Let's Play Teach the Idiot!

You called? Ask away, babe.

KTC said:

I write poetry to a beat inside me. BUT I'm trying to figure out what I 'should' be doing, instead of what I am doing...just to see.

Here's my first 'idiot' question:

Stressed and Unstressed?

I have scoured notes, books, etc. I still don't get it. I don't know how this is determined.

From a book on my shelf, here is an example:

x / x / x / x /
I know | that I | shall meet | my fate

x/x/x/x/
Somewhere | among | the clouds | above...



The example is from Yeats, An Irish Airman Foresees His Death


I don't get it. How is it determined what is stressed and what isn't? Enlighten me...I've read notes on this ad nauseum and I am quite confident I will never understand the difference between stressed and nonstressed syllables????

ETA: The stress marks didn't go over the proper syllables, but if you count them you can see where they fall.

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The stresses are the same in both lines.
If the notes say otherwise, then I'm baffled.

The stress is on the syllable you'd pronounce with more emphasis.

(C.bronco spent her youth stealing meter from the greats.)

P.S. Don't Touch Monkeys. That's a P.S.A.

"someWHERE aMONG the CLOUDS aBOVE"

You put the stresses where you'd normally say it.

e.g. PHEN-ter-MINE vs. phen-TER-mine.

No one would say phen-TER-mine.

P.S.A. is radio talk fpr Public Service Announcement.

More examples:
MA-ple SYR-up, or HELL-ow KITT-y.

KTC said:

Don't confuse the idiot! What does psa mean?

How are those syllables more stressed than the others?

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If you're stressing the opposite syllables, it sounds silly.

Try saying phenTERmine. See?

I still remember Wild Bill's freshman English lesson on trochee:
WHEN to the SESSions of SWEET silent THOUGHT...

It's in the ear. When you hear the stresses in the unconventional way, it's more apparent.
My last name is BRON-co, not bron-CO. Try saying a multi-syllabic word stressed in two different ways, and see which is akward.

KTC said:

I am trying to. Really, I am. When I say it, I don't sense a stress on any of the word. phentermine. phentermine. If I were to say it in the stressed way you say is right, I sound foolish. PHENterMINE. I wouldn't rise and fall like that.

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I picked the wrong example. PHENTERMINE is one of the great mysteries of the universe.

Hasta Manana

Nah. It's all fun; go with it!
It's better to know the rules before breaking them.

Most of my first poems were to the meter from a part of stairway to Heaven:

and AS we WIND on Down the ROAD
u / u/ u/ u/
our SHADows TALLer THAN our SOUL
u/ u/ u/ u/

(and I wondered why my poems only had 4 feet per line).

Maybe, but it wasn't me. I was on Code Blue.

This is a great thread! But not for idiots. I think you do a lot naturally poetically that comes to you naturally. You just never had names for it yet.
Stresses and iambic meter, etc are a lot easier to HEAR explained I think than to SEE explained.

Keep up the questions, I'm sure others have questions too.

I don't think you have trouble with classic forms and their stressors, KTC. I've seen your work and think it's great. But I do think you have trouble with pretending to be some-one you are certainly not ... which is the very intention of classic form ... and why mavericks like thou should never soil your own breathe to parrot!

This was hit #1 on Google: Tetrameter: Four-Footed Verse and the very first poem was

And did those feet in ancient time
Walk upon England's mountains green?
And was the holy Lamb of God
On England's pleasant pastures seen?

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If you read it aloud the rhythm is very apparent daDum daDum daDum daDum, although the second line is a stretch for me.

I know I don't often wander into the poetry forum, but this thread intrigued me because I'm rather poetically illiterate outside of some classics and the Romantic period, which, as the specialty of my favorite college professor and advisor, was the one I studied the most.

I think it comes across better when you can 'hear' the stresses. It is harder to explain it in writing. You use stresses naturally when you speak. (Ohh... just noticed that Stew said the same thing. But it is worth repeating...) It is the natural rhythm of speech. Do you 'hear' your voice when you write poetry? When you write lyrics, is there a rhythm that you are writing to? Stress and pentameter is something that I 'experience' as I write... it isn't easy to learn it from a book. Toss the book aside and just listen to the rhythm when you read a poem out loud.

I think the thing to remember, above all else, is that if YOU are the poet, then the meter is going to be based on YOUR mental speech pattern...i.e. where YOU naturally place the emphasis. Some may say PO-ta-TO, with emphasis on the first and third syllables. Others may place all of the emphasis on the last syllable...po-ta-TO, giving equal (lesser) stress to the first two syllables. Audibly, this would sound like putay-TO.

I have no explanation for people who say po-TAH-to.

KTC said:

I always listen to my voice as I write...and I do readings quite frequently too. I think this is something that has to be taught by listening. I can't hear stresses in words? I can see theatrical stresses...but not your everyday stress. I wouldn't know what part of say 'journey' is stressed and what part unstressed. I will take a guess and say it's like this: JOURney. But, argh. I guess when people learn these basic things it is probably in a classroom setting where they are hearing the explanation???

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i'm sure something like this is usually taught in a class room -- or at least discussed audibly. learning only via text is difficult, especially for this sort of thing.

Yes! Please everyone who wants to know something about poetry, ask questions!

I saw this quote on Authorscoop just now and thought of you, Kevin.

"To me, the greatest pleasure of writing is not what it’s about, but the music the words make.”

- Truman Capote

KTC said:

I write poetry to a beat inside me. BUT I'm trying to figure out what I 'should' be doing, instead of what I am doing...just to see.

Here's my first 'idiot' question:

Stressed and Unstressed?

I have scoured notes, books, etc. I still don't get it. I don't know how this is determined.

From a book on my shelf, here is an example:

x / x / x / x /
I know | that I | shall meet | my fate

/ x x / x / x /
Somewhere | among | the clouds | above...



The example is from Yeats, An Irish Airman Foresees His Death


I don't get it. How is it determined what is stressed and what isn't? Enlighten me...I've read notes on this ad nauseum and I am quite confident I will never understand the difference between stressed and nonstressed syllables????

ETA: The stress marks didn't go over the proper syllables, but if you count them you can see where they fall.

Bronco did it like this...which is visually more understanding, at least:

i KNOW THAT i SHALL meet MY fate
someWHERE Among THE clouds Above...

(the stresses are as they appear in the book. The book is The Broadview Anthology of Poetry

Click to expand...

When I took my Shakespeare performance class in the long past of the 1970's we were told there is some wiggle room to interpreting rhythms and to examine the important words to see if they marry to strong beats. If there is an important word that doesn't seem right in a line because it is unstressed it likely needs a more interpretive approach in assigning rhythm.

Clear as mud?


Sorry--not a better night for me.

Chiming in with my $.02

We speak with a natural rhythm dictated by the way we pronounce words. But part of that is cultural or regional. Where I was born we elongate words most of the country doesn't. For instance, in Haiku the rule is 5 - 7 - 5:

rain on the water
gray clouds float in southern skies
wish I could also

The poem is accurate to format and though I speak 3 syllables in the word southern (SUTH-er-en), the only word I mentally stressed while writing it is 'I' in the last line. You may have emphasized the word float. Neither of us wrong. IMHO, those who put "poetry" in a box and add restrictions aren't the ones writing it.

I write what defines me in that moment and don't worry about it. Personally, I believe that while you can teach someone the rules of accepted format for specific styles of poetry (i.e. Haiku = 5 - 7 - 5), you can't teach them to write poetry. Poetry comes from the soul, not the classroom. Understand as much as you must when there are poetry form rules. Otherwise, open up and let your soul out.

methinks the idiot always ends up teaching us.

"The Irish Airman Foresees His Death" is an interesting example, because when I speak the words naturally I don't speak the second line entirely iambic; I'd say the couplet as:

i KNOW that I shall MEET my FATE
SOMEwhere IN the CLOUDS aBOVE.

so line 1 is 4 iambs, but I'd say line 2 is trochee, singlet, iamb, iamb. You'll find lots of that kind of variation throughout Shakespeare, too - IMO too regular a rhythm can sound mechanical and boring.

Here's a quick reference with examples, using x for a stressed syllable and / for an unstressed one.

Singlet: x ex: me
Iamb (Iambic) /x ex: toDAY
Trochee (Trochaic) x/ ex: REcent
Spondee (Spondaic) xx ex: LET'S PLAY (OK, this one is a little iffy - single words are rarely spondaic, two-word phrases can change depending on meaning.)
Anapest (Anapestic) //x ex: underSTAND
Dactyl (Dactylic) x// ex: EXcellent


Line lengths - I'll try to keep these examples all iambic, with stresses in CAPS.Monometer One Foot "Look UP!"
Dimeter Two Feet "How HIGH is UP?
Trimeter Three Feet "The SKY is HIGHer STILL."
Tetrameter Four Feet "And ALL the CLOUDS have SILver SIDES."
Pentameter Five Feet "That FACE the MOON, the PLANets AND the SUN."
Hexameter Six Feet "Could WE soar UP there, WE would SEE them SHINing BRIGHT,"
Heptameter Seven Feet "But HERE on EARTH we SEE their DARKer SIDEs, and SO we THINK"
Octameter Eight Feet "The WORLD'S gone DARK, for WE see NOT the SHINing OF their SILvered SIDES."

(I just wrote these lines as an example - if they don't make much sense, that's why.)