Poetry Forms and Meters: Online Notes

1. Poetry Forms and Meters: Online Notes English 10 CP

2. Iambic Pentameter • Each grouping of an unstressed and stressed syllable is called a “foot” • When you have five of these “feet” you have Iambic Pentameter • Iambic Pentameter is used in a lot of classic poetry

3. How do I detect Iambic Pentameter? • Think of the sounds of the word tick-TOCK • TOCK is clearly the syllable that is stressed. • Exercise: I need at least four LOUD volume volunteers, and four SOFT volume volunteers. • We will read a poem together. If you are loud reader, say you’re assigned word loudly. If you are a soft volume reader, read it normally.

4. Fixed Verse • Fixed Verse poems follow a blueprint or type that has been established by tradition. For instance, they perhaps come in the form of a Sonnet, which must be 14 lines. • Think of these types of poems akin to a builder who uses a blueprint. He or she would use a model or plan to make sure that what he or she creates follows a preformed template.

5. Blank Verse • Does not rhyme • Still uses Iambic Pentameter

6. Free Verse • Does not follow any fixed pattern, meter, or rhyme scheme • If we think of fixed verse as a builder following a blue print, free verse is a painter freely swinging his or her brush against a canvas to see where his or her imagination goes. • Much more “chaotic”