Wiploc
Veteran Member
"nested in spheres." Bravo! That's the stuff !
I really enjoyed these, Wiploc.
Thanks.
I'm using Wikipedia as my main source of history.
I believe the phrase, "nested in spheres" came from there.
"nested in spheres." Bravo! That's the stuff !
I really enjoyed these, Wiploc.
"nested in spheres." Bravo! That's the stuff !
I really enjoyed these, Wiploc.
Thanks.
I'm using Wikipedia as my main source of history.
I believe the phrase, "nested in spheres" came from there.
"nested in spheres." Bravo! That's the stuff !
I really enjoyed these, Wiploc.
Thanks.
I'm using Wikipedia as my main source of history.
I believe the phrase, "nested in spheres" came from there.
well, rats, then. I thought it came from your noodle. Anyway, it's still brilliant to fit it into your works.
No WAB thread has lasted more than a few pages.
well, rats, then. I thought it came from your noodle. Anyway, it's still brilliant to fit it into your works.
Is it my fault that Wikipedia sometimes writes in iambs? [smirk]
No WAB thread has lasted more than a few pages.
I've got a lot of centuries to go, and this is only the first draft.
I stopped writing after one stanza because I wanted a ruling from the chair.
It was the Sixth of January
. . When a country met its shame.
A band of traitors stormed the Capitol
. . And shat upon the walls of same.
This alternates pentameter with tetrameter. OK?
I'm being a bit tongue-in-cheek: TFT is a very courteous and pleasant place and I don't really think friends here will complain to the Mods about the tetrameters. But I am curious about terminology. Is there a special name for alternating meters like this? What about lines with nine syllables instead of ten?
Traditional ballads are written in a meter called common meter, which consists of alternating lines of iambic tetrameter (eight syllables) with lines of iambic trimeter (six syllables). ... --google search
Meter in Ballads
Though the majority of ballads use iambs as their main foot, there is no specific meter required for a ballad. This means that while one ballad might use common meter (and many do), another ballad might use a different sort of meter. Generally speaking, ballads have a consistent meter throughout, so that a ballad in common meter will be common meter all the way through, while a ballad with another meter will use that meter all the way through. However, even poems with consistent meter tend to have some mild variations on that meter within them, meaning that a ballad in iambic pentameter will likely contain occasional lines of eleven or more syllables that break the "ten syllables per line" rule of iambic pentameter. [emphasis added] -- litcharts.com
I looked up "ballad meter," which turns out to be the same as "common meter":
Traditional ballads are written in a meter called common meter, which consists of alternating lines of iambic tetrameter (eight syllables) with lines of iambic trimeter (six syllables). ... --google search
Meter in Ballads
Though the majority of ballads use iambs as their main foot, there is no specific meter required for a ballad. This means that while one ballad might use common meter (and many do), another ballad might use a different sort of meter. Generally speaking, ballads have a consistent meter throughout, so that a ballad in common meter will be common meter all the way through, while a ballad with another meter will use that meter all the way through. However, even poems with consistent meter tend to have some mild variations on that meter within them, meaning that a ballad in iambic pentameter will likely contain occasional lines of eleven or more syllables that break the "ten syllables per line" rule of iambic pentameter. [emphasis added] -- litcharts.com
The litcharts website looks interesting. I'll have to poke around there more.
I don't believe either of the above definitions. Meter is normally in feet these days, not syllables.
I guess we'd say Haiku is written in syllabic meter, but I can't think of anything else.
If Haiku has meter.
Let's look at the world's most famous limerick:
There once was a man from Nantucket
Who kept all his cash in a bucket.
But his daughter, named Nan,
Ran away with a man
And as for the bucket, Nantucket.
Well, blow me down.
The truncated first feet are offset by extrametrical syllables, with the result that each line has exactly the number of syllables dictated by the definitions above.
There once was a man from Nantucket
de DUM de de DUM de de DUM (de)
But the actual rule with limericks, as with all poetry, is that you can get away with whatever you can get away with.
Let me see if I can remember one of mine:
There was a role model, Ulysses.
The suitors were after his missus.
He lied and he screwed;
he was violent and rude.
A morality tale is what thissis.
Line three has a truncated first foot (de DUM, rather than de de DUM) but no extrametrical syllable (unaccented syllable after the final stressed syllable). It has five syllables rather than six, and it's just fine.
Line five has the extrametrical syallable at the end, but it doesn't have truncated syllable at the beginning, so it winds up with ten syllables rather than nine. It's fine too.
I like to try to truncate the first foot of a line if the previous line has an extrametrical, but it's not worth much effort. And I've never heard of anyone else doing it.
Is there a special name for alternating meters like this?
I stopped writing after one stanza because I wanted a ruling from the chair.
[*=1]It was the Sixth of January
[*=1] . . When a country met its shame.
[*=1]A band of traitors stormed the Capitol
[*=1] . . And shat upon the walls of same.
This alternates pentameter with tetrameter. OK?
[emphasis added]
[*=1]It was the Sixth of January
[*=1] . . When a country met its shame.
[*=1]A band of traitors stormed the Capitol
[*=1] . . And shat upon the walls of same.
I've done one stanza of anapestic tetrameter
(de de DUM, de de DUM, de de DUM, de de DUM)
already, and plan (though "plan" may be too strong a word)
to do many different styles of poetry in my second draft.
But I'm not the OP, so I'd also be happy with a ruling from the chair.
Line 1: strikes me as iambic tetrameter. (With an extrametrical syllable.)
Line 2: We could call this iambic tetrameter with a truncated first foot,
or we could call it iambic trimeter with an irregular (anapestic) first foot.
Since the first syllable is stressed, but stressed less than the third syllable,
it can be classified either way. We'll look at the rest of the poem to see which classification works for us.
Line 3: We could call it iambic pentameter, but none of the other lines are pentameter. So my instinct is to class it as iambic tetrameter, and call the last two syllables extrametrical.
de dUM, de DUM, de DUM, de DUM (de de)
Line 4: Iambic tetrameter.
Upshot:
Lines 1 and 4 are iambic tetrameter.
Line 2 can work as either trimeter or tetrameter.
Line 3 can be either tetrameter or pentameter.
Rather than have a single line of trimeter or pentameter, my inclination is just to call all four lines tetrameter:
[*=1]It was the Sixth of January
[*=1] . . When a country met its shame.
[*=1]A band of traitors stormed the Capitol
[*=1] . . And shat upon the walls of same.
I don't believe either of the above definitions. Meter is normally in feet these days, not syllables.
I'm the chair!
The chair explicitly allows non-iambic and non-pentameter.
Ballad meter is allowed; haiku is allowed; native English meter is allowed; irregularities are allowed; blank verse is allowed; free verse is allowed; whale roads are allowed.
Myself, I figure to continue with the iambic pentameter for awhile. I'm still learning how to do it. I only just figured out that starting a line with a trochee what causes me to accidentally slip into anapestic meter.
I wrote it as I did for better grammar parsing, but intended it to scan as pure pentameters and tetrameters like this:It was the Sixth of January
. . When a country met its shame.
A band of traitors stormed the Capitol
. . And shat upon the walls of same.
This alternates pentameter with tetrameter. OK?
I wrote it as I did for better grammar parsing, but intended it to scan as pure pentameters and tetrameters like this:It was the Sixth of January
. . When a country met its shame.
A band of traitors stormed the Capitol
. . And shat upon the walls of same.
This alternates pentameter with tetrameter. OK?
It was the Sixth of January whenShould I have written it the second way? (Yes, best would be to rewrite it and avoid this issue.)
. . A country met its shame.
A band of traitors stormed the Capitol
. . And shat upon the walls of same.
This alternation of pentameter and tetrameter seems very familiar: Are there famous poem(s) with this meter?
Edgar Allan Poe said:... This led me at once to a single word as the best refrain.
The question now arose as to the character of the word. Having made up my mind to a refrain, the division of the poem into stanzas was, of course, a corollary: the refrain forming the close of each stanza. That such a close, to have force, must be sonorous and susceptible of protracted emphasis, admitted no doubt: and these considerations inevitably led me to the long o as the most sonorous vowel, in connection with r as the most producible consonant.
The sound of the refrain being thus determined, it became necessary to select a word embodying this sound, and at the same time in the fullest possible keeping with that melancholy which I had predetermined as the tone of the poem. In such a search it would have been absolutely impossible to overlook the word "Nevermore.'' In fact, it was the very first which presented itself.
Several decades ago I bought a (1927) copy of Edgar Allan Poe's Complete Works at a small Sunday "flea market" in Berkeley, Calif. and — almost miraculously — still have this volume despite a few moves where I lost most possessions.
In Volume VIII (Essays) are "The Poetic Principle",
"The Rationale of Verse"
and "The Philosophy of Composition."