Notes from 35-75

While poetry is written in lines that do not necessarily pay attention to the margins, especially the right margin. For every turning is a meaningful decision, the effect of which is sure to be felt by the reader. Discussion of the line is best undertaken through an examination of the metric line.

In metrical verse, each line of the poem can be divided into feet, and each foot into stresses to reveal the rhythmic pattern. The process of dividing a line into its metrical feet and each foot into its individual parts is called scansion. An iamb is one light stress followed by a heavy stress. Five iambic feet strung together create an iambic pentameter line.

Metrical lines:

1. A one-foot line is called monometer.

2. A two-foot line is called dimeter.

3. A three-foot line is called trimeter.

4. A four-foot line is called tetrameter.

5. A five-foot line is called pentameter.

6. A six-foot line is called hexameter.

7. A seven-foot line is called heptameter.

8. An eight-foot line is called octameter.

Metrical Feet and Symbols

1. iamb: a light stress followed by a heavy stress.

2.trichee: a heavy stress followed by a light stress.

3.dactyl: a heavy stress followed by two light stresses.

4.anapest: two light stresses followed by a heavy stress.

5.spondee: two equal stresses.

Ex--Pentameter:

Forlorn, the very word is like a bell.

Ex-Tetrameter:

I wandered lonely as a cloud

That floats on high o'er vales and hills.

In tetrameter, it reveals a sense of quickness and spareness. The trimeter an evoke an even more intense sense of agitation and celerity.

The pentameter is the most usual line used by the English poets because of the pentameter line most nearly matches the breath capacity of the English lungs. It fits without stress, makes a full phrase, and leaves a little breath. Yet, the reader is brought to a more usual attentiveness by the shorter line, which states the abnormal situation. It felt a sense of agitation and restlessness. When people wanted to express prevailing and leisure in the poem, people usually take their time for length and breath, going to small details, stories. However, when something is critical and serious, poets cut off the inessential parts and right go to the part. The longer line states a greater than human power. It can also symbolize abundance, joyfulness.

The reader quickly enters the rhythmic pattern of a poem. Rhythm is one of the most powerful pleasures, and when we feel it, we just want to continue. Sometimes, it gets sweeter. Sometimes, it gets real. There is another verse called free-verse but in a free-form poem. Change the line length or the established rhythm when you want to, need to, or choose to, to change the mood of the reader. Good poetry is usually been a little irregular: some pattern actually enhances the poems. Nevertheless, people have many different variations of reading the lines. My version of reading and interpretation might be different than yours. This suggests that the poem is interesting. Some reader would stress on "forlorn", "bell" than "very", "word", or "like".  Ex: But who can plumb the sinking of that soul? this sentence makes nonsense because "that" is a heavy sound, but when it followed the iambic poem, it couldn't make the heavy sound. As a result, it would then change from iamb to the spondee for the two last words, as a flat sound. As a result, it would be normal.

Caesura is a structural and logical pause within and only within the line.

Ex: Forlorn,   the very word is like a bell.

The way in which different poets use the caesura is almost a signature of their poetic style.

It is also useful for setting a conversational tone.

The most important point in the line is the end of the line and the second important point is the beginning of the line. The iambic is more relaxing and natural for most of the poets. When a poem does begin with a heavy stress, it points to the reader that something dramatic is at hand. As I mentioned, the mood of rhyming poems is lighthearted.

The rhyme has two types. One is called true rhyme, which is masculine rhyme: words rhyme on a single stressed syllable.

There is another rhyme called off-rhyme or slant rhyme: it uses words of more than one syllable that ends with a light stress.

There is a brief pause at the end of each line, as hesitation is part of the dance.

The poets also used enjambs to turns the line to the other line so that a logical phrase is involved.  

Some Given Forms

A poem requires a sense of orderliness which through the authority and sweetness of the language used in the way that it is used. It is a gathering of words and phrases and patterns that have been considered and selected. There is other thing that matter with the poems, too. Such as the overall length of the poem, the tone, and the imgary subjects. Poems written without end rhyme are called blank verse.

Stanza

Stanza is the term by which we designate a group of lines in a poem that is separated by an extra amount of space from other groups of lines. There are no absolutely right or wrong ways to divide a poem into stanzas, except, of course, when one is following a pattern that includes a particular strict formation of stanzas and stanza breaks. Ending a stanza at the end of a sentence strengthens the natural pause that follows any line and any completed sentence.Sometimes, it can create a feeling of creative power.

Any change from an established pattern indicates that the poet wants the reader to feel something different at that point. Besides being a guide to the way the poet wants the reader to feel and understand the poem, each stanza is a part of the design of the poem.

A poem may also be divided into different sections, numbered or not, and such divisions within a single poem do not need to follow any formal pattern. Poets want to break away poems to sharpen and deepen the context. The poets can literally change anything, the tone, the narrative, and line length..etc.

Syllabic Verse

In syllabic verse, a pattern is set up, and rigorously followed, in which the number of the syllables in each of the lines of the first stanza is exactly repeated in the following stanzas. What matters is that the syllable count of each line, in each stanza, but exactly repeated.

Free verse

The free verse is a poetry rose out of a desire for release from the restraints of meter, the measured line, ad strict rhyming pattern. Free verse is free from formal metrical design. In the metrical verse, the poetry depended on strict application of alliteration or some pattern of light or heavy stresses. The free-verse poem sets up, in terms of sound and line or an expectation. The free verse, when finished, must “feel” like a poem- it may rhyme a little.

Tone and Content

Change the tone of the poems became a increasing idea of a democratic and classless representation in American society. At that time period, Everyone was able to create poem. What a poem mean to them is a feeling of spontaneous, as true to the moment, talking in the street.

Walt Whiteman

He was the first American poet to write in free verse. He was the one who broke the tradition and create the free verse. The poem “From Leaves of Grass”, exactly express what free verse is, the attitude and the tone.

William Carlos was another person who wrote free verse. He has a new pattern in which only introduce about the nouns in the poem. Also, his poem lack of punctuation suggested that his was a new way of people to read the poem.

The Red Wheelbarrow

so much depends

upon

a red wheel

barrow

glazed with rain

water

beside the white chickens

This poem focus more on the objects rather than thoughts and ideas. He thought that people should notice thing about the world. Another question raises. What does it mean that the poem is so brief? Maybe is because the intense focus couldn’t hold for any great length. In the sound, the poem makes brilliant use of dark and heavy mutes.

Enjambment

The ability to restrain or to spur on the pace of the poem, emphasizing great flexibility.

A phrase might be broken down with gramatical reason, but also logical unit. Logic may break the poem into pieces. Enjambment can be serious, distruptive with the moods and the setting of the poem. It might also be surprising like a sweet candy. All those lines would depend on the poem’s language.