using like or as, between two basically unlike things that have something in common.
And now, like amorous birds of prey,
Rather at once our time devour….
In this example the similarity between the lovers and the birds of prey is their hungry appetite.
Metaphor
A metaphor also compares two basically unlike things that have something in common, but unlike similes, metaphors use no connective such as like or as. This comparison may be stated (She was a stone) or implied (Her stony silence filled the room).
Hyperbole
A great exaggeration (such as “I’m so hungry I could eat a horse”) is called hyperbole. The effect may be serious or comic.
Personification
In personification, a poet endows abstractions, ideas, animals, or inanimate objects with human qualities, as in the following lines:
Death, be not proud, though some have called thee
Mighty and dreadful, for thou art not so;
For those whom thou think’st thou dost overthrow
Die out, poor death, nor yet canst thou kill.
Imagery
Imagery refers to the sensory details that provide vividness in a poetic work and tend to arouse emotions or feelings in a reader that abstract language does not. To illustrate:
Then by the bedside, where the faded moon
Made a dim, silver twilight, soft he set
A table, and, half anguished, threw thereon
A cloth of woven crimson, gold, and jet.
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