Quick Question About Rhythm

[jkwut]

The pattern of stressed and unstressed syllables in a sentence or a line of poetry.

I am doing a research project and I have to find a poem and show how it is related and how it has rhythm.

Would any poem work?

If so, do you have any poems that you might recomend because of it's good rhythm?

How would I show that something has rhythm? (Like explaining the meaning of the example or how it illustrates the rhythm)

Thanks,
jkwut

[camus]

jkwut,

I'm not much of an academic, but one poem that does spring to mind is Tennyson's Charge of the Light Brigade, the rhythm (not sure, stressed, unstressed) has the effect of war drums or galloping horses.

An obvious example but sturdy.

[cameron]

Hi jkwut,

Stressed and unstressed syllables is basically meter. In English the four most commonly used meters are iambic, trochaic, anapestic and dactylic. (See my Glossary of Poetic Terms (Meter) on http://www.poetsgraves.co.uk

The regular pattern of stresses creates rhythm eg this line from Shelley which is classic iambic pentameter

If WINter COMES can SPRING be FAR beHIND.

The capitals indicate stress. Iambic meter consists of 'feet' containing two syllables where only the second syllable is stressed. Shakespeare's plays are largely in iambic pentameters (10 syllables ie five iambic feet per line) - although there are many irregularities.

This only applies to poems written using meter. Many modern poets do not use meter but write in free verse which uses only the natural irregular patterns of ordinary speech.

Hope this helps

Cam

[cameron]

PS just looked at Charge of the Light Brigade Kris which is very metrical.

Essentially it is a dactyllic dimeter i.e. two front stressed three syllable feet per line eg

THEIRS not to/REAson why,
THEIRS but to/DO or die:

(The rhymes are feminine and therefore not stressed.)

However some lines are only five syllables eg

RODE the/SIX hundred

which is a trochee plus a dactyl.

Cam

[camus]

Cam,

Its so mathematical, for example would Tennyson have applied all those 'rules' to his poem whilst writing, agonising over the feet, the stresses etc, or would he have written it with the rhythm in mind and just gone with the flow, letting the meter create itself?

[cameron]

Yes I think he would actually. Prior to the advent of modernism, any poet worth his salt would have been skilled in both meter and numbers. In fact, while looking at 'Charge' there was an interesting footnote which stated that the actual number of soldiers involved was 700 but Tennyson deliberately chose 600 because it's a dactyl and therefore scans better.

It would seem terribly constricting for us to write in this way today but prior to 1900 it was the norm.

Cam

[Queen Victoria]

Of course practically any poem (in English at any rate) has rhythm, in the sense of some "beat" in the sound. If it hadn't it wouldn't be a poem. But the metre is more regular, stronger, and more obvious in some than in others. I could write pages on this but I won't.

There exists an extraordinary wax recording of Tennyson himself reading "The Charge of the Light Brigade", where at one point you can hear a strange noise in the background. It sounds as though Tennyson was beating out the rhythm on his desk as he read. Go to http://charon.sfsu.edu/TENNYSON/lightbrigadewax.html and click on the play button.

Apropos his "six hundred", as opposed to the real seven hundred, I have read somewhere (in Peter Levi's biography ? in Christopher Ricks's Allusion in Poets ?) that the proximate cause of the discrepancy was an erroneous newspaper report.

[cameron]

Incredible recording! It'll never get to number one though.

Thanks for your intelligent contributions your majesty.

Cam

[Queen Victoria]

Glad you like it. These two are interesting too:

http://www.poets.org/poems/poems.cfm?prmID=1371 ,

and

http://www.poets.org/poems/poems.cfm?prmID=1159

(Click on Hear it.)

[Queen Victoria]

RODE the/SIX hundred

We, on the other hand, have always read it as

RODE the six / HUNDred

VR

[cameron]

It's a fair cop. Dactyl + trochee.

Look forward to more erudite insights.

Cheers
Cam