Rules for Poets

[skysidhe]

Iambic pentameter


Ĭn sóoth,/Ĭ knów/nŏt whý/Ĭ ám/sŏ sád.

Ĭt wéa/riĕs mé;/yŏu sáy/ĭt wéa/riĕs yóu....


Simple sample! I feel I need a degree to get it!

Simple example

An iambic foot is an unstressed syllable followed by a stressed syllable. The rhythm can be written as:da DUM!


A line of iambic pentameter is five iambic feet in a row:da DUM da DUM da DUM da DUM da DUM


It's possible to notate this with a '˘'(Breve) mark representing an unstressed syllable and a '/'(Forward Slash) mark representing a stressed syllable[1]. In this notation a line of iambic pentameter would look like this:˘ / ˘ / ˘ / ˘ / ˘ /


The following line from John Keats' Ode to Autumn is a straightforward example:[2]
To swell the gourd, and plump the hazel shells

We can notate the scansion of this as follows:˘ / ˘ / ˘ / ˘ / ˘ /
To swell the gourd, and plump the ha- zel shells


We can mark the divisions between feet with a |, and the caesura (a pause) with a double vertical bar ||.˘ / ˘ / ˘ / ˘ / ˘ /
To swell | the gourd, || and plump | the ha- | zel shells