Understanding Poetry Meter and Structure

1. Poetry Meter and structure

2. is a stressed and unstressed syllabic pattern in a verse, or within the lines of a poem. Stressed syllables tend to be longer, and unstressed shorter. If you read a poem aloud, and it produces regular sound patterns, then this poem would be a metered or measured poem. Meter 

3. Qualitative Meter • Meter contains stressed syllables with regular intervals. These can be discovered if we look closely at the natural stress points in the words of the poem. Below is a strategy for doing this. • Read the poem out loud so you can hear the rhythm of the words. When an individual writes a poem using a specific meter, the rhythm of the words will produce a pattern that you can hear. • Listen to the syllables that you hear when you read the poem out loud. A syllable is the natural division of a word when you say it out loud. Each syllable has at least one vowel sound in it. The word “student,” for example, has two syllables: stu-dent. • Break down the words into syllables. Use the sound patterns that you hear when you read a poem to break down the words into syllables, using a dash to divide the syllables in each word. If you were analyzing the nursery rhyme “Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star,” you’d divide the syllables in the first line in this manner: “Twin-kle, twin-kle, lit-tle star.”

4. Now you try it! • Break down the syllables in the following stanza, using the method in the slide above. Re-write the break-down version on the lines provided. • And through the drifts the snowy cliftsDid send a dismal sheen: Nor shapes of men nor beasts we ken— The ice was all between.  • -from the Rime of the Ancient Mariner, by Samuel Taylor Coleridge • ___________________________ • ____________________________ • ____________________________ • _____________________________ • _____________________________

5. A group of lines or a “chunk” of poetry. Stanzas can take many shapes, depending on the poem. See the following examples. Stanza

6. CoupletWrite your own couplet here:

7. quatrain

8. Haiku Poems Haiku Poems • three-line stanzas with a 5/7/5 syllable count. This form of poetry also focuses on the beauty and simplicity found in nature.  • "Sick on a Journey" by Basho Sick on a journey - Over parched field Dreams wander on

9. Cinquains • a five-line poem inspired by the Japanese haiku.  • "To Helen" by Edgar Allan Poe Helen, thy beauty is to me Like those Nicean barks of yore, That gently, o'er a perfumed sea, The weary, way-worn wanderer bore To his own native shore.

10. Alexis seems quite shy and somewhat frail, Leaning, like a tree averse to light, Evasively away from her delight. X-rays, though, reveal a sylvan sprite, Intense as a bright bird behind her veil, Singing to the moon throughout the night. Acrostic Poems also known as name poems, spell out names or words with the first letter in each line. While the author is doing this, they're describing someone or something they deem important.

11. Poem by Edward Lear "There was an Old Man with a beard Who said, 'It is just as I feared! Two Owls and a Hen, Four Larks and a Wren, Have all built their nests in my beard!'" Limericks humorous poem consisting of five lines.  The first, second, and fifth lines must have seven to ten syllables while rhyming and having the same verbal rhythm.  The third and fourth lines only have to have five to seven syllables, and have to rhyme with each other and have the same rhythm.

12. Sonnet • One of the most famous types of poetry, the sonnet, has been popular with authors from Dante to Shakespeare. • A sonnet contains 14 lines, typically with two rhyming stanzas known as a rhyming couplet at the end. • The example on the right is Sonnet 23 by William Shakespeare. (One of my personal favorites.) Sonnet XVIII Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?Thou art more lovely and more temperate:Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May,And summer's lease hath all too short a date:Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines,And often is his gold complexion dimm'd;And every fair from fair sometime declines,By chance or nature's changing course untrimm'd;But thy eternal summer shall not fadeNor lose possession of that fair thou owest;Nor shall Death brag thou wander'st in his shade,When in eternal lines to time thou growest:So long as men can breathe or eyes can see,So long lives this and this gives life to thee.