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Talking turkey about trochaic tetrameters |
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By patterjack
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25 March 2008 |
Since I believe firmly that a trochee consists of two stresses : the first heavy , the second light , and that finishing a tetrameter on a single heavy stress denies its viability as a trochaic line , I have had a go at composing a trochaic tetrametric quatrain .
Awkward stuff , but I can stand correction if it is required
Anyone who cares to add to my cynicism , feel free !
Bite the bullet; dull the painful;
Suffer under yokes of tyrants;
Showing spirit's rarely gainful;
This is one of living's constants. |
Preening...
Written by gerardconnolly (1186 comments posted) 25th March 2008 | Sorry Brian. I can't take part in this pipsqueek poets' pretentious pantomine.
Nice work, though. Always nice work. Always well thought out and executed. Sadly the rest of them don't measure up. They are so very... er.... Urghhhhhhhhhh! Clueless. Worse... ..*****.!!***. !**!!**!!
' How many flowers can you grow
In a garden filled with snakehead snow...?'
Slan! |
Written by Josie (2496 comments posted) 25th March 2008 | | Hello Brian. I can (ha ha). Not pretentious at all. Very difficult. Please go and see the poem in the children's section and tell me: Isn't it difficult to write in English and end on a small stress? In Italian it's so easy. You did very well, but is Hiawatha the only poem written in trochiac verse, with the last word always with an unstressed ending? Full marks for trying something which I know is definitely very difficult. | probably not
Written by fellpony (1507 comments posted) 25th March 2008 | Hiawatha is written in a Finnish metre, the Kalevala, so presumably there are lots of poems in Finnish that are written in a trochaic form. And of course there are a gazillion parodies of Hiawatha.
He killed the noble Mudjokivis.
Of the skin he made him mittens,
Made them with the fur side inside,
Made them with the skin side outside.
He, to get the warm side inside,
Put the inside skin side outside.
He, to get the cold side outside,
Put the warm side fur side inside.
...
-- George A. Strong |
Written by Veronica_Milvus (455 comments posted) 25th March 2008 | I am pretty sure my OTHER mentor - Stephen Fry, says you can dock an unstressed syllable off the end of a line and it still counts as a whatever-ameter. Otherwise you could never have a weak ending in a trochaic piece.
so you could have
"bite the bullet; dull the pain"
and it would still be a trochaic tetrameter because it retains four stressed syllables.
whatever. am confused now. |
Written by Veronica_Milvus (455 comments posted) 25th March 2008 | duh. I meant you could never have a STRONG ending in a trochaic piece...
Mary had a little lamb
he had a sooty FOOT
and into Mary's bread and jam
his sooty foot he PUT.
tetrameter - no?
kthxbai | I give up
Written by patterjack (1053 comments posted) 25th March 2008 | I don't give two hoots in hell about how many heavy stresses there are in lines of verse, from monometer to infinitometer -- and I am all for flexibility in the variety of feet used within those meters . Choose any or all of the available feet, from the simple iamb to the amphibrach or the even more esoteric.
But a meter that runs trochee trochee trochee followed by a foot that is a single stressed syllable is not a pure trochaic tetrameter.
Maybe a vanGogh-ish ear-ometer?
That's me out of here
patterjack |
Written by Veronica_Milvus (455 comments posted) 25th March 2008 | I refer you to m'learned friend. Mr Fry, and I will go and re-read him myself. However, we do not disagree that flexibility matters, whereas the Naming of Parts matters a lot less.
Content is king. And I think the amphibrach might be extinct. It was eaten by a thesaurus! |
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