The anapest

[butters]

i think it'll take me an awful lot of work, time, and some damned fine inspiration before i can write a 'real' poem in this form. it devolves too easily into jingly jangly drivel. practise, i guess.. sigh. still, at least i have a better grasp of what an anapest actually looks and reads like

didn't Dr Seuss write in this format a lot? seems to me...

 

[Tzara]

Actually, English is extra nice in this respect. A poem can imply its own pronunciation of words and phrases, and a great majority of the readers will accept it. Of course it happens all the time in the case of limericks, but also in other poems.

I think that's what my ear is doing in that fourth line of Byron's "Sennacherib"--tweaking the "natural" sound of the line (i.e., how I would read it outside of the context of the poem) to fit the meter.

 

[UnderYourSpell]

*hides in a corner and mutters something about having never read any Dr Seuss *

 

[Tzara]

Thank you for Pinsky, I had forgotten where I read that about fi iii er, but I be damned if I can make it four.

You may have read that elsewhere. I think it is probably a fairly common, and perhaps apocryphal, story. Pinsky refers to it in the glossary of his book, where he kind of doesn't define the term "syllable."

I can't hear it as four either. Not even three. Two or one, yes.

 

[Liar]

didn't Dr Seuss write in this format a lot? seems to me...

"So be sure when you step, Step with care and great tact.
And remember that life's A Great Balance Act.
And will you succeed? Yes! You will, indeed!
(98 and ¾ percent guaranteed)

-Dr. Seuss, from Oh, the Places You'll Go!

(The slight glitch in the third line is totally forgiven by the epic awesomeness of the fouth.)

 

[Tzara]

I don't know why I noticed this this morning--perhaps reliving Xtina warblin' the USA national anthem at the Super Bowl--but Francis Scott Key's "The Defence of Fort McHenry" is primarily anapestic:

O! say can you see, by the dawn's ear·ly light,
What so proud·ly we hailed at the twi·light's last gleam·ing,
Whose broad stripes and bright stars through the per·i·lous fight,
O'er the ram·parts we watched, were so gal·lant·ly stream·ing?
And the rock·ets' red glare, the bombs burst·ing in air,
Gave proof through the night that our flag was still there--
O! say, does that star-spang·led ban·ner yet wave
O'er the land of the free, and the home of the brave?

On the shore, dimly seen through the mists of the deep,
Where the foe's haughty host in dread silence reposes,
What is that which the breeze o'er the towering steep,
As it fitfully blows, half conceals, half discloses?
Now it catches the gleam of the morning's first beam,
In full glory reflected now shines on the stream--
'Tis the star-spangled banner, O! long may it wave
O'er the land of the free, and the home of the brave.

And where is that band who so vauntingly swore
That the havock of war and the battle's confusion
A home and a country should leave us no more?
Their blood has washed out their foul foot-steps' pollution,
No refuge could save the hireling and slave,
From the terror of flight or the gloom of the grave;
And the star-spangled banner in triumph doth wave
O'er the land of the free, and the home of the brave.

O! thus be it ever when freemen shall stand
Between their loved home, and the war's desolation,
Blest with victory and peace, may the heaven-rescued land
Praise the power that hath made and preserved us a nation!
Then conquer we must, when our cause it is just,
And this be our motto - "In God is our trust!"
And the star-spangled banner in triumph shall wave
O'er the land of the free, and the home of the brave.

 

[Tzara]

i think it'll take me an awful lot of work, time, and some damned fine inspiration before i can write a 'real' poem in this form. it devolves too easily into jingly jangly drivel. practise, i guess.. sigh. still, at least i have a better grasp of what an anapest actually looks and reads like

didn't Dr Seuss write in this format a lot? seems to me...

Yertle the Turtle:

On the far-away is·land of Sal·a-ma-Sond,
Yert·le the Turt·le was king of the pond.
A nice lit·tle pond. It was clean. It was neat.
The wa·ter was warm. There was plen·ty to eat.
The turtles had ev·ery·thing turt·les might need.
And they were all hap·py. Quite hap·py in·deed.

 

[butters]

"So be sure when you step, Step with care and great tact.
And remember that life's A Great Balance Act.
And will you succeed? Yes! You will, indeed!
(98 and ¾ percent guaranteed)/I]

-Dr. Seuss, from Oh, the Places You'll Go!

(The slight glitch in the third line is totally forgiven by the epic awesomeness of the fouth.)

aha! i thought as much - though it's been ... quite a while ... since i last read Seuss aloud to my youngest

*hides in a corner and mutters something about having never read any Dr Seuss *

quit whinging, you whingerer and don't go lurking in the corner with those sad eyes, either!

*stage whispers in horrified voice* we have glossas up next! ooh 'eck!

I don't know why I noticed this this morning--perhaps reliving Xtina warblin' the USA national anthem at the Super Bowl--but Francis Scott Key's "The Defence of Fort McHenry" is primarily anapestic:

O! say can you see, by the dawn's ear·ly light,
What so proud·ly we hailed at the twi·light's last gleam·ing,
Whose broad stripes and bright stars through the per·i·lous fight...

it's like being pregnant - once you are, you see pregnant women everywhere! and now i think we're going to be realising this is out there all over the place *nods* this really ought not surprise me. sigh.

 

[butters]

Yertle the Turtle:

On the far-away is·land of Sal·a-ma-Sond,
Yert·le the Turt·le was king of the pond.
A nice lit·tle pond. It was clean. It was neat.
The wa·ter was warm. There was plen·ty to eat.
The turtles had ev·ery·thing turt·les might need.
And they were all hap·py. Quite hap·py in·deed.

there ya go
i think it's quite safe to say i'm no Seuss, just a chancer


Now i know a book and this book had a name
but this book is now lost and it's really a shame
what'd rock would be if its own name i'd recall
but till then i will pester and ask of you all

Who was its author and when was it sold?
What about typeface? latino in bold?
Was it a guy or a gal, let's suppose
a rose is a rose is a rose is a rose...

My mind is a soupy confection (it's age)
so you'll pardon my cheating a little on stage
and you'll get that i'm trying to count up to three
on my fingers while typing, a damned chimpanzee!

Now i remember the name of that book!
Thanks to a quote, because that's all it took {rollseyes}
Had to be Shakey, of course, to be clear
with his two star-crossed lovers, look! I have it here.

 

[Remec]

There's an interesting comment in (I think) Pinsky's book on the sound of poetry where he talks about a southern (USA) kid who asks his instructor how many syllables "fire" has. Instructor says "one." Kid says, "where I'm from, it has four."

*nod*

I know how that can be. My college's athlethic cry always sounds like they're cheering for aspirin. ("Go Bayers!" ) I hear and say things a little odd anyways since my parents are both from mid-Pennsylvania (Harrisburg and Chambersburg), while I had my first words in California and Virginia and started kindergarten in Georgia.




(Oh, and just for comparison, 'fire', to me, normally has two syllables.)

 

[EroticOrogeny]

*nod*

I know how that can be. My college's athlethic cry always sounds like they're cheering for aspirin. ("Go Bayers!" ) I hear and say things a little odd anyways since my parents are both from mid-Pennsylvania (Harrisburg and Chambersburg), while I had my first words in California and Virginia and started kindergarten in Georgia.




(Oh, and just for comparison, 'fire', to me, normally has two syllables.)

syllables and phonemes - where do we make the split?
And dialect plays a key role here.

 

[UnderYourSpell]

I thought about writing a poem in a broad Norfolk accent but I didn't think it would go down too well lol

Hev Yew Gotta Loight Boy?

 

[twelveoone]

Iambic pentameter is supposed to echo the characteristic rhythm of spoken English. (I think Pinsky says this, for example, but I can't find where I placed my copy of his book at the moment.)

the stutter step of wrens? -Under the Black Flag

maybe, if you had your ass in a academic chair most of your life.

That is where I hear it and from English people. I don't really hear that much. English is changing. Think about it. How many Non-English speak English?

Here, let me bait you, one more time:
Shall I compare thee to a summer's day? Shakespeare Sonnet 18

Shall I
Shall I
Shall I

that was from Stephen Fry who is English.

 

[twelveoone]

I wish somebody would tell me if I've written it right *exits stage left muttering*

Does it sound right to you???
and you don't want to write in strict accentual-syllabify verse anyway. The generally accepted opinion (not mine) is it is doggerel if you do.

 

[twelveoone]

Thank you Liar, Tzara and ev'body for the theme and examples and so on. You're welcome to contine (or even prepend) the following two lines which I made for this exercise:

call me mellow or sick or whatever you please
leave alone stationary in residence dreams​

Enjoy,

Looks like a metric suppression tactic to avoid Iambic Hexameter, the structure does not give a clear indication of what should be stressed, the first one "please" looks like a definite stress and -er (at the end of whatever) unstressed. The rest are ambiguous including "mel" in mellow, alliteration of me in front of it would tend to add the stress.
But I'm going to take a wild guess, dactylic hexameter, the meter of Homer and Virgil in quantitative verse, but I'm just going on duration of line length.
But since you are on your "ignore me" kick, I guess I'll never know, ah well.

 

[twelveoone]

I think that's what my ear is doing in that fourth line of Byron's "Sennacherib"--tweaking the "natural" sound of the line (i.e., how I would read it outside of the context of the poem) to fit the meter.

http://www.poemtree.com/articles/Scansion.htm

Because I suspect you are not one of those Hard-Ass neo- formalists, some numbers regarding substitutions, using the two-step.

wha?? did I read that right, better than a third??

 

[twelveoone]

Anyhoo, the reason I started this thread was because almost all attempts at form and meter poetry that I see here and elsewhere are obsessing solely with iambic meter.

I never understood why that one is the default meter foot. To me, it seems contrived from the get-go and I have the hardest time fitting what I want to say into it. A three stroke rhythm seems much more natural and easy to express oneself in.

Wanted to hear the more form-proficient poets' view on it.

I want to see you explain Tycho Brahe .
can't quite figure it out.

Most of the other meters get a bad rap, as doggerel, sometimes deservedly.
But bad iambic pentameter is deadly.
Sometimes I wonder, in one corner if it has an obvious effect, it's doggerel, ie, Poe, Longfellow.
On the other what sounds like prof drone, or bitch whine, it's poetry.

I guess it all has to do with the bowl of lilies.

 

[Tzara]

the stutter step of wrens? -Under the Black Flag

maybe, if you had your ass in a academic chair most of your life.

That is where I hear it and from English people. I don't really hear that much. English is changing. Think about it. How many Non-English speak English?

Here, let me bait you, one more time:
Shall I compare thee to a summer's day? Shakespeare Sonnet 18

Shall I
Shall I
Shall I

that was from Stephen Fry who is English.

You needn't bait me. One of my favorite examples of iambic pentameter is To be or not to be: that is the ques·tion, which depending on how you scan it either ends dactyl trochee, trochee amphibrach, or trochee, iamb, and some left over syllable. And that doesn't even talk about how the first three stressed syllables vary in stress--I hear them as descending in emphasis.

Your example is interesting, because I think that line could be greatly influenced by context. I tend to read Shakespeare's sonnet as starting Shall I com·pare thee to a sum·mer's day? (I think, anyway), but if the line was part of a sequence like

The sun is out and I am feeling gay;
Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?​

I think I would tend to read the line as straight iambic.

 

[twelveoone]

You needn't bait me. One of my favorite examples of iambic pentameter is To be or not to be: that is the ques·tion, which depending on how you scan it either ends dactyl trochee, trochee amphibrach, or trochee, iamb, and some left over syllable. And that doesn't even talk about how the first three stressed syllables vary in stress--I hear them as descending in emphasis.

Your example is interesting, because I think that line could be greatly influenced by context. I tend to read Shakespeare's sonnet as starting Shall I com·pare thee to a sum·mer's day? (I think, anyway), but if the line was part of a sequence like

The sun is out and I am feeling gay;
Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?​

I think I would tend to read the line as straight iambic.

Don't ya just love it?
And I'm glad to see you are not one of those on again off again people.
Anyway I stumbled across a web-site, the old foetry people, lovin' Poe, Byron, etc. bitchin' about Empson, Eliot, etc.; I never realized just how middle of the road I am.

 

[butters]

To be or not to be: that is the ques·tion, ... And that doesn't even talk about how the first three stressed syllables vary in stress--I hear them as descending in emphasis...

this^

 

[MikeIvy]

man...I am lost in all this...I though a anapest was a Italian salad that had cold cuts and peppers on it....

 

[butters]

man...I am lost in all this...I though a anapest was a Italian salad that had cold cuts and peppers on it....

so long as it tastes good, what matter the name?

 

[MikeIvy]

so long as it tastes good, what matter the name?

..." A 12,000 calorie salad by any other name would still taste as sweet?"

 

[butters]

..." A 12,000 calorie salad by any other name would still taste as sweet?"

precisely

or savoury, depending on your choice of dressings - but what a lot of calories in your salad, man

 

[MikeIvy]

precisely

or savoury, depending on your choice of dressings - but what a lot of calories in your salad, man

Beats kidney pie....or tinned bully beef...Cheers