The Prosody All Around Us

    As indicated by Roberts and Jacobs in the opening of Ch. 16 of RJc3, one broad way of differentiating kinds of poetry is the division into "closed form" and "open form" (the latter is sometimes referred to as "free verse").  Main components of "closed form" poetry include aspects of "prosody" -- the rhythm, meter, sound effects, and verse forms. Verse forms would include set patterns of rhythm and meter (e.g., trochaic tetrameter), poems with no breaks between groups of lines (called "continuous poems"), or poems with breaks between groups of lines (called "stanzaic poems"). Sometimes units in a continuous poem may be indicated by the first line being indented for particular groups of lines, making the groups look like paragraphs, and consequently having the name "verse paragraphs."

    In continuous poems, certain rhyming units would constitute a pattern, usually of two lines (e.g., the ends of each set of two lines rhyming would be a continuous poem in rhymed couplets, or just couplets), three lines (rarer -- a triplet, or possibly terza rima, the form for which Dante is famous in his Divine Comedy), four lines (various forms of quatrain), or even longer units. In a stanzaic poem, line groups or stanzas may be irregular (no set number of lines for each group of lines), or the line groups may be divided into regular stanzas of two lines (couplets; rhymed couplets, if the lines rhyme), three lines (tercets; triplets, if all three lines rhyme), four lines (quatrains), and so on, up to stanzas of fourteen, sixteen, or even twenty lines each.  The rhyme scheme is indicated by lowercase letters. Thus, the rhyme scheme of Alfred Lord Tennyson's poem "The Eagle" (printed early in Ch. 16/"Form" of R&J compact edition) would be indicated a-a-a | b-b-b ("hands," "lands," "stands"; "crawls," "walls," "falls").

    Further, particular genres or categories of closed form poetry might be determined by set line lengths and particular rhyme schemes, such forms (listed alphabetically) as the ballad, ballade (not the same as a "ballad" like "Sir Patrick Spens"), chant royal, clerihew, double dactyl, limerick, pantoum, rondeau, rondel, sestina, sonnet, triolet, and villanelle. All of these forms may be looked up in your collegiate dictionary.

    The sound effects of poetry, which many persons besides English majors find baffling, technical, and least meaningful of the elements of literature, are often of paramount importance to poets; attention to the acoustic properties of language is one of the defining qualities of a poet as opposed to other writers. Often poets have said that they revised a poem until it "sounded right," indicating this inclination. But the sound effects of poetry -- its prosody -- are only a subset of the sound effects of language in general, including prose (which has its own prosody), and all languages. All languages have their own sound, as students or appreciators of foreign languages know. For example, a basic element of the prosody of the French language may be indicated by comparing identical words, with identical meanings, in French and English:
 

Word in English	Word in French
silence [pronounced: SIGH-luns]	silence [pronounced: see-LAHNS]
justice [pronounced: JUHS-tiss]	justice [pronounced: jews-TEES]
doctor [pronounced: DAHK-tur]	docteur [pronounced: dowk-TOOR]

 

        Besides the difference in vowel sounds, the basic difference is in meter and rhythm, which are possessed by all accentual languages (most of the Indo-European languages). Some languages, especially Asian languages, are primarily tonal rather than accentual; but in the accentual languages, all two-syllable words and above have a usual accentual pattern learned by native speakers of the language and recorded as the pronunciation of the word in dictionaries of that language. English has many trochees (accented plus unaccented or less accented syllable) in its two-syllable words, while French has many iambs (unaccented or less accented plus accented syllable) in its two syllable words. Viewers of old movies who see the famous French actor Maurice Chevalier appear in American or British movies will hear how a native-French speaker often attempts to pronounce an English word with an iambic pattern rather than its actual trochaic pattern. Conversely, native English speakers will often make the opposite mistake while trying to vocalize French, pronouncing French words trochaically when these words should be pronounced iambically.

        Even within the same language, a regional or societal group within a country may have a distinct overall sound, including prosody. Thus the word insurance is pronounced differently by urban speakers not from the South differently from rural speakers and those from the South. For urbanites -- and collegiate dictionaries of English -- the word insurance is an automatic amphibrach ("ihn-SHUR-uns"; unaccented, accented, unaccented syllable), while for many rural speakers and native Southerners the same word is an automatic dactyl ("IHN-shur-uhns"; accented syllable, unaccented syllable, unaccented syllable). A similar difference can be heard in the pronunciation of the word police. For urbanites and many Caucasians (and collegiate dictionaries), the word is an automatic iamb ("puh-LEES"; unaccented syllable followed by accented syllable), but for many rural and African-American speakers the word is an automatic trochee ("POH-lees"; accented syllable followed by unaccented syllable). This second, trochaic pronunciation is drawn attention to in section 1 of William Faulkner's "That Evening Sun [Go Down]" when the black woman Nancy explains about her husband "'He quit me . . . . Done gone to Memphis, I reckon. Dodging them city po-lice for a while, I reckon'" (Collected Stories, p. 293).

        Something of this concern, as manifested in prose, may be found in John Galsworthy's novel The Man of Property (Book 1 of The Forsyte Saga) and Albert Camus' novel The Plague. In Ch. 1 of Part 1 of the Galsworthy novel ("'At Home at Old Jolyon's'") occurs a prosodic analysis of the surname, Bosinney, of the fiancé of June Forsyte, with reference to James Forsyte's pronunciation of the name: "he made the word a dactyl in opposition to general usage of a short o" (p.9). And repeatedly in Camus' novel occurs the reference to the several drafts of Joseph Grand's opening sentence of his novel ("One fine morning in the month of May an elegant young horsewoman might have been seen riding a handsome sorrel mare along the flowery avenues of the Bois de Boulogne"), to get the rhythm right: "'That's only a rough draft. Once I've succeeded in rendering perfectly the picture in my mind's eye, once my words have the exact tempo of this ride -- the horse is trotting, one-two-three, one-two-three, see what I mean? -- the rest will come more easily, and what's even more important, the illusion will be such that from the very first words it will be possible to say: 'Hats off!'" (p. 96). Later the would-be novelist says about the revised sentence ("'One fine morning in May a slim young horsewoman might have been seen riding a handsome sorrel mare along the flowery avenues of the Bois de Boulogne'"): "Don't you agree with me one sees her better that way? And I've put 'one fine morning in May' because 'in the Month of May' tended rather to drag out the trot, if you see what I mean" (pp. 123-27). Later in the novel, Grand is still at his revising: "One fine morning in May, a slim young horsewoman might have been seen riding a glossy sorrel mare along the avenues of the Bois, among the flowers" (pp. 238-39), and near the novel's end, Grand exults that "he'd made a fresh start with his phrase. 'I've cut out all the adjectives'" (p. 276).  Indeed, the anapest (duh-duh-DUH) can suggest to the Anglo-American ear the canter or gallop of a horse, whether in prose or poetry.

        While poets are especially attuned to the sound effects of poetry -- its prosody (rhythm, meter) and other acoustic properties (e.g., consonance, alliteration, assonance, onomatopoeia, rhyme) -- all of us, if we truly listen, can enjoy different worlds of sounds that emanate from the variety of human voices all around us every day in ordinary speech, in person or in various electronic media, not just the artistically rarefied realm of poetry.

        The artistry of a poet's use of sound contributes to the meaningfulness of the poem. Hence, when the technical aspects of prosody are studied, the ultimate goal for purposes of literary analysis is ascertaining, as with the other components of literature, how these elements are meaningful or significant, how they contribute to the themes and ideas and emotions expressed by the poem.

        Basically, closed-form poetry includes rhymed verse (regular rhythm and meter, plus rhyme) and blank verse (regular rhythm and meter, but no rhyme).  Open-form or free verse poetry has no regular rhythm, regular meter, or regular rhyme, but nevertheless will have meaningful rhythmical and other sound effects (effects that contribute to the expression of the poem's ideas, meanings, and themes).  Following is a chart or table of these three general categories:

 

Overall Genre	Regular Rhythm & Meter	Rhyme
rhymed verse	x	x
blank verse	x
open form or free verse

If a modern poet attempts in a poem to keep to a pattern of a certain number of stresses per line (say four or five) and a certain range of syllables (say between nine and eleven), but not include rhyme, then the poem might very be classified as a blank verse poem.

        The basic unit of measurement in rhythm and meter is the "foot," usually composed of two or three syllables.  Following is a chart of the possible metrical "feet."  Often poems will include some variation for expressive, thematic, or characterizational purposes; a poem that was composed entirely of iambs (ta DAH) would inevitably convey the idea of meaningless metronomical regularity (the meaningless ticking of a metronome); such regularity would then defeat communication of meaning -- unless the meaning was related somehow to the meaningless, unvarying ticking of a metronome. Accented syllables may be indicated by a forward slash mark ( / ) or a macron (a horizontal line) (called the "arsis" or "ictus"), the former mark being more usual; a back slash mark ( \ ) might be used for a syllable having secondary stress -- some stress or accent, but less stress or accent than some other syllables in the line. Unaccented syllables are usually indicated by a lowercase or uppercase "u" (called a "breve").

Chart of Two-Syllable Feet

Name	Accentual Pattern	Example
pyrrhus (adjective: pyrrhic)	U  U	only occurs within a line, rather than   single words
iamb (adjective: iambic)	U   /	the word "until"
trochee (pronounced "TROH-kee")(adjective: trochaic)	/   U	the word "meter"
spondee (adjective: spondaic)	/   /	the word "football"

Chart of Three-Syllable Feet

Name	Accentual Pattern	Example
amphibrach	U  /  U	the word "arrangement"
amphimacer	/  U  /	the word "altitude"
anapest	U  U  /	the word "contravene"
antibacchius	/  /  U	"high mountain"
bacchius	U  /  /	"aboveboard"
dactyl	/  U  U	"merrily"

Lines of poetry with two "feet" (or metrical units) are said to be in "dimeter" (pronounced "DIH-mehtur"), while lines in three "feet"  = "trimeter" (pronounced "TRIH-mehtur"), four feet = "tetrameter" (pronounced "teh-TRAM-ehtur"), five feet = "pentameter" (pronounced "pehn-TAM-ehtur"), and six feet = "hexameter" (pronounced "hex-AM-ehtur").

Finally, the rhyme sounds at the ends of lines are indicated by lower case letters. For example, the rhyme scheme of Alexander Pope's "Epigram, Engraved on the Collar of a Dog which I Gave to His Royal Highness" (in Ch. 15/"Tone" of RJc3; p. 578) would be a-a. The rhyme scheme of Alexander Pope's "Epigram from the French" (in Ch. 15 of RJc3; p. 577) is a-a b-b. The rhyme scheme of Ralph Waldo Emerson's "Concord Hymn" (in Ch. 16 of RJc3; p. 625) is a-b-a-b c-d-c-d e-f-e-f g-h-g-h.

Sometimes poets (especially modern poets) employ near rhyme (also called "half rhyme," "oblique rhyme," "off rhyme," or "slant rhyme"). Instead of having "exact rhyme" (e.g., "moon" and "June"), the words have a more approximate acoustic resemblance (e.g., "moon" and "loan"). An example occurs in the first and third lines in Mona Van Duyn's "Leda" (in Ch. 18/"Myths" in RJc3; p. 703), while W.S. Merwin's "Odysseus" (in Ch. 18 in RJc3; p. 706) uses both exact rhyme as well as near rhyme. 
 

Norm's 3-Step Process for Ascertaining Rhythm and Meter

        Although almost all speakers of a language, including English, are proficient in pronunciation, many students have an initial difficulty with or even a block against ascertaining rhythm and meter in a line of poetry. The following three-step process, based on a native speaker's own knowledge of English should prove helpful, when applied to a line of poetry. (Accented syllables are indicated by a forward slash mark, / , called an "arsis" or "ictus," while unaccented or relatively unaccented syllables are indicated by a sort of capital "U," called a "breve." Occasionally a long horizontal mark, called a "macron," is used by some critics to indicate an accented syllable. Also, some analysts use a back slash mark, \ , to indicate a syllable that has secondary rather than primary stress. The forward slash mark and breve are used in the following remarks.) In a line of poetry:

1. Find all words of two syllables or more. Each of these words usually has its regular pronunciation in English. Thus the word aloud will be an automatic iamb ( U / ); the word common will be an automatic trochee ( / U ). The word artichoke will be an automatic amphimacer ( / U / ); the word arthritis will be an automatic amphibrach ( U / U ) ; and so on. A reader who isn't sure about the pronunciation of a word of two syllables or more can look the word up in a collegiate dictionary, where pronunciation of all syllables will be indicated.

2. Next find all function word plus content word combinations. A function word is defined in grammar or linguistics as an article, infinitive marker (the "to" in "to analyze"), preposition, conjunction, or occasionally an auxiliary verb (such a word indicates relation of one word to another rather than carrying its own content). A content word is defined as a noun, pronoun, verb, adverb, or adjective; such a word conveys content by pointing to qualities of the real world outside the sentence, which can be perceived by the senses, mind, or imagination (e.g., stone, she, walks, quickly, blue). Usually, in the combination of function word plus content word, the function word is unaccented or relatively unaccented, while the content word is accented or relatively more accented. In the first line of Emily Dickinson's poem "To Hear an Oriole Sing" (RJc3, Ch. 19/"Two Poetic Careers"; pp. 750-51) -- "To hear an Oriole sing" (line 1) -- function word plus content word combinations occur in "to hear" and "an Oriole," and the infinitive marker, "to," and article, "an" are unaccented or relatively unaccented syllables, in contrast to the content word "hear" (verb) and "Oriole" (noun), which carry referential meaning to something in the real world. The scansion -- prosodic analysis -- of the first four words of the second line of Dickinson's poem ("to hear an Oriole") would thus be the following: U / U / U / (according to our ear, as well as our collegiate dictionary, the three-syllable word Oriole is an automatic amphimacer: / U / or possibly / U \ ).

3. Finally, in the syllables remaining after steps 1 and 2, try to hear which syllable receives less stress or accent than the syllable that immediately precedes or immediately follows it. In the sixth line of Emily Dickinson's poem "To Hear an Oriole Sing" -- "As unto Crowd" (line 6) -- the two-syllable word "unto" is automatically a trochee ( / U ), while the function-word plus content-word combination "unto Crowd" indicates an accent on the word "Crowd." All that remains is to determine the accentual status of the word "As"; does this word, as a reader hears the line spoken aloud or in the mind, receive more or less accent than the accented first syllable of the word "unto"? Most readers will hear "As" receiving somewhat or perhaps slightly less stress than the accented "un" in "unto," and thus "As" may be marked with a "U" or breve. The scansion of "As unto crowd" would thus be the following: U / U / .
 

N & Q on the first five or six lines in Robert Frost's poems "Mending Wall" and "Birches" (in Ch. 19/"Two Poetic Careers" in RJc3)

        The section on "Blank Verse" in R&J in the first part of Ch. 16 might mislead some students into thinking that only very long (and old, or very old) poems or poetic dramas (particularly by Shakespeare) have been written in blank verse. However, many modern poets have used this verse form, as can be seen by looking at several poems by Robert Frost in Ch. 19 ("Two Poetic Careers") in RJc3. The poems "Mending Wall," "Birches," and "'Out, Out ---- '" all exemplify blank verse.

1. (A) Do a scansion (prosodic analysis) of line 3 of "Mending Wall" and line 2 of "Birches." What rhythmical pattern emerges in each instance? (B) What ideas or notions, both parallel and opposite to the regularity of the rhythm and meter in line 3 of "Mending Wall," might be conveyed by the content of the line vis-a-vis its rhythm and meter? (C) How does Frost's "Mending Wall" definitely not start off, in line 1, with the regular rhythm to be found in line 3? How might this variation in rhythm in the beginning of line 1 be meaningful or thematic or expressive of content in some way?
 

N & Q on Alfred, Lord Tennyson's "The Eagle" (Ch. 16/"Form" of RJc3)

1. Read and study the commentary on this poem, along with an example of how to take notes and organize a literary-analysis paper, in Ch. 5 of Prinsky's Engl. 1102 Pamphlet (from Prinsky's Engl. 1102 webpage).

N & Q on Dylan Thomas's "Do Not Go Gentle into That Good Night" (cited in the editorial material about tercets and triplets in Ch. 16/"Form")

1. This poem will never be the same after its use in the Rodney Dangerfield comic movie Back to School. College students -- especially college students in English courses -- should especially appreciate some of the film's humor. How is the analysis of this poem by the character played by Dangerfield at the end of the film accurate, though crude?

2. This poem, like Elizabeth Bishop's "One Art" and Theodore Roethke's "The Waking" in Ch. 16 of RJc3, exemplifies the special form called the villanelle. (See the study questions by R&J on Bishop's poem.) (A) One dominant characteristic of the form -- how? -- is repetition. How does repetition help convey the speaker's anger and obsessiveness in the poem? What is the speaker angry and obsessive about, perhaps best revealed in the poem's last stanza? (B) Another dominant characteristic of the form, through limitation of rhyme sounds (how many?) and required repetition of certain lines in certain places in the poem (where? which?), is limitation or restrictiveness. How does the concept of limitation or restrictiveness relate to what bothers the speaker?

Notes and Questions on Walt Whitman's Poem "Reconciliation" (Ch. 16 of RJc3)

1. In a free verse or "open form" poem, regular rhythm and meter should not be expected. However, rhythmical effects will occur, since English is an accentual language, and since such effects are an element that helps define a poet and a poem. (A) Scan -- that is, do a scansion or analysis of prosody -- of the poem's first line. How are stresses piled up in the first three words? How does this rhythmical effect help set up the following notion: the emphatic rhythmical effect in the first three lines helps stress or convey the emphatic importance of the "word over all"; why is this "word" (see the hint in study question 3 by R&J of what the word is) so important to the speaker and to the themes of the poem? (B) Following up the general direction in R&J study question 1, how is the brevity of line 1, the poem's shortest line, appropriate to the content of the line, and how is the lengthiness of line 3 (so long that it has to be run over to the next line of type, as signaled by the indention; the line thus runs from "That" through "world") appropriate to its content? What key word or words in each line relates in some meaningful way to brevity or shortness (line 1) or lengthiness (line 3), respectively?

2. How is the alliteration on the s-sound in line 3 (note that "s-sound" has to be emphasized, since the sound may be conveyed by a letter other than s, as happens in line 3) appropriate to the content of the line?

3. (A) Though the poem has a serious subject, it contains a pun, which may be found in "over all" (line 1). What two meanings can "over all" have, referring to importance and to the actual typography of the poem? (B) How does the simile of "beautiful as the sky" (line 1) have a directional pointer that relates to the two meanings of "over all" (line 1)?

4. How might the grammar of the poem as a single sentence be related to the poem's ideas or content?
 

Notes and Questions on George Herbert's Poem "Easter Wings" (Ch. 16 of RJc3)

1. Some students need amplification of the excellent study questions by R&J on this poem. (A1) How do the poem's shape and title correspond to two dominant extended metaphors in the poem (rising vs. falling; flying)? (A2) In what lines, and how, are the extended metaphors used, which are mentioned in A1? (B) R&J mention the shape of an altar depicted in the pictorial form of the poem's stanzas; how would this shape be symbolic or meaningful or significant, in relation to the poem's subject matter, content, themes, or imagery?

2. Another dominant extended metaphor in the poem is expansion vs. contraction. (A1) In what lines, and how, is this extended metaphor used? (A2) How does this extended metaphor accord with the poem's visual shape?

3. How are all the components of the poem related to the holiday of Easter?
 

Notes and Questions on E.E. Cummings' Poem "Buffalo Bill's/ defunct" (Ch. 16 of RJc3)

1. Cummings preferred to sign his name or have his poems attributed to his name without capital letters. Some people think, mistakenly, that Cummings (or cummings) never used capital letters. (A1) How does this poem prove the belief in Cummings' exclusive use of lowercase incorrect? (A2) What themes or ideas are conveyed by capitalization in the poem?

2. Cummings is celebrated for special effects with words and punctuation marks and typography. See his other poems in R&J, "in Just-" (Ch. 21) and "she being Brand / -new" (Ch. 18). (Remember that additional literary works in every chapter in R&J are organized alphabetically by surname of the author.) For an amusing film occurrence of "she being Brand / -new" (cf. the film occurrence of Dylan Thomas's "Do Not Go Gentle" in the Rodney Dangerfield comedy Back to School), check out the video of the film Plain Clothes. Ponder the excellent study questions in R&J about the poem.

3. (A) To the excellent study question 2 of R&J on the poem, add the following: what is the scansion (pattern of stressed or unstressed syllables) in "onetwothreefourfive" and "pigeonsjustlikethat" (line 6)? What was Buffalo Bill actually doing in the Wild West show that caused the pigeons to break, and how does sound echo sense here? How is the running together of the words relevant to the implied action by Buffalo Bill? (B) How does the alliteration of the s-sound in lines 4-5 help convey anything about their content?

4. Some poems such as George Herbert's "Easter Wings," William Heyen's "Mantle," John Hollander's "Swan and Shadow," May Swenson's "Women," and Charles Webb's "The Shape of History" (all in Ch. 20 of R&J) have an attention-getting visual shape, which evokes the question about how the shape relates to the poem's ideas and content. (Such poems, dating from ancient Greek poetry, are variously called "concrete poetry," "shaped poetry" or "shaped poems," "carmen figuratem," "pattern poetry" or "pattern verse," "figure poems," "calligrammes," or "altar poems" [this last item, with reference to George Herbert's poem "The Altar"].) In other poems, such as Cummings' "Buffalo Bill's / defunct," a visual or pictorial shape may be present that is subtler than the definite "shaped poem," yet still meaningful or significant. (A1) What pictorial form seems to emerge, when the following units are considered: lines 1-5 ("Buffalo" through "stallion"), 6-7 ("and" through "Jesus"), 8-9 ("he" through "is"), and 10-11 ("how" through "Death")? (A2) What repeated pictorial pattern is left incomplete in lines 10-11, and how is this incompleteness related to the content of the lines as well as the poem's overall themes or ideas?
 

Questions on Jean Toomer's "Reapers" (Ch. 16 of RJc3)

1. The best line to start with for scansion of the poem's predominant rhythm and meter (though, like all poems, it has variations that help convey character, setting, theme, and content of an individual line), is line 4. Apply Prinsky's three-step scansion process (in the Notes & Questions on Ch. 19) on the line. (A) How does the regularity of the rhythm of the line help convey its content -- that is, aspects of the reaping? (B) How do the predominant meter and rhyme scheme of the poem help to convey aspects of the sharpening and of the reaping?

2. (A) The opening of lines 1 and 5 have significant variations from the predominant rhythm and meter of the poem; what is the rhythmical or metrical pattern of just "Black reapers" (line 1) and "Black horses" (line 5)? (B1) How does the metrical or rhythmical pattern of the opening of lines 1 and 5 help emphasize the color and also help equate the two beings referred to, along with repetition and grammatical parallelism? (B2) How does the equation effected between the openings of lines 1 and 5 contribute to the poem's criticism of the plantation system and its racism? (C) How might the field rat contribute, through what it implicitly symbolizes, to the poem's criticism of the plantation system and its racism?

3. (A) How does the first sound effect noted by R&J in their question 3 help convey something about the sharpening or the reaping? (B) How is onomatopoeia used to convey the content and theme of the second quatrain of the poem?