Poetic Meter and Form

by Octavia Wynne

Overview

Can you tell an iamb from a trochee? An anapest from an amphibrach? Why do children always take such delight in dactylic tetrameter? Is a ballad the same as a ballade, and what is poetic rhythm? In this neat pocket book, Scottish poet Octavia Wynne examines the elements of poetry, from its various feet, metres and lines, through its patterns, stanzas and rhymes, right up to the poetic forms themselves, with ancient and modern examples from William Shakespeare to Dr.Seuss. WOODEN BOOKS USA. Small books, BIG ideas.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781952178085
Publisher:	Wooden Books
Publication date:	07/01/2021
Series:	Wooden Books North America Editions
Pages:	64
Product dimensions:	5.50(w) x 6.75(h) x 0.33(d)

About the Author

Octavia Wynne is a poet, musician and songwriter. Originally from the Scottish Highlands, she now lives in the wilds of Essex, where she smokes cheese and keeps geese and bees.

Read an Excerpt

People have been writing poems for a very long time. The Sanskrit epic Ramayana dates to around 300 BC and is still popular throughout India, Cambodia, Indonesia and Thailand. The Chinese Shih-ching, or Book of Songs, contains 305 poems dating from the 11th to 7th centuries BC. Poems meaningfully pattern the musical features of language, using rhythm, pitch and timbre (texture) and often grasp at truths that resist the logical pen of prose. This book looks at the patterns of poetry, its shapes and rhythms, through foot, metre and form.
The word 'poetry' derives via Latin from the Greek term poiein ('to make'). In the Archaic Period [800-480 BC], poetry was largely improvised orally, often accompanied by music (derived from the Greek word mousikê, 'having to do with the Muses'). In the Classical Period [480-323BC], poetry began to be performed with the other verbal arts, rhetoric (public speaking) and drama, and some poems were memorised and written down.
Ancient European poetry was often sung: land songs, Anglo Saxon oar songs, Celtic smith songs, Greek altar songs, medieval court songs, and children's songs. The vast majority of pre-12th century English poetry is lost, but the Anglo-Saxons and Vikings brought with them a canon of verse full of epic myth which rolled and rowed to a four-beat turn with a stress on the first syllables of words, forming an earthy rhythm. Other settlers who followed them sometimes emphasised the ends of words, encouraging rhymes and a lilting upward beat. These two opposing styles combined in the daily rhythms of speech, poetry and song. Only later did the Crusades and the Renaissance bring with them the Greek and Roman classics, encouraging poets of the time to imitate these ancient forms.

Table of Contents

Introduction 1

Patterns in Language 2

Accentual or Syllabic 4

The Spondee; The Pyrrhic 6

The Trochee; The Iamb 8

The Dactyl; The Anapest 10

The Amphibrach 12

Meter 14

Tetrameter; Pentameter 16

Hexameter; Heptameter and Octameter 18

Caesurae; End Stopping and Enjambment 20

Substitution 22

Hidden Rhythms 24

Rhyme 26

The Stanza; Blank Verse 28

Couplets and Triplets 30

The Ballad 32

Four Quatrains 34

Quintains; Sestets 36

Septets, Octaves, and Nines 38

The Sonnet 40

Villanelle; Pantoum 42

Ballade, Triolet, and Rondeau 44

Sestina; Canzone 46

The Sapphic Ode; Odes and Elegies 48

Celtic Verse; Anglo Saxon Verse 50

Ghazal; Tanka and Haiku 52

Poetic Devices 54

Glossary 56

Editorial Reviews

"Stunning." — The New York Times

"Excellent." — New Scientist

"Fascinating." — Financial Times

"Beautiful." — London Review of Books

"Genuinely mind-expanding." — Fortean Times

"Rich and Artful." — The Lancet

From the Publisher