Also, I’d be down when I have the free time for sure.

@Alcaeus Also, it’d probably be clearer if I put it as ROM | ped – I didn’t because the p sound applies to both vowels. Imagine that line breaking the metrical foot going right down the P – this is how I actually do it in long hand.

@Bradapalooza word, yeah, just having the lone “ed” kind of made me wonder if you were doing some old school, like, Golding shit and pronouncing it like watchèd. Now what’s one to do about acute accents MÁRGARÉT, áre you gríeving :p

@Jhanna So glad you’re down as well!

Maybe I’ll do a simple little intro (though I’m not the best suited for this) or at least get the ball rolling sometime today or tomorrow and you guys can add on/improve when you have time?

@Alcaeus @Jhanna I can do a basic intro after a meeting I have in about 20 mins with one of my favorite English profs. if you’re not comfortable with starting the intro – I could at least list the common meters in english and provide examples to start us off. I even have Helen Vendler’s basic explanation of prosody (in her fantastic primer Poems – Poets – Poetry: An Introduction and Anthology) on my desk about three feet away from where I’m typing.

@Bradapalooza

That’d be sick! Maybe I should get that, I have some little contemporary anthology by her and her intro is quite good, along with some of her suggestions.

So you’re in school? What are you studying specifically?

@Alcaeus

She was the editor of the Anthology of Contemporary American Poetry – is that what you’re referring to?

She’s a fantastic writer – the primer is excellent as an introductory text and a piece to refer back to – it’s often the main textbook in college poetry classes; however, her prose is deliberately simplified in the primer, since she’s writing it for students. Her book The Odes of John Keats is a perfect example of why she’s a famous critic.

I’m a senior hours wise and a junior plan wise in uni. I’m a double major: English w/ Creative Writing w/ Distinction (or at least – I’m being nominated for distinction by two professors so it’s a 99% probability but not 100%) and a BFA in Film.

So, I’m doing an independent study in Fiction this semester working on a novel and have another novel on hiatus at 130k words (I plan to axe a character and do some significant rewrites to that), studying Romantic Poets (more than I have before, that is), and then doing Production 2 for film (shooting in-class films, creating a small crew shoot outside of class, writing short screenplays, directing one of the in-class shoots – I was just the Director of Photography on the last shoot), and Film Directing which consists of working with actors and breaking down scripts et cetera. I also have to have my thesis film proposal ready by the 21st of this month – which is a ton of work.

I’m more interested in my work in English, though, and from here will probably go onto graduate studies in English.

The above said reminds me of the amount of work I need to do – I can get to writing an intro to prosody/meter fairly soon but if @stephen_j_p or @perfectrhyme or someone else comfortable with prosody is up for it, go for it!

Hey @Bradapalooza this is sick – nicely done.

One of the best introductions to metre and also verse forms is The Ode Less Travelled by Stephen Fry. It is written as a manual for people who want to learn how to write poetry, but it is equally valuable as a guide for how to actually read and appreciate it. Stephen Fry has a masterful command of the subject area and his wit makes it both elegant and accessible. It even has little exercises you can do to practice the techniques and forms which he covers. I thoroughly recommend it to all students of poetry.

I’m keen to jump on board with this. I think the Glossary is dope but it would be fantastic if we could build a more in-depth guide to metre. I’d say it should be better than wikipedia but really wikipedia doesn’t have much so lets aim a lot higher.

How much metrical analysis/scansion do you guys include in annotations currently? I discuss stress in detail where I feel it is important but try to steer clear of foot-by-foot breakdowns.

Sidenote – any one know of critics doing deeper prosody analysis of rap? ‘Flow’ is such a vague term.

@Alcaeus Sounds great!!

@jeeho @perfectrhyme

The interpretations of the lines you added as suggestions are both possibilities. I’ve done prosody on this twice – once as an exercise for a professor and once as a lesson for high school students. My readings contradict each other in various places and, as I noted, I tried to adhere closer to iambs than I normally would due to the three waltz steps and the tempo of a waltz.

I integrated both of your interpretations and in the future you could simply edit these readings unless you’re looking for someone to double-check you. As far as -ed words go in Roethke – some have to be read using elision (i.e. one syllable) and others have to be two. Generally this should be technically determined by the consonant-vowel sounds – i.e. the hardness or softness being carried over to the other part of the word; however due to the casualness of this poem, it’s really quite debatable – which actually makes it a good thing for teaching imo. As long as people grasp what Roethke is doing with the meter and some basic effects of his manipulation – I’m happy.

In comparison, the Yeats poem scansion is really only strongly debatable against my reading on the word “vague” in line five and the word “could” in the last line. “That” in line seven and “so” in both lines eleven and twelve are arguable but not strongly.

@Bradapalooza I love your work on that poem! I think I’m going to do some on ‘The Heron.’

Ok, I just put up some annotations on ‘The Heron.’ It’s a great poem for understanding the nuances of rhythm and how it relates to meter. Professor Alan Shapiro of UNC Chapel Hill uses ‘The Heron’ to explain rhythm and meter in his essay ‘The New Formalism.’ Here’s the citation if anyone’s interested in further reading:

The New Formalism
Alan Shapiro
Critical Inquiry , Vol. 14, No. 1 (Autumn, 1987) , pp. 200-213
Published by: The University of Chicago Press
Article Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/1343578

@Bradapalooza Yeah that’s the book, really nice little collecction; maybe I should get her primer, or that hollander book… ha or @eldubs that stephen fry book sounds interesting as well, he’s hilarious and I much admire his support for humanities and specifically antiquity. Also, most of our poems generally don’t say much about meter, aside from occasionally noting what the meter is in the sidebar. We could definitely incorporate more, just as long as we don’t do it for every line of every poem, as that’d get pretty tedious and many users would probably find it kind of alienating. Plus, it risks breaking the golden rule.

@Bradapalooza ha, sounds like you’ve got your hands full. I didn’t come close to staying that busy in college… 130k that’s like about 250 pages right? Do you mind if I ask what any of the novels are, maybe “about” is a bad word, but what their thing is, their groove? I love the romantic poets, but am terribly ignorant on the subject; though, I do really enjoy the few poems I have read from that time. Any suggestions?

@jeeho !!!!

That’s such an excellently simple, clear, informative and fun intro to iambic

I think when we get around to making THE INTRO we should definitely put that in as an example.

WORD

Just breathing all of this in. Some awesome ideas being posited. Let me try to get a handle on what everyone’s doing. The guide to prosody/meter/whatever has been brought up before, and it looks like we’ve got the talent to pull it off.

There are loads, and loads, of these kinds of guide on the market. We should be aiming not to just be better than the wiki one, but better than all of them. We have the people and the platform.

@Bradapalooza Would you be down to write something of an introduction, along the lines of the (awesome) metrical stuff you’ve been doing already, but maybe pitched at a slightly more forgiving level? The Leda and the Swan piece read great to all of us, I think, but we’re pretty heavy into poetry to begin with.

@jeeho Could you maybe write something that distills some of the contemporary stuff on meter, e.g. New Formalism? Or, perhaps, a metrical analysis of a poem which makes use of this stuff?

@Alcaeus Would you be down to write something on quantitative meter? Beardy old etymologist in me says it’s important to learn what the terms like “spondee” originally meant, and why we use them, and the problems that exist in using them. I personally try to steer clear of mentioning them, but they’re the foundation of metrical analysis in English.

@Jhanna How do you feel about writing something about the way we read poetry, the relationship between meter and performance, that sorta thing? I know you’re pretty on point with spoken word stuff, and this should translate really nicely to making this topic more accessible. I’m thinking video annotations presenting readings of stuff anf then maybe identifying the stresses etc in prose afterwards?

@eldubs Would you be down to do domething that analyses rock and rap stuff from a metrical perspective? @perfectrhyme came up with this idea a while back and it seems like something that’d suit you.

I think this could come together to be something really big.

Finally, there is A LOT of theory about this which hasn’t really been mentioned. This is something that maybe I could cover– I got pretty mad into versification as an undergrad and would be comfortablish surveying the field.

I’ve very tentatively guessed everyone’s interests from your contribs to the site so far, feel free to shoot me down! Hit me up here or via message with any questions, comments, threats, insults. Peace.

@Alcaeus Thanks so much!!

@stephen_j_p Definitely! I’ll start with some poems and keep you updated.