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Poetry Magnum Opus

Test Your Prosody


badger11

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Very cool find. I spent a little time checking out this resource and will likely explore it further.

Not that I know a whole lot about metrics, but I am opinionated on what I do think I know when it comes to iambic pentameter. For example, check out this one:

fbfv1.JPG

According to the site, I got the third line wrong. Pursuant to the rules that I follow when it comes to iambic pentameter, L1,L2, and L4 are iambic pentameters while L3 is not:

 

/ O ver / the LAND / FRECKled / with SNOW / half THAWED / (iambic pentameter)
/ the SPEC / u LAT / ing ROOKS / at their / NESTS CAWED / (iambic pentameter)

/ and SAW / from ELM / tops DEL / i CATE / as FLOW / er of GRASS /  (iambic hexameter)

/what WE / beLOW / could NOT / SEE WIN / ter PASS / (iambic pentameter) [There's a few ways to scan this line, but any which way you do, it's an IP.]

 

Then there are other examples especially when it comes to Yeats where I think the site posits that the poem is in iambic pentameter when in my opinion it is not. I'm not saying that Yeats himself held the poem out as iambic pentameter only that the site seems to. Or maybe he did, but I wouldn't know why when clearly Yeats knew very well how to write in perfect iambic pentameter as he did in one of my favorite poems, Leda and the Swan. In any case, there are many poems on the site which even in accordance with "my" rules are composed in such a manner that every line is a perfect iambic pentameter. I'm probably just picky.

 

Here is a link to an index of my works on this site: tonyv's Member Archive topic

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