Rhythm and Meter

Chapter Twelve: Rhyme and Meter

Rhyme – wavelike recurrence of motion or sound
- Accented and unaccented syllables provide some degree of rhythm
- Designates flow of pronounced sound

Rhetorical stresses – make intentions more clear

Pauses: help structure thought

End-stopped line – when the end of the line corresponds with a natural speech pause

Run-on line – when the sense of the line moves on without pause into the next line

Caesuras – pauses that occur within lines

Prose poetry – uses many poetic elements, including connotation, imagery, and figurative language

Meter – identifying characteristic of rhythmic language where accents are arranged to occur in equal intervals of time
- Can make reader more aware of how the poem should be read
- Certain effects can be analyzed to have meaning
- Patterns that sounds follow when arranged into metrical verse
- Foot – unit of meter that consists of one accented syllable and one or two unaccented syllables
- Stanza – group of lines whose metrical pattern is repeated throughout the poem
- Metrical variations: call attention to some irregular sounds
            substitution: replacing a regular foot with another one
            extrametrical syllables: added to beginnings or endings of lines
            truncation: omission of an unaccepted syllable at either end of a line
- Scansion – process of defining a poem’s metrical form:
            1) Identify prevailing foot
            2) Name number of feet in a line
            3) Describe the stanzaic pattern

Rhythm -
- Expected rhythm – the rhythm our minds construct when reading poetry
- Heard rhythm – actual rhythm of words
- The two are counterpointed