![]() ![]() Middle Eastern poetry often uses quantitative verse as a measure but then again, it is sometimes described in syllabic terms. Like the Asian languages, Middle Eastern prosody sometimes requires measure of other factors. Or we will often attempt to reduce to the lowest common denominator and simply count syllables, still a little warped. In English, quantitative verse is sometimes difficult to discern and we transition to Accentual Syllabic by default which warps the intent a bit. But the English ear doesn't readily recognize the long and short sounds as easily as stressed and unstressed sounds. ![]() There was a failed attempt in 16 th century England to emulate Greek meters using long and short vowel sounds by the Classists. However, Quantitative measures are made up of a combination of long and short vowel sounds. Quantitative Verse also measures the line by dividing it into metric feet as well as counting syllables.Tony provides a wonderful explaination of how the patterns and metric measures fit together in this forum thread. A book I have found very helpful in the understanding of meter, specifically Accentual Syllabic meter, is Rules for the Dance by Mary Oliver, 1998, ISBN 6-x. Accentual Syllabic measures are made up of a combination of stressed and unstressed syllables. Accentual Syllabic Verse measures the line by dividing it into metric feet as well as counting syllables.Another way would be to recognize that a single syllable word in Chinese could translate into multi syllables in English and therefore converting character count to word count. one way to equate the transition to English is to simply count syllables. Since most Chinese words written in characters are a single syllable. Probably the accurate term for measurement, especially when emulating the Chinese forms, would be to count characters. This is language specific and impossible to duplicate in English and again we are left with the syllable. The Chinese and some other Asian poetics include the measure of pitch or tone in their count. Japanese poetry measures the line by onji which means "sound syllable" for which there is no true translation in English, therefore we are reduced to simply counting syllables as we understand them. A syllable is a unit of pronunciation uttered without interruption, It forms the whole or part of a word. Syllabic Verse simply measures the line by number of syllables. ![]() It might be described as written with 4 stresses or 3 stresses and 4 unstressed syllables. This is folk verse, it carries the rhythm of normal speech. Accentual Verse measures heavy stresses without any specific pattern and sometimes measures unstressed syllables, but not always."I would sooner write free verse as play tennis with the net down." "There are only two meters "strict and loose iambic." Robert Frost One of the best explainations of the iambic pentameter line that I have ever read is right here at this site written by our own Tony Veenpere Iambic Pentameter. The most popular metric line in the English language is the "iambic pentameter" line. There are many more metric terms (rarely used and rarely understood) that I do not include here. I also include an index for the various meters found in poetic cultures around the world. Here is my simple understanding of the basics of meter. The four major measures in English are Accentual Verse, Syllabic Verse, Accentual Syllabic Verse and Quantitative Verse. There are different measures used in poetics. It was the Greeks who were the first to measure and name poetic meters and in English we still refer to the various units of measure by their Greek names. Free verse does not have meter, a regular rhythm from line to line, and we don't scan it to analyze it's rhythm." Tõnis Veenpere The lines may be different lengths and line breaks, stanza breaks, natural cadences of the English language (which is primarily iambic, even if one reads prose), and other poetic devices make up the poem's musicality. Free verse has rhythm, but not regular rhythm. While all poems have musicality (or should) metrical poems, unlike free verse, have regular rhythm. The beat - the regular rhythm - must be there in metrical poems. The meter, the beat, is there even with substituted feet, the underlying beat is there in the backdrop. Think of the variations (the substituted feet, choice of syntax, rhyme, etc.) as the music superimposed over that beat. “Think of meter as an underlying beat, a poem's regular beat, like the beat in a piece of music. (Metric) scansion is merely a way to begin to reveal just how the pleasing effect of sounds in speech is augmented by stress patterns.” Ikars Sarma "Meter is so not rhythm, because rhythm is way beyond and above meter. Meter is the rhythmic measure of a line of verse. ![]()
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