Englisch poetry from the former centurys is very beautiful. For example the poetry of Shakespeare and the other poetry Jane Austen liked - masterpieces of metre and rhythm and everlasting trues!
Variety is the spice of life -- and art! I agree with you about the importance of deliberately breaking the rhythm. Unrelenting strict metre gets painful fast. Of course, if that's the effect you _want_ to create... Have you come across "This sentence has five words" by Gary Provost? It's a piece of self-demonstrating writing advice that had a big impact on me when I first read it.
Exactly! Thank you so much for the recommendation, Kell. I hadn't come across Provost's piece before, but it's great advice, and fabulously illustratively written. For anyone else interested, here is the quotation: "This sentence has five words. Here are five more words. Five-word sentences are fine. But several together become monotonous. Listen to what is happening. The writing is getting boring. The sound of it drones. It’s like a stuck record. The ear demands some variety. Now listen. I vary the sentence length, and I create music. Music. The writing sings. It has a pleasant rhythm, a lilt, a harmony. I use short sentences. And I use sentences of medium length. And sometimes when I am certain the reader is rested, I will engage him with a sentence of considerable length, a sentence that burns with energy and builds with all the impetus of a crescendo, the roll of the drums, the crash of the cymbals-sounds that say listen to this, it is important. So write with a combination of short, medium, and long sentences. Create a sound that pleases the reader’s ear. Don’t just write words. Write music."
For me one of the most dramatic moments in Shakespeare comes near the end in King Lear. With all the iambic pentameter of the play, Lear, over the dead Cordelia says "Never, never, never, never, never." The change fairly weeps.
A beautiful example of a moment where shift in rhythm really matters (just before he dies of course) - the commanding sense of certainty created by the repeated trochaic rhythm (the word itself "NEV | er" is a trochee), both recalls the man he once was (with power, status, surety, etc) and contrasts poignantly with his lostness.
I have phoentic dyslexia and no musical talent so despite loving Shakespeare I always glazed over not sure how to understand rhythm or iambic pentameter. As I've written poetry myself, I can tell if it works or not but not why. So this was fun to findly understand more and analyze what I write most in. Eight syllables tend to be my go to, but I can see poems where I rewrote them until they fit in metre even though I didn't understand metre. I was going by ear.
Excellent video! Thank you for not wasting any time, and for just teaching us this topic. Too many RUclipsrs will try to cram in stupid jokes, which only serves as a frustrating distraction. This was wonderful.
Great video! Your comment on the spondaic and the pyrrhic metre made me think of my no. 1 rule in graphic design: if all design elements claim the same amount of attention, none of them are important. Kind regards from Copenhagen ❤️
Or music - the same applies, variations in key or rhytmn help a musical composition to avoid repetitiousness. I think there have been studies into this and the human mind tends to be attracted to a mid-point of complexity in artistic compositions, where there is enough regularity to see pleasing structures but enough variation to be interesting.
I would love more videos that feature close readings of poems for form, metre and structure. You could do one on sonnets, one on odes etc. I'd also be enthusiastic to watch the way these styles evolve when we hit the modernist era: T.S. Eliot, H.D., Ezra Pound, Mina Loy-the whole gang.
Such a great content !!! Your channel brings. Earlier I used to hate poetry and lit. As I thought this was jst a waste of time but gradually I realized poets and their works introduce us to that depth and perspective of life that one could never imagine ....
Thanks so much for this video! I’m a professional musician and I’ve always wondered how poetic meter relates to musical meter. Your video has been very helpful in making that connection for me!
How are you doing dr octavia actually iam very lucky to be subscriber in your wonderful channel i studied English language and literature till second year and left college it’s will of god not mine but thank god we are foreigners subscribers as overseas students RUclips channels are as open universities for us thank you for reminded me of my past lessons lectures and refresh my memory again I gathered main points about rhythm and meter in English poetry briefly here it’s common types of meter in poetry one foot monometer two feet dimeter three feet trimeter four feet tetrmeter five feet pentameter six feet hexameter seven feet heptmeter eight feet octameter rhythms is expressed through stressed and unstressed syllables and rhythm too is pattern of stresse in line of verse common examples of rhythms good evening dear (lamb) how it’s only (trochee ) check please (spondee) beautiful weather we’re having now ( dacty) to infinity and be yond ( anapest) can I consider my self university student and youare my teacher i promise you iwill be very polite and active student you became proud of her iam Arabic lady citizen ihope too we became intimate friends from now on stay safe blessed good luck to you your dearest ones
Hello, Dr. Cox! Thank you for an illuminating dive into metre and rhythm. Loved it! I've been looking at the Charge of the Light Brigade verse, and I slightly disagree. I believe the last line shares a meter/rhythm with an earlier line in the verse: Volley'd and thunder'd Rode the six hundred These two lines seem to be the same to me. A dactyl followed by a trochee. Just the way it reads to me. I don't stress the word 'six'.
Thank you, Bonnie! - I've very pleased that you found the video illuminating. As I said in the video, I think the final line of The Charge of the Light Brigade stanza is debateable, and I completely accept your reading of the line. Looking at the line "Volley'd and thunder'd", though, I do think that "thunder'd" is a dactyl rather than a trochee (THUN | der | 'd), in keeping with the lines that surround it.
Sometimes I like to think of poetry more in terms of musical notation, with a foot equaling a measure and the syllables as notes of different duration. "Cannon to left of them" is two bars of 3-4 time with three quarter-notes in each, the stress occurring on the first beat ; and the last line "Rode the six-hundred" would be two bars of 3-4 time with a half-note at the beginning of the first line since to my ear the word isn't just emphasized, it actually takes more time.
Can you please help me find more information on "How to properly deviate from the intended rhythm in a poem by using "Spondaic and Pyrrhic meters" to create more interesting lines? Very helpful video in that you explained how a poem can be classified as being in a specific meter but in most cases the rhythm can be temporarily broken. Thank you!
How wonderful is that! Just what I need for my composition studies. It work of course also with German Literature and it's what i longed for to know about Poetry for my musical ambitions. 👍👍👍
This is one I'll keep coming back to! BTW, in the Tennyson, the fourth line also breaks the rhythm, ending on a trochee, does it not? He's even written "thunder'd", to make sure it's said as two syllables. This creates a tiny pause between the first quatrain, which tells us what they saw, and has an urgency (or, could be interpreted that way), and the second, which tells us what an onlooker might have seen, and contains comment. The whole thing echoes the rhythm of a galloping horse, perhaps with slight falters in the face of the cannon fire, before it all breaks down at the end. It's fascinating how these metres interact with natural speech rhythms. English is a stress-timed language, but has irregular stress patterns, so the art is to make it regular sounding (so we know it's poetry!), without being too unnatural, or too boring. Did these patterns come from ancient Greek poetry? If so, was there a period of English poetry with different conventions? I'm thinking of really old poems, such as Beowulf.
Thank you londongael! Re. the fourth line of The Charge of the Light Brigade, I read "thunder'd" as dactylic (THUN | der | 'd) in line with the rhythms around it, but I accept that it's a compressed beat, and others may well read it as you do. (I like your division concerning the shifting focus between the two quatrains.) The developing relationship between apostrophes and rhythm in poetry is really interesting - writers in the 18th and 19th centuries were often far more cavalier with their apostrophes than we might be now. Take "Volley'd and", for example - rhythmically the apostrophe seems unnecessary given that "Volleyed and" would be the same number of syllables. Ditto "Storm'd at with". If you are interested, by the way, the first draft of the manuscript of the poem is available on the British Library website: www.bl.uk/collection-items/first-draft-of-the-charge-of-the-light-brigade-by-alfred-tennyson I always find manuscripts fascinating!
@@DrOctaviaCox please forgive my ignorance, but it's it possible that, in days gone by, the -ed parts were pronounced as separate syllables? Then the apostrophe would be needed to show the intended contraction, just as these days one might put an accent on the e in, say, winged to indicate that it must be spoken as 2 syllables. Or maybe the poet put the apostrophe in to indicate that, in spite of the rhythm established in the previous lines, the reader must resist the temptation to insert the -ed syllables?
I'll be honest... I have a very hard time telling stressed & unstressed syllables apart. In a poem, I can tell there's a metre, but can't usually pick it up. Then again, I'm mostly deaf, so maybe this is common for people with severe hearing loss? Oddly, I do fine in ballet class unless there's a really strange piece of music (or if the music is too soft). I'd think that picking out the beat from a waltz would be a similar skill to picking out the beat of a piece of poetry? (To be clear: I do find poetry & this topic interesting. It struck me that my post could sound negative, but that's not my intention. I find differences in perception interesting).
Thank you for your post, Kerrie - please don't worry, I don't take it as negative at all. Perhaps if you think of emphasis, rather than stress, that might help? When you read (aloud) a poem, which words / syllables do you find yourself emphasising? - that might be a better way for you to think about it.
Thank you for taking the time to respond! Hmm. I think for me, it's more about how it flows & whether there's alliteration, consonance, etc. or not. If I do read anything aloud, there are words I emphasize, but I find that happening more with prose than with poetry. (It's tough to read certain passages of Jane Austen's without emphasizing certain words which show how sassy & almost snarky her tone is... Literary mood lightning!) In some cases, it's a little more obvious... With apologies to Blake: "Tyger, tyger, burning bright, in the forests of the night..." feels like a mix, two syllables with emphasis on the first syllable times two, then maybe three syllables with emphasis on the last syllable. Bright & night seem emphasized to me, and that, along with the repetition of the T & G sounds (which are gnarly sounds in English) with the long I between, to me emphasize a feeling of fear & also awe. I have trouble with iambic pentameter, Shakespeare's metier, though. That doesn't stop me from reading it, though. 😁
I would also add that dactyls (in hexameter) were the basis for classical epic poetry in Greek and Latin in the same way iambs were the 'default' English meterical foot. So the use of a dactyl in English is usually done with reference to those works (which were widely known as they formed the basis of much formal education in previous centuries) and therefore lending an air of epicity either earnestly or ironically.
At last! I have wondered about metre for years, but didn't know whom to ask. Thank you! (I don't know about you, but my RUclips doesn't want me to use "metre." Oh well, too bad for RUclips.)
Your explanation on the topic is appreciated. Without fail I think of Strauss’ Blue Danube whenever there is a mention on the stressed-unstressed syllables!
I have just watched this video again: I find it very interesting and insightful. That would be great to have other videos about poetry and versification.
Hi, Dr Cox. Thank you for your excellent videos. I have a question which is as relevant here as anywhere. Regularly, I come across the single stressed syllable "heav'n" or the disyllabic "heav'nly" (typically in Shakespeare and above all in Milton). Do you know how these were actually pronounced? Do we just slur the sounds between the h- and the -n?!
Hola, que tal?, como van?, Los mejores y más cordiales Saludos desde puente piedra, lima, Perú, ojalá que puedas venir en algún momento a mi país y que disfrutes mucho de todo por aquí, con la familia y los amigos; felicidades por tus vídeos....
Amazing, as they ever happen to be, your videos! I'm not a poetry reader, I confess. Now thanks to this video I can say I understand "how is it written", but please let me confess my greatest problem with poetry is not "how" but "why". Every time I read a poem I end wondering why to write that way: rythm, broken lines and so on. Why not to write clear prose?
I can think of several reasons: 1) Rhythm in any writing is inherent-it is always there and played with in whatever form. A novelist uses the rhythm of sentences to create structure in their paragraph and keep the reader’s interest. 2) These forms have been seen as creating naturally beautiful poetry. Most languages have forms that are considered to create beautiful poetry. 3) The structure gives a way of emphasizing important words and creating drama by breaking the form. 4) Structure was considered very important at this time in all forms of art in Europe. If you look up how the great painting masters created the composition (placement of form) in their paintings, it is based on “divine math” and “divine form.” Occultists take this in their own direction, but it is known to be how artists created composition. Tibetan thangka painting has a similarly complex system of mathematical relationships, though it is distinct from European ones. This is a poetic version of that same rigid, defined way of creating structure that was so important culturally in Europe at this time.
Broken lines have been used to facilitate rhymes and metre. In viewpoint poems, combined with awkward splitting of phrases and words, they can denote a scattered or even disorganised mind; they can create little "cliff-hangers" for jokes or anything else that needs to have a bit of an element of surprise on the reader. The fraction of a second it takes for the reader's eyes to dart from the end of a line to the start of a new one is a short pause. Modern poetry often uses broken lines to mimic the flow of anything; thought or natural speech as well as traffic or waterfalls or a toddling kitten's steps and stumbles. Where prose would describe how an idea forms in someone's mind; to show it, prose needs to borrow some poetic stylings-often fancier punctuation (and by fancy I mean, really, just not quite as plain as is common)-to suggest a rhythm, to denote the tacks and turns of a developing opinion. A lot of poetry is interested in expressing impressions of things that are hard to describe in prose without becoming a philosophy book in style and length alike.
Excellent video, as always! One thing that I've never been able to analyze - how should Betjeman's "Group Life: Letchworth" be characterized? *Sym* - path - y - is - *sten* - cil l -ing Her - *dec* - or - a - tive - *leath* - er - work, *Wil* - fred's - learned - *a* - folk - tune - *for* The - *Mor* - ris - Danc - ers' - *band.* It's metrical, but what sort of meter? Is it a dactyl? But most of the feet have four (not three) syllables.
I'm studying Shelley's 'Ode to the West Wind' at the moment which, as you know, is primarily in iambic pentameter but I love the switch up in the third line of Canto 3 which goes into a more trisyllabic metre on: 'Lulled by the coil of his crystalline streams,' which gives it a real hypnotic, subduing feel. Throw all that lovely consonance on top of it and the effect is amazing!! Thanks, as always, for this brilliant back-to-basics video; I think it's always good to revisit this kind of thing.
A great interpretation of Shelley's line from his marvellous 'Ode to the West Wind' - yes, rather like a "Lull[ing]" lullaby. Talking of lovely consonance in Canto 3, I love the diction and image in the lines "The sea-blooms and the oozy woods which wear | The sapless foliage of the ocean" (ll.39-40). And I've also always rather loved the semi-joke of the description of the "azure moss and flowers" which are "So sweet [that] the sense faints picturing them!" (ll.35-6).
@@ConstanzeWeber It's the long vowels, especially the repeated "oo" "oo" "oo" (sea-blooms, oozy, woods) and "ea" "ea" "ea" (sea-blooms, wear, ocean) which add to the sense of physicality I think.
Thank you for this - It took me back a long way. I wish you hadn't started with Paradise Lost - it reminded me of Housman's lovely couplet "And malt does more than Milton can/To justify God's ways to man". Has any poet matched Stravinsky's variations to rhythm at the end of "The Rite of Spring" where the time signature from bar to bar? I love the way Keats' "La Belle Dame Sans Merci" changes the last line of each stanza from four syllables to five.
Ha! - fab lines of Housman's. I too love Keats' variations at the end of each stanza in 'La Belle Dame' - somehow "And no birds sing" and "And her eyes were wild" seem to fit beautifully (despite obviously having a different number of syllables).
I think you should have explained about stressed / unstressed syllables. It is not clear what is the physical difference between double and triple meters.
This is difficult for me because it's in English. I would certainly read "That like a wounded snake" as `- - - `- - -, not -`- -`- -`-. And then, lose all rhythm and rhyme (which, by the way, I could hardly find in those few English verses I read, probably because I'm not a native speaker).
So, what is happening in the movie, “Sense and Sensibility “ when Hugh Grant is reading poetry with an incorrect rhythm and Kate Winslet, clearly irritated, pushes in and demonstrates how to read it properly?
Something never made sense to me about English syllabic scansion. The syllables in English don't map one-to-one with a timed beat since they vary so wildly in length. They aren't all like quarter notes in music for an analogy. For example, the time it takes to say "spawned" is substantially longer than "sat" even though they're both monosyllabic words. With such wildly varying lengths to syllables, it doesn't seem right to me to analyze rhythm in terms of syllables but rather their timings/lengths as well as natural pauses between. Without consistent time patterns, there is no rhythm. Consider this example: >> Jim had flown today. That would obviously classify as using trochaic feet if we analyze it by syllables, but it is not at all rhythmic unless we draw out the time between "JIM" and "FLOWN" to quantize "FLOWN" to a stress beat like so: >> JIMmm had FLOWN toDAYyy. Unless we read in such an unnatural and exaggerated way, it's like a horrible drummer who is sticking to a consistent kick and snare drum accent pattern, but his timing is so all over the place that it doesn't sound the slightest bit rhythmic. Read naturally, it isn't like "DA di DA di DA." It's more like, "DAA di DAAAA di DAA." It doesn't matter how uniformly sounds conform to an accent pattern if their timing is sporadic; the first and foremost thing a rhythm in sound requires is to establish consistency in timing (even more important than accents/stress to sound rhythmic to our ears). Meanwhile, consider this: >> Jimmy had flown today. This disrupts the trochaic feet by starting with a dactyl from a strict syllabic scansion. Yet it actually sounds _"more trochaic"_ to my ears, not less with this insertion of the extra syllable -- because it smooths and helps even out the timing of the stressed syllables; It evens out the length discrepancies of "JIM" and "FLOWN" as syllables and the time between them. It now becomes like, "DAAdi di DAAAA di DAA," which leave some tension at the end still but that tends to be smoothed out with the natural pause created by the period. Thinking about scansion in terms of stressed/unstressed syllable patterns seems counter-productive this way to understand the true rhythmic sound qualities of a poem or lyrical prose. I think we have to focus, above all else, on timing between stressed syllables to distribute them evenly across uniformly-timed beats -- not how many unstressed syllables there are -- or else we can create a lot of needless rhythmic tension even when conforming perfectly to a syllabic meter. I hope you'll forgive my long-windedness but focusing so much on syllables and not timing just always struck me as an incorrect way to understand rhythmic qualities of a poem. The ancient Greeks, to my understanding, did factor in the relative lengths of syllables when they came up with these metrical systems.
Seems to me that if one is writing _in order to_ fit a meter scheme, both the meaning and the sound will suffer. I'm not sure why things like sonnet forms became so popular. Makes the language so much more stilted and awkward.
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Thank you very much indeed for watching.
Englisch poetry from the former centurys is very beautiful.
For example the poetry of Shakespeare and the other poetry Jane Austen liked - masterpieces of metre and rhythm and everlasting trues!
Variety is the spice of life -- and art! I agree with you about the importance of deliberately breaking the rhythm. Unrelenting strict metre gets painful fast. Of course, if that's the effect you _want_ to create...
Have you come across "This sentence has five words" by Gary Provost? It's a piece of self-demonstrating writing advice that had a big impact on me when I first read it.
Exactly! Thank you so much for the recommendation, Kell. I hadn't come across Provost's piece before, but it's great advice, and fabulously illustratively written.
For anyone else interested, here is the quotation:
"This sentence has five words. Here are five more words. Five-word sentences are fine. But several together become monotonous. Listen to what is happening. The writing is getting boring. The sound of it drones. It’s like a stuck record. The ear demands some variety.
Now listen. I vary the sentence length, and I create music. Music. The writing sings. It has a pleasant rhythm, a lilt, a harmony. I use short sentences. And I use sentences of medium length. And sometimes when I am certain the reader is rested, I will engage him with a sentence of considerable length, a sentence that burns with energy and builds with all the impetus of a crescendo, the roll of the drums, the crash of the cymbals-sounds that say listen to this, it is important.
So write with a combination of short, medium, and long sentences. Create a sound that pleases the reader’s ear. Don’t just write words. Write music."
For me one of the most dramatic moments in Shakespeare comes near the end in King Lear. With all the iambic pentameter of the play, Lear, over the dead Cordelia says "Never, never, never, never, never." The change fairly weeps.
A beautiful example of a moment where shift in rhythm really matters (just before he dies of course) - the commanding sense of certainty created by the repeated trochaic rhythm (the word itself "NEV | er" is a trochee), both recalls the man he once was (with power, status, surety, etc) and contrasts poignantly with his lostness.
This is great! I am slowly getting into poetry, and this is exactly the sort of information I need to understand it better.
Excellent - I'm very pleased the video helps.
I have phoentic dyslexia and no musical talent so despite loving Shakespeare I always glazed over not sure how to understand rhythm or iambic pentameter. As I've written poetry myself, I can tell if it works or not but not why. So this was fun to findly understand more and analyze what I write most in. Eight syllables tend to be my go to, but I can see poems where I rewrote them until they fit in metre even though I didn't understand metre. I was going by ear.
Excellent video! Thank you for not wasting any time, and for just teaching us this topic. Too many RUclipsrs will try to cram in stupid jokes, which only serves as a frustrating distraction. This was wonderful.
Great video! Your comment on the spondaic and the pyrrhic metre made me think of my no. 1 rule in graphic design: if all design elements claim the same amount of attention, none of them are important. Kind regards from Copenhagen ❤️
Thank you! Ha! - it's rather wonderful to think of the comparisons between poetry and graphic design. And very apt here too.
Or music - the same applies, variations in key or rhytmn help a musical composition to avoid repetitiousness. I think there have been studies into this and the human mind tends to be attracted to a mid-point of complexity in artistic compositions, where there is enough regularity to see pleasing structures but enough variation to be interesting.
The best explanation of metre and rhythm I've come across yet. Thank you.
I would love more videos that feature close readings of poems for form, metre and structure. You could do one on sonnets, one on odes etc. I'd also be enthusiastic to watch the way these styles evolve when we hit the modernist era: T.S. Eliot, H.D., Ezra Pound, Mina Loy-the whole gang.
Such a great content !!! Your channel brings. Earlier I used to hate poetry and lit. As I thought this was jst a waste of time but gradually I realized poets and their works introduce us to that depth and perspective of life that one could never imagine ....
Thanks so much for this video! I’m a professional musician and I’ve always wondered how poetic meter relates to musical meter. Your video has been very helpful in making that connection for me!
Oh brilliant! - thanks for watching.
It's just like travelling to a new planet....wow! highly interesting! A new perspective for me!
Ha! - well I'm very happy to be your intergalactic guide!
How are you doing dr octavia actually iam very lucky to be subscriber in your wonderful channel i studied English language and literature till second year and left college it’s will of god not mine but thank god we are foreigners subscribers as overseas students RUclips channels are as open universities for us thank you for reminded me of my past lessons lectures and refresh my memory again I gathered main points about rhythm and meter in English poetry briefly here it’s common types of meter in poetry one foot monometer two feet dimeter three feet trimeter four feet tetrmeter five feet pentameter six feet hexameter seven feet heptmeter eight feet octameter rhythms is expressed through stressed and unstressed syllables and rhythm too is pattern of stresse in line of verse common examples of rhythms good evening dear (lamb) how it’s only (trochee ) check please (spondee) beautiful weather we’re having now ( dacty) to infinity and be yond ( anapest) can I consider my self university student and youare my teacher i promise you iwill be very polite and active student you became proud of her iam Arabic lady citizen ihope too we became intimate friends from now on stay safe blessed good luck to you your dearest ones
Hello, Dr. Cox! Thank you for an illuminating dive into metre and rhythm. Loved it!
I've been looking at the Charge of the Light Brigade verse, and I slightly disagree. I believe the last line shares a meter/rhythm with an earlier line in the verse:
Volley'd and thunder'd
Rode the six hundred
These two lines seem to be the same to me. A dactyl followed by a trochee. Just the way it reads to me. I don't stress the word 'six'.
Thank you, Bonnie! - I've very pleased that you found the video illuminating. As I said in the video, I think the final line of The Charge of the Light Brigade stanza is debateable, and I completely accept your reading of the line.
Looking at the line "Volley'd and thunder'd", though, I do think that "thunder'd" is a dactyl rather than a trochee (THUN | der | 'd), in keeping with the lines that surround it.
@@DrOctaviaCox I hadn't thought of reading thunder'd that way. Thanks! Have a great day!
Sometimes I like to think of poetry more in terms of musical notation, with a foot equaling a measure and the syllables as notes of different duration. "Cannon to left of them" is two bars of 3-4 time with three quarter-notes in each, the stress occurring on the first beat ; and the last line "Rode the six-hundred" would be two bars of 3-4 time with a half-note at the beginning of the first line since to my ear the word isn't just emphasized, it actually takes more time.
Can you please help me find more information on "How to properly deviate from the intended rhythm in a poem by using "Spondaic and Pyrrhic meters" to create more interesting lines? Very helpful video in that you explained how a poem can be classified as being in a specific meter but in most cases the rhythm can be temporarily broken. Thank you!
How wonderful is that! Just what I need for my composition studies. It work of course also with German Literature and it's what i longed for to know about Poetry for my musical ambitions.
👍👍👍
This is one I'll keep coming back to! BTW, in the Tennyson, the fourth line also breaks the rhythm, ending on a trochee, does it not? He's even written "thunder'd", to make sure it's said as two syllables. This creates a tiny pause between the first quatrain, which tells us what they saw, and has an urgency (or, could be interpreted that way), and the second, which tells us what an onlooker might have seen, and contains comment. The whole thing echoes the rhythm of a galloping horse, perhaps with slight falters in the face of the cannon fire, before it all breaks down at the end.
It's fascinating how these metres interact with natural speech rhythms. English is a stress-timed language, but has irregular stress patterns, so the art is to make it regular sounding (so we know it's poetry!), without being too unnatural, or too boring.
Did these patterns come from ancient Greek poetry? If so, was there a period of English poetry with different conventions? I'm thinking of really old poems, such as Beowulf.
Thank you londongael!
Re. the fourth line of The Charge of the Light Brigade, I read "thunder'd" as dactylic (THUN | der | 'd) in line with the rhythms around it, but I accept that it's a compressed beat, and others may well read it as you do. (I like your division concerning the shifting focus between the two quatrains.) The developing relationship between apostrophes and rhythm in poetry is really interesting - writers in the 18th and 19th centuries were often far more cavalier with their apostrophes than we might be now. Take "Volley'd and", for example - rhythmically the apostrophe seems unnecessary given that "Volleyed and" would be the same number of syllables. Ditto "Storm'd at with".
If you are interested, by the way, the first draft of the manuscript of the poem is available on the British Library website: www.bl.uk/collection-items/first-draft-of-the-charge-of-the-light-brigade-by-alfred-tennyson
I always find manuscripts fascinating!
Thank you for explaining this. Dr Cox emphasizes in the video that that is her interpretation, but I read it as you did, and wondered.
@@DrOctaviaCox please forgive my ignorance, but it's it possible that, in days gone by, the -ed parts were pronounced as separate syllables? Then the apostrophe would be needed to show the intended contraction, just as these days one might put an accent on the e in, say, winged to indicate that it must be spoken as 2 syllables.
Or maybe the poet put the apostrophe in to indicate that, in spite of the rhythm established in the previous lines, the reader must resist the temptation to insert the -ed syllables?
Thank you for helping others keep the best of human nature alive. It’s not always easy or properly appreciated but it is important work. Never stop.
I'll be honest... I have a very hard time telling stressed & unstressed syllables apart. In a poem, I can tell there's a metre, but can't usually pick it up. Then again, I'm mostly deaf, so maybe this is common for people with severe hearing loss? Oddly, I do fine in ballet class unless there's a really strange piece of music (or if the music is too soft). I'd think that picking out the beat from a waltz would be a similar skill to picking out the beat of a piece of poetry? (To be clear: I do find poetry & this topic interesting. It struck me that my post could sound negative, but that's not my intention. I find differences in perception interesting).
Thank you for your post, Kerrie - please don't worry, I don't take it as negative at all. Perhaps if you think of emphasis, rather than stress, that might help? When you read (aloud) a poem, which words / syllables do you find yourself emphasising? - that might be a better way for you to think about it.
Thank you for taking the time to respond! Hmm. I think for me, it's more about how it flows & whether there's alliteration, consonance, etc. or not. If I do read anything aloud, there are words I emphasize, but I find that happening more with prose than with poetry. (It's tough to read certain passages of Jane Austen's without emphasizing certain words which show how sassy & almost snarky her tone is... Literary mood lightning!) In some cases, it's a little more obvious... With apologies to Blake: "Tyger, tyger, burning bright, in the forests of the night..." feels like a mix, two syllables with emphasis on the first syllable times two, then maybe three syllables with emphasis on the last syllable. Bright & night seem emphasized to me, and that, along with the repetition of the T & G sounds (which are gnarly sounds in English) with the long I between, to me emphasize a feeling of fear & also awe. I have trouble with iambic pentameter, Shakespeare's metier, though. That doesn't stop me from reading it, though. 😁
I would love to hear you talk about William Blake’s “Lullaby”. Thank you! Jane Bryce
I would also add that dactyls (in hexameter) were the basis for classical epic poetry in Greek and Latin in the same way iambs were the 'default' English meterical foot. So the use of a dactyl in English is usually done with reference to those works (which were widely known as they formed the basis of much formal education in previous centuries) and therefore lending an air of epicity either earnestly or ironically.
At last! I have wondered about metre for years, but didn't know whom to ask. Thank you! (I don't know about you, but my RUclips doesn't want me to use "metre." Oh well, too bad for RUclips.)
It's my pleasure!
(It's the same for me too! Clearly "metre" is frowned upon.)
Thank you so much. I am delighted with the technical aspects of your videos!
It's my pleasure!
Your explanation on the topic is appreciated. Without fail I think of Strauss’ Blue Danube whenever there is a mention on the stressed-unstressed syllables!
Yes, excellent example of what in poetry would be called dactylic metre - the stress is really clear in the Blue Danube.
@@DrOctaviaCox .....or the Elizabethan Serenade.
This is super helpful. Love watching your back to basic type videos. Thanks so much!
I have just watched this video again: I find it very interesting and insightful. That would be great to have other videos about poetry and versification.
Hi, Dr Cox. Thank you for your excellent videos. I have a question which is as relevant here as anywhere. Regularly, I come across the single stressed syllable "heav'n" or the disyllabic "heav'nly" (typically in Shakespeare and above all in Milton). Do you know how these were actually pronounced? Do we just slur the sounds between the h- and the -n?!
Hola, que tal?, como van?,
Los mejores y más cordiales Saludos desde puente piedra, lima, Perú, ojalá que puedas venir en algún momento a mi país y que disfrutes mucho de todo por aquí, con la familia y los amigos;
felicidades por tus vídeos....
Amazing, as they ever happen to be, your videos! I'm not a poetry reader, I confess. Now thanks to this video I can say I understand "how is it written", but please let me confess my greatest problem with poetry is not "how" but "why". Every time I read a poem I end wondering why to write that way: rythm, broken lines and so on. Why not to write clear prose?
I can think of several reasons:
1) Rhythm in any writing is inherent-it is always there and played with in whatever form. A novelist uses the rhythm of sentences to create structure in their paragraph and keep the reader’s interest.
2) These forms have been seen as creating naturally beautiful poetry. Most languages have forms that are considered to create beautiful poetry.
3) The structure gives a way of emphasizing important words and creating drama by breaking the form.
4) Structure was considered very important at this time in all forms of art in Europe. If you look up how the great painting masters created the composition (placement of form) in their paintings, it is based on “divine math” and “divine form.” Occultists take this in their own direction, but it is known to be how artists created composition. Tibetan thangka painting has a similarly complex system of mathematical relationships, though it is distinct from European ones. This is a poetic version of that same rigid, defined way of creating structure that was so important culturally in Europe at this time.
Broken lines have been used to facilitate rhymes and metre. In viewpoint poems, combined with awkward splitting of phrases and words, they can denote a scattered or even disorganised mind; they can create little "cliff-hangers" for jokes or anything else that needs to have a bit of an element of surprise on the reader. The fraction of a second it takes for the reader's eyes to dart from the end of a line to the start of a new one is a short pause. Modern poetry often uses broken lines to mimic the flow of anything; thought or natural speech as well as traffic or waterfalls or a toddling kitten's steps and stumbles. Where prose would describe how an idea forms in someone's mind; to show it, prose needs to borrow some poetic stylings-often fancier punctuation (and by fancy I mean, really, just not quite as plain as is common)-to suggest a rhythm, to denote the tacks and turns of a developing opinion.
A lot of poetry is interested in expressing impressions of things that are hard to describe in prose without becoming a philosophy book in style and length alike.
Excellent video, as always!
One thing that I've never been able to analyze - how should Betjeman's "Group Life: Letchworth" be characterized?
*Sym* - path - y - is - *sten* - cil l -ing
Her - *dec* - or - a - tive - *leath* - er - work,
*Wil* - fred's - learned - *a* - folk - tune - *for*
The - *Mor* - ris - Danc - ers' - *band.*
It's metrical, but what sort of meter? Is it a dactyl? But most of the feet have four (not three) syllables.
I love your videos, my daughter and I watch you together a lot. Today: “Mama, is she rapping?” (she’s 7😁)… Me: “… yes. That’s… yes.”
Ha! Fascinating! I now have much nerdier words for 4/4 time, 3/4 time, 6/8 time, etc. in music 😂
Thank you for this 🙏
Do you have any of your own examples of a poem’s metre and rhythm that you find particularly striking or interesting?
I'm studying Shelley's 'Ode to the West Wind' at the moment which, as you know, is primarily in iambic pentameter but I love the switch up in the third line of Canto 3 which goes into a more trisyllabic metre on: 'Lulled by the coil of his crystalline streams,' which gives it a real hypnotic, subduing feel. Throw all that lovely consonance on top of it and the effect is amazing!! Thanks, as always, for this brilliant back-to-basics video; I think it's always good to revisit this kind of thing.
A great interpretation of Shelley's line from his marvellous 'Ode to the West Wind' - yes, rather like a "Lull[ing]" lullaby. Talking of lovely consonance in Canto 3, I love the diction and image in the lines "The sea-blooms and the oozy woods which wear | The sapless foliage of the ocean" (ll.39-40). And I've also always rather loved the semi-joke of the description of the "azure moss and flowers" which are "So sweet [that] the sense faints picturing them!" (ll.35-6).
And thank you - I'm glad you enjoyed the video and found the introductory, back-to-basics concept useful.
@@DrOctaviaCox I so agree about the 'oozy woods' line. When you say it aloud it's quite the physical experience!
@@ConstanzeWeber It's the long vowels, especially the repeated "oo" "oo" "oo" (sea-blooms, oozy, woods) and "ea" "ea" "ea" (sea-blooms, wear, ocean) which add to the sense of physicality I think.
excellent. thank you
Thank you for this - It took me back a long way.
I wish you hadn't started with Paradise Lost - it reminded me of Housman's lovely couplet "And malt does more than Milton can/To justify God's ways to man".
Has any poet matched Stravinsky's variations to rhythm at the end of "The Rite of Spring" where the time signature from bar to bar?
I love the way Keats' "La Belle Dame Sans Merci" changes the last line of each stanza from four syllables to five.
Ha! - fab lines of Housman's.
I too love Keats' variations at the end of each stanza in 'La Belle Dame' - somehow "And no birds sing" and "And her eyes were wild" seem to fit beautifully (despite obviously having a different number of syllables).
I think you should have explained about stressed / unstressed syllables. It is not clear what is the physical difference between double and triple meters.
Thank you mam
never been this fast to any video before!
Welcome!
great! thanks!
Thank you!
This is difficult for me because it's in English. I would certainly read
"That like a wounded snake" as `- - - `- - -, not -`- -`- -`-. And then, lose all rhythm and rhyme (which, by the way, I could hardly find in those few English verses I read, probably because I'm not a native speaker).
👌
So, what is happening in the movie, “Sense and Sensibility “ when Hugh Grant is reading poetry with an incorrect rhythm and Kate Winslet, clearly irritated, pushes in and demonstrates how to read it properly?
Something never made sense to me about English syllabic scansion. The syllables in English don't map one-to-one with a timed beat since they vary so wildly in length. They aren't all like quarter notes in music for an analogy. For example, the time it takes to say "spawned" is substantially longer than "sat" even though they're both monosyllabic words.
With such wildly varying lengths to syllables, it doesn't seem right to me to analyze rhythm in terms of syllables but rather their timings/lengths as well as natural pauses between. Without consistent time patterns, there is no rhythm. Consider this example:
>> Jim had flown today.
That would obviously classify as using trochaic feet if we analyze it by syllables, but it is not at all rhythmic unless we draw out the time between "JIM" and "FLOWN" to quantize "FLOWN" to a stress beat like so:
>> JIMmm had FLOWN toDAYyy.
Unless we read in such an unnatural and exaggerated way, it's like a horrible drummer who is sticking to a consistent kick and snare drum accent pattern, but his timing is so all over the place that it doesn't sound the slightest bit rhythmic. Read naturally, it isn't like "DA di DA di DA." It's more like, "DAA di DAAAA di DAA." It doesn't matter how uniformly sounds conform to an accent pattern if their timing is sporadic; the first and foremost thing a rhythm in sound requires is to establish consistency in timing (even more important than accents/stress to sound rhythmic to our ears).
Meanwhile, consider this:
>> Jimmy had flown today.
This disrupts the trochaic feet by starting with a dactyl from a strict syllabic scansion. Yet it actually sounds _"more trochaic"_ to my ears, not less with this insertion of the extra syllable -- because it smooths and helps even out the timing of the stressed syllables; It evens out the length discrepancies of "JIM" and "FLOWN" as syllables and the time between them. It now becomes like, "DAAdi di DAAAA di DAA," which leave some tension at the end still but that tends to be smoothed out with the natural pause created by the period.
Thinking about scansion in terms of stressed/unstressed syllable patterns seems counter-productive this way to understand the true rhythmic sound qualities of a poem or lyrical prose. I think we have to focus, above all else, on timing between stressed syllables to distribute them evenly across uniformly-timed beats -- not how many unstressed syllables there are -- or else we can create a lot of needless rhythmic tension even when conforming perfectly to a syllabic meter. I hope you'll forgive my long-windedness but focusing so much on syllables and not timing just always struck me as an incorrect way to understand rhythmic qualities of a poem. The ancient Greeks, to my understanding, did factor in the relative lengths of syllables when they came up with these metrical systems.
However… what is of the utmost importance, is freedom (a breakfast food) and finding one’s own voice in writing…
Seems to me that if one is writing _in order to_ fit a meter scheme, both the meaning and the sound will suffer. I'm not sure why things like sonnet forms became so popular. Makes the language so much more stilted and awkward.
I always thought trochee was pronounced trokee not troshee.
2ish poetry would have been explained in school like that. My teacher made me hate it. Made me nnotmli,e poetry
We dont measure distance in meters! 🇺🇸