[Stylist] Some Poetry Trivia

[jackieleepoet at cox.net]

Hi,

This might help if the form stays like I paste it.

This has been my bible. It does not quite get to iambic pentameter, the most common in the English language. Be sure to count the syllables and where the accent is in each.

Jeanne Resnick, Why I think she was a great teacher. She showed us by example, rather than just telling us.

                            Jacqueline Williams       Oct. ‘16

 

Quatrains of Sample Feet and one Five-liner 

 

Iambic

The man who lives upstairs 

has twenty dining chairs

a hall rack ten feet tall

and that is all

 

Trochaic

Mary had a little lambkin

covered with a damask napkin 

carried safe in wicker basket

"Are you comfy?" she would ask it

 

Anapestic

In the dark of the night

when there's wind and there's rain 

I get high as a kite

on my vintage champagne

 

Dactylic

Natalie called to me

"Come to me, bed with me," 

Turned me quite roseate, 

caused me to explicate,

"Sorry, I'm celibate."

 

Iambic

I write iambic quatrain plain

with nothing much for me to gain 

except to make a smooth refrain 

My teacher then will not complain

 

Have fun. Jackie Williams

From: Stylist <stylist-bounces at nfbnet.org> On Behalf Of missruthnfb via Stylist
Sent: Sunday, October 2, 2022 9:49 AM
To: Barbara HAMMEL via Stylist <stylist at nfbnet.org>
Cc: missruthnfb <missruthnfb at yahoo.com>
Subject: Re: [Stylist] Some Poetry Trivia

 

Miss Ruth here. Barbara, you're a Poetry Savant. I recognized some words in your email, such as "the" and "from," but the rest is alien to me. :)

 

Just jesting! 

 

But I wonder if you wouldn't mind giving us a poetry primer at a future meeting, with Shelley's indulgence. You could share examples of different types of meter from your own poems. And for those of us who haven't been in a classroom in mumble-mumble years, you could define all those poetry terms, i.e., iamb, trochee, etc. 

 

I suppose I could just Google it, but I love to hear you wax poetic!

 

Also, did I read that correctly? Are you working on an unrhymed poem? Now that's a surprise! Do share once you're done. 

 

Take care!

Sent from my Verizon, Samsung Galaxy smartphone

 

 

-------- Original message --------

From: Barbara HAMMEL via Stylist <stylist at nfbnet.org <mailto:stylist at nfbnet.org> > 

Date: 9/29/22 9:53 PM (GMT-05:00) 

To: stylist at nfbnet.org <mailto:stylist at nfbnet.org>  

Cc: Barbara HAMMEL <poetlori8 at msn.com <mailto:poetlori8 at msn.com> > 

Subject: [Stylist] Some Poetry Trivia 

 

I'm reading a book I downloaded from Bookshare called Writing Metrical Poetry. It's right up my alley because the author says that in order for a poet to break all the rules, he/she should be well-versed in the traditional forms.  

Some things I have gleaned that will now stick is how to remember which syllables are accented in which feet, here are the four common ones: iamb "the heart", trochee "heartless", anapest "in the heart", dactyl "heartlessly". 

Thus far I have written a poem in common meter, which is first and third lines in iambic tetrameter and second and fourth lines in iambic trimeter — think hymns. But where hymns usually have an abab rhyme this quatrain could be abcb. 

I'm currently working on a blank verse poem. For this particular assignment, given in the book, it has to be 20 lines. Blank verse is unrhymed lines of imambic pentameter. (Some website lied to me a number of years ago and told me it was tetrameter.) 

I can't wait to see what else I get to practice in this book. If I don't get through it by November, I'll may be writing some of these poems with my November Poem-a-day challenges. If you want to try your hand at that quatrain, the actual assignment was to read Stephen Vincent Benet's Daniel Boone and write your quatrain in imitation of that poem about a person of myth or a real person preferably who lived before 1900. And you're supposed to keep sarcasm and satire out of it. Those weren't the words the author used but I forget what they were, it might have been humor.  

Barbara Hammel 

We are all but characters in the books of God’s library. — Chris Colfer 

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