I edited / cleaned up an old essay which explains prosody by performing scansion in great detail on Yeats’s “Leda and the Swan” – it needs annotating.. I’d do it all myself – but that’d be a lot of annotations simply saying “spondee” or “trochee.”

So, editors and mods of PoetryGenius – have at it, if you’d like to.

Bump @perfectrhyme @stephen_j_p @Jhanna @Alcaeus @somedamnname and @ anyone I forgot who knows anything about prosody.

This is awesome– would you be up for getting verified with it? I’ll add some ‘tates tonight and we can showcase it– sometimes learning by example is the best, and this is a great example!

@stephen_j_p Sure! I was thinking about putting up the brief explanation of Blake’s “The Little Black Boy” and some other things as well.

I have three pretty shitty poems by myself up already anyways, plus a Shakespearean sonnet that I wrote and self-critiqued to (personally) better learn Shakespeare’s brilliance and explain it to others. It was an assignment personally given to me by my Shakespeare mentor/professor who had done the same exercise while earning his Ph.D.

@Bradapalooza Dope! I was actually going to suggest doing something in this forum, but it seems like you’re already on it :p

I personally don’t quite feel comfortable enough with stressed (i.e. not length) based meter to fully jump in. Also, greek makes me tend to hear dactyls and anapests in too many places, while my little english training also makes me beat things into iambic pentameter. Like,

by the DArk WEbs || her NApe caught IN his BILL,
However, if it weren’t for the first two lines making me think in iambic, I would equally read

her NAPe CAUght in his BILL

which as you note in your leda essay, is a more dynamic and compelling reading.
I def want to check out that hollander book you recommended though.

But in the meantime, would you consider maybe writing a dumbed down version of this? a more straightforward, sort of layman’s introduction to english meter? Like our glossary of poetic terms?

I think it’d be really helpful for us english meter nubes. Maybe you could explain things like, for example in this clever little couplet:

In the hexameter rises the fountains silvery column
In the pentameter aye, falling in melody back.

Why is “in” stressed in some places, but not in others? English can make things stressed or unstressed by position, I’m guessing? Are there general rules or is it more a poem by poem sort of thing?

@Alcaeus

I can attempt a layman’s introduction – Hollander does an excellent job but I have a few more basic prosody exercises – one on Roethke’s “My Papa’s Waltz” for example.

“Leda and the Swan” is exemplary when it comes to the effect meter can have on poetry but it is already an extremely complex poem. Roethke’s poem is also exemplary but less complex – the meter is used in “My Papa’s Waltz” to highlight the fact Papa is drunk and to mimic a waltz.

It’s a very clever poem because it is written in trimeter (and waltz are in 3/4s time with three steps) but since Papa is drunk the (literal and metrical) “feet” are misplaced (or variations of what they should be). The poem is a metrical pun in a lot of ways. I wrote my explanation of that in long hand but I can transcribe it at some point after writing a layman’s introduction to meter. I.E. my prosody for dummies explanation and then the Roethke poem as the culminating example.

As for “in” being stressed sometimes and not others – basically any monosyllable word can be unstressed or stressed and if the word in question is small / part of a phrase then the syllables might be combined into one. A basic start is to pick words that have several syllables (which can only be stressed a certain way in many cases) and start with those and use context and reasoning like that in the essay on Leda.

For example, caught would be stressed because of what it suggests – that Leda is helpless.

Edit: A basic way to start any poem is to pick the words that have several syllables and do those first, and then use context and reasoning to give precedence to (or take it away from) the monosyllable words in a poem.

In the process of prosody, one should also read the poem again and again and again – I usually memorize any poem I’m going to perform prosody on. Meter/verse rarely sounds unnatural – you have to feel the way the words would be said.

Also, every time I quoted from “Versification” in the essay on Leda – that’s actually an excerpt from Hollander’s book of the same name that was included in The Norton Anthology.

Oh cool, the changing by position rule for monosyllables is really helpful, ha, as well as by context, which is kind pretty interesting…

Starting with polysyllabic words (when beginning) seems like a pretty neat training wheel thing as well, sort of like scanning backwards in length based languages :p

Re Roethke, ha I never thought about that poem being in trimeter to match triple meter, in which waltzes are composed. As far as meter mirroring clumsy inebriation, do you mean like

my rIGHt ear scrAped a bUckle.

the added le of buckle?

trying to get the hang of this english scansion thing

The are a ton of variant feet in My Papa’s Waltz

For example:

with a PALM | CAKED HARD | by DIRT

iamb-spondee-iamb

I’ll get around to it sooner or later and give a full example. I think it would make a good cuminating example for a beginner’s guide to prosody if the Yeats example is too intimidating. However, the Yeats piece goes in to far more detail so I’d intend the layman’s intro to prosody and the Roetke reading to merely introduce the concepts and then for those interested to carry on to the Yeats piece once they sorta grasp the basics.

That sounds like a good idea, a sort of, a little intro on commonly used meters (in English) and then some brief examples of scansion and rule of thumb explanations. Then at the end you could have a sort of, “for those interested in seeing works where meter reflects/furthers content see here” link. and direct it to the Yeats or forthcoming Roethke bit.

@Alcaeus @stephen_j_p

Here is a simpler lesson on “My Papa’s Waltz” – which goes into less detail and is hopefully easier to grasp. I’m slowly adding the appropriate ‘tates.

Chill! Yeah this is a much less intimidating, more straightforward introduction. Good to know meter can be so pliable as well. Ha, I like that you call the “ed” at the end of certain words elided. Question though, so when you scan

ROMP | ed UN
would you actually pronounce the syllable on that “ed?” Out of curiosity, re pronunciation/stress, where are you from?

Ha, sorry to keep bothering you on metere, but would you be down to help me compile a list of English meters into an intro doc? Pentameter, elegiac couplets, hexameter, hendecasyllabic, sapphic, etc. We could begin explaining different types of feet and what exactly are “stressed” and “unstressed” syllables, along with a little rule of thumb on how to tell. Then we could mark out meters and provide example poems for practice? You down? Ha, you’d have to do most of the heavy lifting/english stuff, but I could do greek/latin meters forced into English , like this neat Frost bit

What do you think?

@stephen_j_p @perfectrhyme @jeeho @dalmo @Jhanna

any of you guys down to help out as well?

@Alcaeus

I would just say “romped” naturally – not romp-ed – but you’d still hear the very light d sound in the pronunciation, like any general pronunciation of an -ed word. The words usually still all sound natural – older poetry often does clearly enunciate the -ed in which case I (and other scholars, modern poets, and even poets back then) put a grave accent on it:

E.G.

watchèd would be WATCH-ed – clearly two syllable although the second is unstressed. Elision can refer to any part of a syllable’s sound being removed – it doesn’t have to be the whole syllable. So there’s no elision in watchèd but theres a much less eunciated -ed sound if that grave accent isn’t over the -ed.

@Alcaeus this is all awesome! love making these aspects of poetry more accessible/less intimidating. super d to help out on a list of english meters into an intro doc!

@Bradapalooza love the lesson using “My Papa’s Waltz”!