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Larsen M. Callirhoe

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Larsen M. Callirhoe

In writing, there are three different options for point of view. First person point of view is when the author is speaking about their own views or ideas. First person normally uses the words “I” or “we” when speaking. Second person point of view is not normally used in poetry, this is used when the person speaking is referred to as “you” as in an instructional video. The third person point of view refers to anyone other than the speaker or the reader. Often words like, “he”, “she”, or ‘it” are

 

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Schilb & Clifford, John & John. Making Literature Matter: An Anthology for. 5th Ed. Boston: Bedford/ St. Martin’s, 2012. chapter 6 pages 161-162. 29 October 2012.

 

Rhythm in poetry refers to the beat, a series of stresses, pauses, and accents. We are powerfully attuned to rhythm, whether it is our own heartbeat or the throb of the bass guitar in a rock band. When we pronounce a word, we give more stress (breath, emphasis) to some syllables then others. When these stresses occur at a regular interval over, say, a line of poetry, we refer to it as meter. When we scan a line of poetry, we try to mark its stresses and pauses. We use (') to indicate a stress syllable and (small u over letter of syllable) for an unstressed one. The basic measuring unit for the stressed and unstressed syllables in English is the foot. These are four usual feet: iambic, trochaic, anapestic, and dactylic. An iamb is an unstressed syllable followed by a stressed one as in "the woods." Reversed we have a trochee, as in "tiger." An anapest contains three syllables that are unstressed, then stressed, as in "When the blue / waves roll nightly / on deep Galilee." The reverse the dactyl, can be heard in the Moother Goose rhyme, "Pussy cat, / pussy cat / where have you / been?" If you look at the first four lines of "The Mill" again, you can hear a regular beat of iambs:

 

The mill / er's wife / had wait . ed long.

The tea / was cold, / the fire / was dead:

And there / might yet / be noth / ing wrong

In how/ he went / and what / he said:

 

Depending on the number of feet, we give lines various names. If a line contains one foot, it is a monometer; two, a dimeter; three, a trimeterl four, a tetrameter; five, a pentameter; six, a hexameter; seven, a heptameter; and eight, an octometer. So Robinson's lines are iambic pentameter.

Larsen M. Callirhoe

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