hey Augnos, I just spent the past 4 years or so learning poetry in order to better understand lyric writing as well. Glad to see someone else with similar thinking! Though, I would say lyric writing is similar to poetry writing and this video is helpful! but------ writing music relies less on poetic meter. more on artistic insight, and on the instrumental!!! this will be helpful for a while, but after a few years it becomes more about the music and less about the meter of the verses. etc.
20 seconds into the video. I click subscribe. I get a comfortable feeling Tim is a confident and educated person to teach me. His public speaking commands my interest.
My notes in Chinese (prepared for the coming exam): 在诗歌中，我们可以在单词上标注“u”表示“unstressed”非重音，用“/”表示重音。 以重音开头，后面跟非重音的，是“falling rhythm”；以非重音开头，后面以重音结尾的，是“rising rhythm” U /是iamb（短长格或者抑扬格）是莎士比亚十四行诗常见的 / u是trochee（长短格或者扬抑格） u u /是anapest（抑抑扬格） / u u是dactyl（强弱格），这种诗歌当中很难见到。 / /是spondee（扬扬格） U U是pyrrhic（抑抑格） 诗歌的韵律可能在某些情况会发生突然的变化，可能有特殊的用途，比如让读者停下来好好思考之类的。 一个诗行中如果只有一个重音（也就是一个音步，foot）的话，就是monometer 二个音步就是dimeter 三个音步就是trimeter 四个音步就是tetrameter 五个音步就是pentameter 六个音步就是Hexameter 七个音步就是Heptameter 八个音步就是Octameter
Dear teacher, I am learning English by reading poetry; This pushes me to understand how poetry is constructed by watching your amazing video. But I see my appetite increasing by seeing myself writing poesy. If one day, I will be a famous poet, I will never forget to mention you as my initiator.
My Man, I've been hunting for an analysis of "It was a Lover and His Lass" for my dissertation and have been coming up dry, so I've been having to learn how to do it myself. It's pretty cut and dry except for the line "In springtime, the only pretty ringtime." This video was awesome! Got me the info I needed and fast. Only wish I could reference you in my dissertation! But my committee probably wouldn't be crazy about that. Funny how we study these days; learn it here, then get your reference somewhere else. Doesn't make much sense. Thanks again!
One of the best songs in Shakespeare! My six-year-old daughter sings and dances to it all the time. Thank you for the compliments! If you want a fantastic little book on the topic that would definitely work for your dissertation, check out Robert Pinsky’s The Sound of Poetry.
Great explanation of rhythm and meter. I knew that Shakespeare wrote in iambic pentameter and didn't understand what that meant until I watched this lecture. Thank you very much!
Good point - more text in the white space next to his head would be great, although I used Microsoft OneNote while watching this and finished with a great outline of rhythm!
Thank you so much, currently im undertaking year 12 lit, and this video is making me more interested in poetry and its structure. Probably should’ve found this before my sac but this helps so much for the upcoming exam!
Barely making it through highschool English lit. This was super helpful, the teachers explanation of stressed and unstresses syllables and how to mark them was super confusing.
This is the best explanation on RU-vid, congratulations! I have a question though: How do you tell what type of meter you have in verses where they kinda blend in and there can be a little ambiguity as to how to set the feet. Here is what I mean exactly: Where, oh/ where have /you been /my love? If I group the feet by two syllables then I would have trochee/trochee/iamb/iamb If I group the feet by three syllables as well, I would have: Where, oh/ where have /you been my/ love? trochee/trochee/amphibrach/spondee/ - or this cannot be because you cannot have a foot made of only one syllable? If we separate them like this: Where, oh/ where have you/ been my love? We would have trochee/dactyl/cretic? The next verse cannot be separated into 2 syllable meter, one syllable is left out, so how do we know whether it is: It's been /so long/ since the /moon has gone/ iamb/iamb/pyrrhus/cretic or It's been /so long/ since the moon /has gone/ Iamb/iamb/anapest/iamb So I guess the right question would be: what are the criteria for separating the feet? how do you tell the 3 syllabic feet from the 2 syllabic feet? How do you decide if to put the slash after 2 syllables or after 3 - when more of them are in a verse like in this example? I watched many videos on this but this answer I could not find; Thank you!
I'm writing a rhyming picture book which is proving to be more complicated than I expected. Your videos are very helpful. I am struggling to grasp exceptions. In your Robert Frost example, "Whose woods these are I think I know," "I" is an unstressed noun. Since one-syllable nouns are typically stressed, how does the reader know that "I" is an unstressed syllable rather than an exception in the meter? Thanks for all your help! I appreciate it!
Language is quite pliable, and though poor meter can sound very forced, most syllables are not emphasized with equal distinction. Therefore, whether a syllable counts as stressed or unstressed sometimes depends on context. “I” is one of those which could probably lean either way. I could lay emphasis on it, or I could lighten its emphasis by surrounding it with more emphatic syllables. Robert Pinsky’s book, which I reference here, notes that the rhythm in this particular line gradually lightens-the beginning of the line is much more emphatic than the end, so much so that some of the later stressed syllable are actually as emphatic as the earlier unstressed syllables! He has a good discussion of it, if I recall correctly. (Unfortunately, I don’t have the book ready at hand.) I recommend checking it out for a more complex and nuanced read of rhythm. Thanks for your question! I wish you luck with your picture book!
Personal speed and emphasis can change delivery, and some poets (Gerard Hopkins, for example) play on unique emphasis, but for the most part rhythm is determined by natural emphasis in the language. If you are native to English, you’ll naturally put the emphasis on the correct syllable; doing otherwise will sound and feel awkward. Try taking words with multiple syllables and deliberately emphasizing the wrong ones. You should notice it sounds wrong. There are still subtle variations and not all emphases are exactly the same, but sharp poets tend to play with these variations, too. Try reading Pinsky’s book The Sound of Poetry for an excellent discussion of this topic.
That sounds fun! I’m currently unable to make anything because of some unfortunate tech trouble, and I also have some stuff I have to finish for my students first, but that sounds like a great video to pursue soon.
You can try, but you'll sound wrong. It's possible sometimes, but usually a natural English speaker will hear the error. It can be done on a few beats deliberately for a purpose (See Gerard Manly Hopkins), but only under special circumstances.
Interesting that you scan Browning's line as trochees. I doubt very much that he meant AS and AND to be stressed. I think it reads much more naturally when scanned as four-syllable feet with the stress on the third syllable: as for VEnice / and its PEOple, / merely BORN to / bloom and DROP (I've used slashes here to mark the foot divisions) - in this case too there's a caesura at the end of the line, no final unstressed syllable. There aren't recognized names for four-syllable feet in English but that doesn't mean you can't write in such a metre. What poem does it come from? Reading more lines from the poem should enable us to tell which metre he's actually using.
Okay, I'm a little confused. I couldn't remember using a Browning poem in the video, and after rewatching it twice, I'm quite sure I didn't. I used the Macbeth witches as my example of trochee. Maybe you're confusing me with another video on rhythm that you've recently watched? I do agree with you that the unnamed four-syllable foot works better on those particular lines, though, and I was a little inaccurate to give off the impression that only two or three-syllable rhythms exist.
@@Nancenotes Now I'M confused! The video I was watching when I commented was not yours, it was a 6-minute video called "How to find poetic metre" and the Browning example is at around 3:30 minutes. ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-Bj6NrUHHxHk.html - I have no idea why my comment got attached to your video instead. RU-vid has a habit of running on automatically from video to video so perhaps by the time I finished typing my comment and hit Reply, RU-vid had switched the URL... Really sorry... I'll copy over my comment to the other guy and hope that this time it finds the right home :)
if you had more visual ways to explain the differences between all the different terms and meters, it would have more helpful I believe. Your definitions and examples were nice, but it's easily glossed over without a visual reference to help connect the words to the meanings.
