Difference between prose and poetry:
Prose: printed( or written), within the confines of margins
Poetry: written in lines that do not necessarily pay any attention to the margins, especially the right margins.
verse means "to turn"(as in versus).
Poets nowadays do not often write in the given forms.
Turning the line - IMPORTANT.
Every turning is a meaningful decision.
In metrical verse, each line of the poem can be divided into feet, and each foot into stresses, to reveal the overall rhythmic pattern.
The process of dividing a line into its metrical feet and each foot into its individual parts is called scansion.
iamb, or iambic foot, is one light stress followed by one heavy stress. E.g U(light)pon(heavy)
The iambic pentameter(five foot) line is the most widely used line in English metrical verse.
Tetrameter lines: There is a sense of quickness, spareness, even a little agitation. which is not evoked in the five-foot lines.
Trimeter: three foot line can evoke an even more intense sense of agitation and celerity.
Pentameter: the first line
Alexandrine: second line
pentamenter line: primary line used by the English poets, because it most nearly matches the breath capacity of our English lungs.
The longer line(greater than five feet) suggests a greater-thian-human power.
The lines may be all of the same length, but in many cases the pattern includes lines of varying length, thus complicating the whole mechanism.
Repetition sometimes can use to emphasize the thing that is important.
Rhythm attract readers.
Rhythm underlies everything.
Alter the line length or the established rhythm changes physiological mood of readers
Some variation enhances the very strength of the pattern.
Spondee: two stresses, of equal weight, can replace the iambic foot in order to take care of compound words.
Trochee: heavy stress comes first and is followed by a light stress. ( good way to begin a line)
dactyl(means finger in Greek): Another meter which can replace the iamb or the trochee. one heavy stress followed by two light stresses. E.g happiness
Anapest: the opposite of the dactyl. Two light stresses followed by a heavy stress.(uncommon)
All of these meters are terms for rhythmic patterns.
Caesura: Structural and logical pause within and only within the line.(usually within a metrical foot itself.
Caesura not only can amass the emotion, but also set a conversational tone.
The most important point in the line is the end of the line. The second most important point is the beginning of it.
If a poem begins with a heavy stress --> something dramatic is at hand.
The similarity of sound at the end of two or more lines creates cohesion.
True rhyme: the words rhyme on a single stressed syllable.
off-rhyme(slant rhyme): the words are not true rhyming words.
Feminine rhyme: use words of more than one syllable that end with a light stress.(it could blur the end rhyme)
Repetition of lines is a source of enjoyment.
Pause at the end of each line - part of motion of the poem.
E.g poet working with metrical verse can do several things, apart from the length of line and the requirements of the meter, the poet must decide where within the phrase itself to turn the line over.
Non-metrical verse also has this end-of-the-line pause to work with and choose among various ways of handling it.
Poet enjambs the line - turns the line so that a logical phrase is int erupted.
Every poem has a basic measure, and a continual counterpoint of differences playing against that measure.
A poem requires a design - a sense of orderliness.
Other important things: overall length of the poem, its tone, the extent to which imagery is used, the subject itself.
Couplets - line 1 rhymes with line 2, line 3 rhymes with line 4, and so forth.
Structure:
Sonnet is a poem of fourteen lines. Italian sonnet: abba abba cdd cee.
The first eight lines(octave) set out a statement or premise; the following six lines(sestet) respond to it.
The English or Shakespearean sonnet: abab cdcd efef gg (Mr. porter taught me this one)
English sonnet divides into three quatrains and a final couplet.
Blank verse: poem written in iambic pentameter without end rhyme.
Stanza(Latin): a group of lines in a poem that is separated by an extra amount of space from other groups of lines.
Stanza can inevitably result in either a felt hesitation or a felt acceleration.
Ending a stanza at the end of a sentence strengthens the natural pause that follows any line and any completed sentence.
Any change from an established pattern indicates that the poet wants the reader to feel something different at that point.
In syllabic verse, a pattern is set up, and rigorously followed, in which the number of syllables in each of the lines of the first stanza is exactly repeated in the following stanzas.
syllabic verse creates a music that is highly regular and at the same time filled with engaging counterpoint.
Sometimes title could be the opening sentence.
Free verse: this kind of poetry rose out of a desire for release from the restraints of meter. Other names: "fluid" poem, "organic" poem
The free-verse poem sets up, in terms of sound and line, a premise or an expectation. Before the poem finishes, it makes a good response to this premise.
Free-verse poem must "feel" like a poem - it must be an intended and an effective presentation.
Free-verse poem need not follow any of the old rules, necessarily. Neither does it have to avoid all of them, necessarily.
In order for the tone of the poem to change, the line had to change.
"no ideas but in things." quote from William Carlos. The idea springs from the object.
The poem is an instance - an instance of attention, of noticing something in the world.
Enjambment can be serious, disruptive, almost painful.
