Dear Fragrance and anyone else who wants to try writing some poems in English.
Fragrance, these are the terms you asked about:
"anapaestic feet": this is a metrical foot made up of three syllables; two unstressed followed by one stressed. {The signs for these are like UU|.} The example is the kind often used in light-hearted or humorous poems. It of course, tells you how to read the poem. On the words or parts of words that are stressed harder you will find the | and on the words or parts of words that are said more easily you will find U .
For example:
U U |like a ghost --or--
U U | U U"Twas the night before
| U U | U U |Christmas and all through the house
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"iambic scheme": This iambic is a metrical foot made up of one unstressed syllable followed by one stressed sylable (U|)
U | U | U | U |For example: Along/ the line/ of smok/y hills.
This is the most common metrical foot there is in English poetry. Using these two kinds of signs, the division of the words with / and the signs above (U amd |) you know exactly how a poem should be read. You can even use these marks on your small cards that you have on a ring, when you have to make a speech. I had to give a talk at a wedding, and I could give the same talk today, exactly as I gave it all those years ago. The people have teenagers now. :-)
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搕he poem contains four quatrains with combined iambic and anapaestic feet. Most lines have three feet and some four, the rhyme scheme is abcb.?
"quatrain": it means a stanza of four lines. The word is from the French word, quatre, which means four. A stanza is a certain number of lines of verse grouped in a definite scheme of meter and sequence, or a metrical division of a poem. These are often incorrectly called a "verse". The word "stanza"comes from the Latin meaning "chamber." You notice how large a part Latin plays in this? This is one of the reasons why I have been talking about ancient Greece and Rome, you see. :-)
"foot": a unit of rhythm within a line of poetry. A foot is usually made upof a stressed syllable and one or more unstressed syllables. For example: U| is an iambic foot. |UU is a dactylic foot. The number of feet in a line is used when describing metre. The pentametre is a five-foot line, the hexametre is a six foot line, etc.
"abab, cdcd, efef , gg": these have to do with the rhyme scheme: the pattern of rhyme within a stanza or poem. The rhyme scheme is usually shown by applying to each similar rhyme the same petter of the alphabet. For example:
...steeple a...town b...people a...down b
The more the kinds of rhymes, the more letters you will need to use.
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A sonnet is a lyric poem of fourteen lines in iambic pentameter following one of several possible rhyme schemes. The two main types of sonnet are the Italian (or Petrarchan) and the English or Shakespearean). If you want to know about these I can give you further details.
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This may make the whole thing more understandable, I hope. Patterns of rhythm are found in a poem by means of the technique called scansion. In scansion we count the accents and unstressed syllables and divide them into feet. Scansion is a way to find out the "mechanical" techniques the poet used to get certain effects. The meaning of the poem always comes first. Then we use scansion to dig deeper into the poet's craft to deepen our appreciation of poetry, and to learn methods we ourselves can apply in writing poetry.
The unit of rhythm is called a foot. There are five common feet in English poetry. Two of them are based on two syllables: the first of these two is the iambic, and here's an example: U | destroy
and the second of these two is trochaic, and here's an example:
| U wander
The iambic is by far the most common. There are two other feet that are based on three syllables and they are: the anapestic and the dactylic. Here's anexample of each of them: U U |anapestic intervene
| U Udactylic merrily
The fifth common foot has two stressed syllables. Here's an example:
| |spondaic football
You will find many variations on these feet as you read poems, which makes scanning poetry somewhat tricky. Your scansion may not agree with someone else's, and you both could be knowledgeable and right. Most poems have one dominant type of rhythm (e.g. iambic), but there will be other feet used occasionally as well. A poem that never varied would become very dull. There can also be in some lines, unstressed syllables that do not seem to fit the patterns. These are called slack syllables. Often a poet varies the rhythm to emphasize important words and ideas.
If you want to state the number of feet in each line the terms for counting are from the Latin words:
mono -- onedi -- twotri -- threetetra -- fourpenta -- fivehexa -- sixhepta -- sevenocta -- eight
To each of these is added the word metre, giving us: monometre - one foot; dimetre - two feet; trimetre - three feet; tetrametre - four feet; pentametre -- five feet; hexametre -- seven feet; octametre -- eight feet.
From this you can describe the rhythm of a line of poetry. For example, if the line is iambic and has five feet it is called iambic pentametre.
The effects of rhythm are used to convey the emotional meaning conveyed by the poem. For example, feelings of sadness or joy are often partly the result of the flow or movement of the words in a poem.
Iambic (U|) is the most common English foot, maybe because there is a tendency in English for words to be accented on the second syllable and because many function words have one syllable, and the more substantive words that follow them are stressed. Here's an example: the dog has run to school. Iambic rhythm seems most natural and most like ordinary speech. Trochaic (|U) reverses the flow and makes a line seem to move more roughly. Anapestic foot (UU|) with the two light beats before the accent gives a leaping motion often are used in humorous verse or in descriptions of fast action. Dactylic (||U) begins with an accent and therefore, often gives a thrusting, driving movement. You can say these to yourself without words to practise them. Do it like morse code which had dots and dashes. The dots are quick the dashes are longer. The dactylic (IIU) would sound like dat dat daaaah.
You vary the motion in a poem by changing the metre at times, or by using more accented one-syllable words. Generally speaking, many unaccented syllables quicken the pace, and many accented syllables slow it down.
Best wishes with your English poetry Fragrance, and any others,
Mary
