[ 3 / biz / cgl / ck / diy / fa / ic / jp / lit / sci / vr / vt ] [ index / top / reports ] [ become a patron ] [ status ]
2023-11: Warosu is now out of extended maintenance.

/lit/ - Literature

View post   
File: 58 KB, 799x449, 11337_800x600.jpg [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google]
2260814 No.2260814 [Reply] [Original]

explain poetry meter plz

what do people mean when they say "i know meter"

>> No.2260821

They mean they took AP Lit in high school and were always careful to refer to it as "AP Lit" instead of just "Lit" and want you to murder them.

Meter is the poetic equivalent of musical beat. It can be measured in "feet" of different lengths, but the most common one is the iamb. One iamb consists of two syllables, the first unstressed and the second stressed (for stress prescriptions, see which part of a word is capitalized in the dictionary phonetic guide). For example: CiGAR. It can also be pronounced "CIgar" by foreigners and other reprobates, but then it's not an iamb. When you hear people talking about "iambic pentameter," they're referring to verse that is written in lines of ten syllables organized into five iambs. Other poetic feet include trochees, which are the opposite of iambs (stress followed by un-stressed, as in CIgar) and dactyls, one stress followed by two unstressed. It's one of those ideas that only sounds complicated and intimidating if you've only heard of it in passing. With enough effort, you could probably master it in a day.

>> No.2260822

A vast majority of the people who write "poetry" have absolutely no idea what metre is, and about 99% of the 4chan poetry I've read has no concept of it.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prosody_(poetry)

>> No.2260826

>>2260822
I can do metre, but I see it as a device rather than a necessity.

>> No.2260827

>>2260826
Then, you're not a poet.

>> No.2260828
File: 31 KB, 599x314, trolled.jpg [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google]
2260828

>>2260827
Was TS Eliot a poet? Is John Ashbery?

>> No.2260838

>>2260828
You are a fool if you think those men didn't count out syllables and perfect the metre.

>> No.2260843

>>2260828

Eliot's poems actually often have incredibly precise meter. The Waste Land is done entirely in iambic.

>> No.2260842

>>2260821
What is AP lit even?

>> No.2260846
File: 9 KB, 780x1200, ashbery.png [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google]
2260846

>>2260838
Sure, they laboured over it. That doesn't mean it's metrical. If Ashbery is metrical, then I defy you to tell me what metre his poem Ritual II is in.

>> No.2260847

Free verse is real poetry. It just happens that it's accessible to terrible writers. Terrible writers writing in meter would still be terrible. Practicing poets should probably try to gain a mastery of language through form and restraint (meter) before going into the abstract and difficult (free verse) however. Free verse is merely easy to start and hard to master.

T.S Eliot and Whitman were master poets and wrote many poems without meter.

>> No.2260848

>>2260846
If this was a good poem, you might have a point.

>> No.2260850

>>2260848

out