Rhythm and Meter
Rhythm – the flow of actual, pronounced sound
Meter- the patterns of sound when the poet has put them in a metrical verse
Foot- unit of meter
Name of Foot
Iamb- unstressed, stressed
Trochee- stressed, unstressed
Anapest- unstressed, unstressed, stressed
Dactyl- stressed, unstressed, unstressed
Pondee- stressed, stressed
*Metrical Lines are measured by naming the number of feet in them (monometer, dimeter, trimeter, tetrameter, pentameter, hexameter).
Steps to Scanning a Poem
1. Read it normally (following its prose meaning)
2. Listen to where the accents fall natural
3. If we don’t know how a line should be marked, move on and fill it in later
4. If you are struggling to go in order, go to lines that you are more confident with.
Key Terms
End- Stopped Line- the end of the line corresponds with a natural speech pause
Run-On Line- the sense of the line moves on without pause into the next line
Caesuras—adding additional pauses in the lines
Metrical Variations- calls attention to certain sounds because they differ from what is regular
Substitution- replacing the regular foot for another one
Extrametrical Syllables- added syllables at the end or beginning of a line
Truncation- taking away an unaccented syllable at either end of line
Grammatical and Rhetorical Pauses- can introduce variation
Clues
Metrical Verse will often have and sometimes two leftover unaccented syllables
In iambic and anapestic verse unaccented syllables will come at the end of the line
Diversions between feet have no meaning except to help us identify meter
Perfect regularity is not part of the criteria for merit
The idea of regularity helps us be aware of the actuality of sounds
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