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In a reply to this post, please write a four line stanza (quatrain) in one of the three meters listed below (all of which appear in A Midsummer Night’s Dream). Please label your poem with its meter, and then briefly describe your experience writing it. What surprised you most about the experience?
Verse forms:
- Blank Verse – Unrhymed lines of iambic pentameter
- Heroic Couplets – Rhymed lines of iambic pentameter
- Trochaic tetrameter – (can be rhymed or unrhymed), lines of four trochaic feet (opposite of an iamb and fewer feet than pentameter).
The slides from the in-class Prosody presentation are available on the Readings page (under Hebert).
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Blank Verse – Unrhymed lines of iambic pentameter
My eye’s wake in the morning and I’m up.
Something does not feel right to me right now.
I’m missing something. Where’s my black coffee?
Oh no! Coffee? Are you there? Please come home.
- This is very difficult to do. I almost feel as if I’m in math class. I’ve gained a deep respect for poets who write with such great judgement to their verses.
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It is difficult to do! You have a good start here, though.
To my ears, I think “wake” in line 1 is stressed, so I stumble a bit. One solution:
“My eyes awake with morning and I’m up”
I’m in love with your last line in part because I think you’ve switched the stress in “Coffee.” I pronounce it with a stress first (COF-Fee), but in your construction it’s almost impossible not to say “cof-FEEEEEEEEE!,” which hits the mood for me perfectly. In this case…. I’m on board with it!
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Heroic Couplet – Rhymed Lines of Iambic Pentameter
In my least favorite class falling asleep
Tired college kid says “fuck off Bo Peep
I can’t stay awake while counting your sheep
I need to stay up this class was not cheap”
- Writing this particular couplet wasn’t too hard, I did have to switch some words out for others for it to be what I really wanted. That being said, I did have a totally different blank verse that I had scrap because I couldn’t get it right. I do think this took longer than if I were to write the same poem without considering syllables and emphasis but I actually liked it a lot. I’m surprised by how easy or hard it could be depending on what verse form you chose to write in, for example, I found the heroic couplet easier than the blank verse and I think if I tired to write the same poem as above without the rhyme scheme it would have been a lot harder. It made me see how much extra work Shakespeare had to put into his writing.
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Woah! Did this happen? Did you hear a kid say this in the middle of class (did you think it and it was you? Was it my class)?
To my ears, “tired” and “college” in line two sound trochaic (TI-erd; “COL-lege”). I have no problem reading the whole line as troches until the final “Bo PEEP” which is definitely iambic.
It’s hard…so hard…
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No, this didn’t actually happen, and if it were to it would most definitely not be in your class. I was daydreaming instead of paying attention in a different class, which is what inspired my poem.
Hearing it now I can see why some parts are trochaic, but I think I did pretty well for having only done it for the first time yesterday.
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Blank Verse- Two Rhymed Couplets in Iambic Pentameter
As I drive home from school in freezing snow
I watch the wheels on each car roll so slow
The minutes pass by agonizingly
I just want to be home so I can eat
-> Since I have actually learned about meter within Shakespeare more than once before, I found my prior experience helpful when writing this because I kind of have a pre-existing rhythm for how iambic pentameter should sound in the back of my head. That being said, this is much more difficult than it looks- there were many words that I wanted to use that just did not sound right, and if one word did not fit I had to think of a completely different new line. Since Shakespeare uses blank verse so frequently and effortlessly, I think that readers take his meter and his writing for granted sometimes. This exercise taught me to recognize how talented he is/was that his writing styles and techniques are so well executed that sometimes it it easy to forget that they are even there.
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Before I read that you’ve done this before–I sensed that maybe you have. There’s a subtlety to your verse. The image of you looking at the wheels moving while driving in lanes strikes me as very real.
Reading, I stumbled over the last line. I’m actually struggling a bit to explain why… prosody is one of those things, because it’s movement and rhythm, it’s hard sometimes to explain. I can find a way to read that line as iambic, but it fights how I want to read it, if that makes sense. I love the sense of the line.
That’s the hard part about all this. You write that this is effortless for Shakespeare. I can imagine it was easier–in the way that working a muscle makes it more strong, but it’s fascinating to me that there is so much Shakespeare must have thrown out because it didn’t fit the verse form.
In a way you’re dramatizing the difference between poetry now and then. Lyric poetry–the type that expresses feelings–has grown in popularity since the 1800s (which includes the romantic period). The idea that poetry’s unique syntax can capture a person’s unique “being” is very Romantic (capital “R”). That’s why poetry started to break rules and meter after that.
But for Shakespeare, everyone has the *same* thoughts. We’ve all been bored in traffic, he might suggest. The game isn’t to express it, but to capture it better than anyone, or at least in a way that feels novel and new. The opening lines of the Odyssey, Home asks the muses to let him tell the old story for a new audience. The emphasis in this frame-of-mind on making an idea/story fresh is also used as a reason to update Shakespeare plays (with new settings, etc.). It’s a set of ideas that are different than how we conventionally approach literature now.
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Trochaic Tetrameter lines of 4 Trochaic feet
How tedious this seems to be
It does not come easy to me,
For these were not part of my plans
its taking me like four life spans
But look it here, it might just be
Eight fit together, oh what glee
I honestly felt like I was playing a game while trying to write these few verses. I had to keep googling what syllable is stressed in each word, then trying to make it rhyme while also making sense. I felt a lot like I was doing a crossword puzzle. For example some of the words i used like “glee and life spans” are not words i would usually use but they make convey the message i want and fit in so i used those. I think it would’ve been easier if we didn’t have to get the right amount of feet or meter. It makes me curious as to how Shakespeare managed to do it, if it took me so long to write just those few lines did he also have to switch out a bunch of words to get it to be the pattern he wanted. Overall i enjoyed this exercise.
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When I was writing the directions for this activity, I almost wrote that it is like a crossword puzzle!
Your comment on vocabulary are so apt! People often dismiss Shakespeare because his vocabulary is so extensive. But you may have hit on one of the reasons!
When the word that comes FIRST doesn’t fit… you have to really think about what word you WANT.
It makes you wonder how it’d be different if I asked you to write your first essay in Blank Verse!
I also love it. I shouldn’t… since it’s about my own assignment, but….
I think you could throw some punctuation on those lines. They sound end-stopped and look to me, too.
“How tedious it sees to me” sounds like a a full sentence. Why no period or at least a semicolon?
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Heroic Couplets- Rhymed lines of Iambic Pentameter
My birthday present lies beneath my bed
Within a box colored purple and red
When I turned nine my mom gave it to me
The scent of this perfume makes me feel me
As I was writing this, I started brainstorming of so many different ideas to write about. But as I picked a specific topic to write about it got easier. This is definitely harder than it seems especially if you would like your four line stanza to rhyme. Though it is challenging to come up with different kind of words, I thought that once I got into the groove of rhyming it came easier to me. I was surprised to see how challenging it is and the fact that Shakespeare constantly uses Iambic Pentameter is very impressive.
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Your poem is an interesting thematic departure from the few previous ones–it’s not about boredom!
I think you very nearly have the rhythm. To my ears, “colored” in line 2 sounds inverted to me (COL-er’d). You pick the rythym up again right after, though (which is hard!).
You’re also not the only one who has struggled with coming UP with words (I certainly do). I think this might be one reason Shakespeare uses such odd words. He’s constantly expanding his vocabulary to be better at this and also practices all the time so that words come more readily. It’s astonishing to me that MND is THOUSANDS of lines long… this is just four!
On a more poetic level, I find it interesting that your quatrain seems to blur senses of time. “My birthday present lies” is in present tense, which implies that the present is either GOING to be given or recently given. When you find out at the end it’s old, it makes me think about how some gifts CONTINUE to be important.
I notice you don’t use punctuation but if you did, you’d have an interesting mix of enjambed and end-stopped lines.
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Blank Verse – Unrhymed lines of iambic pentameter
I walked across the street to meet my friend
but then came something I did not expect
A friend who no longer lived close to me
was standing there before my bright blue eyes
- Writing this was a bit more difficult than I had expected. I found myself struggling to have the right amount of syllables in each line. If there were too little or too many, I either had to change the whole sentence, or come up with new words to make sure they fit in. The same thing happened when finding words with the right stressed or unstressed syllables. I realized how much really has to go into this! After writing this, it showed me how much work Shakespeare put into his writing, and how talented he was as a writer considering it is easy to not even notice the specific writing styles he used.
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For SURE Shakespeare is talented. He’s also a cheat (he made up so many words! He breaks the rules whenever he NEEDS to).
But there’s also a second dimension to all this. You can be good at arranging a line into ten (or six) syllables, but do you CARE about those lines?
Every dramatist at this time was writing in this way. We’re only exposed to this one, so we can’t comparatively say Shakespeare is better (because you don’t have anything to compare it to). That’s where the real literary analysis begins: you’ve gotten the words into the right spots, now… are they the right words?
You don’t punctuate your poem. Most of the lines look end-stopped to me. What do you think?
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Iambic pentameter rhymed
The time is ticking down so cautiously
I feel the nerves just creeping awfully
I try to hide the fear so causally
I shoot and pray that I’m still praiseworthy.
This poem is meant to be about a basketball player having to shoot a final shot in the championship game, with a few seconds left, which will decide if his team wins or loses the championship.
Writing this poem was like a true journey. There were so many obstacles (being iambic, rhyming, and being a pentameter) throughout writing this poem. It was a very fun challenge to try to write this poem with these guidelines and rules. It definitely was a bit difficult trying to find certain words to fit the lines, or trying to add another word into a certain spot so it can fulfill the guidelines. It was so relieving when I finally finished it, thank god it was only four lines. These type of assignments make you really appreciate the works of people like Shakespeare.
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To my ears, you nailed the rhythm here. You don’t punctuate most lines, but they all look like independent clauses (each COULD take a period). So I think you have end-stopped lines, but you have to decide if they take semi-colons or periods. They’ll each make your lines have different kinds of relationships.
I can see where the “just” in line two had to move slightly out of position, from where you *might* have put it (“I feel the nerves creeping just awfully”), to where it had to fit with the rhythm. That’s why Shakespeare’s word order is odd sometimes.
I like the images, particularly.
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Blank Verse – Unrhymed lines of iambic pentameter
I plan to paint a board of many hues,
A landscape maybe beach or mountains high.
A gift it will be for my mother kind
I hope she loves it for my best I tried.
I can’t believe how long it took me to write just four lines. I have so much respect for Shakespeare and all other poets who write in meter. It must have gotten easier for him that after writing like that so often that he must’ve thought in pentameters too. I actually just kept repeating this to my mom as I shared my poem with her and was researching where the stress in “perhaps” is. I had my draft written on a yellow lined piece of paper and my sheet looked like Emily Dickinson’s when she wrote her truth poem. I looked up words and the syllable breakups on the internet and in my dictionary so I had lists of words in my margins and words stacked on top of each other. Like you said in class, I was forced to be meticulous with my word choice. For example I wanted to use “perhaps” but chose “maybe”, I planned to write “colors” but then had to change to “hues”. Before I even got to this poem, I wanted to write about other themes and started one about love and Cupid but I saw I was forcing too much meter and rhyming and it just didn’t work. Writing a story made it easier but this was definitely still difficult. I find it fun to write and read work like Shakespeare’s because then I start to think in his form of English. I’d like to continue to try to write this on my own but could never match Shakespeare with a whole lengthy play, 5 acts worth of iambic pentameter.
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It hard. I think most people seem to think this shows that Shakespeare is skilled… he is, but no one’s made an argument as to whether it’s a USEFUL skill. Who cares if you can put together thousands of iambic lines?
Well… actually, in his day the people who cared was the audience. And with them he was a success. That’s why his plays were published.
Does that mean we should still respect his skill? After all, we have different skills, now. We are less likely to write in iambic pentameter, but more likely to creatively use emoticons and abbreviations. Memes show incredible inventive wit. Both forms require the same rule-following (you can’t use an emoticon that doesn’t exist and you can’t create a meme from a screen-grab that doesn’t exist…)
It’s an interesting thought experiment for me. Is the best meme-artist as good as Shakespeare as capturing the human condition?
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Blank Verse or Unrhymed Iambic Pentameter
I am waiting for winter to be done
That way the flowers can sprout through
The days will get longer and the sun will shine
Spring is my favorite time of the year
I was not very surprised at how difficult this was. I’m already terrible at writing poetry, so trying to worry about the rhythm at the same time didn’t make the process any smoother. Shakespeare has my upmost respect. Not only was he able to write entire plays in iambic pentameter, but he was able to write considerably good plays in iambic pentameter. He’s even been able to play with the rhythm in order to convey the speaker’s feelings or intelligence. I could never get to that level. Just writing these four lines took hours.
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What do you mean you’re “terrible” at writing poetry? Based on what evidence?
If you base your poetry on published poems… well, that’s a narrow subset of the poems in the world. For instance… We have 37 Shakespeare plays…. how many BAD drafts you think existed? Or do you think he just wrote them perfectly? I want to see the Shakespeare plays that failed!! The ones his friends didn’t want to republish. I wan’t to see the bad verses he scribbled out in the night in a dream and then woke up to wondering what on earth he’d written. I want to see the drafts his actors told him here dumb. It must have happened, because it happens to everyone.
So the question should not be are you bad at poetry, but are you as bad (sometimes) as Shakespeare at it?
To my ears you third line has an extra syllable. Maybe something like “The days will longer get, so shines the sun”?
Your last line does the opposite of what Shakespeare often does. He seems to privilege pronunciation. So while “Fa-vo-rite” is a three-syllable word, most of us pronounce it something closer to “Fav’rite” (two syllables). When I read your last line, I miss a beat, until I slow down and read it again following the rhythm more closely. When you slow down and say “Spring is my favorite time of the year” it WORKS… but who says it like that? Maybe (just maybe… I’m not sure about it) try “season” instead of “time”: Spring is my fav’rite season of the year“?
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Iambic Pentameter Rhymed (or at least tried to)
The fear I feel inside surpasses none
The fish jumping from my river of thoughts
I faced darkness with open eyes until
A light, so bright had shown the one I sought
The poem is about how one person can help you, and act as a beacon of hope for situations that may seem out of your control. This is personal to me, and I still remember that person to this very day.
Honestly, I knew what the poems topic was going to be, from the beginning. The challenge for me was to condense it down to just four lines and to try and remove the unnecessary bits from my first draft thaat I had written. I was never really strong in writing poetry, and this time was also no exception. Shakespeare had written entire plays in iambic pentameter and I am struggling to write four lines, so this had opened my eyes to see that Shakespeare’s work shows his talent in using structures to his plays.
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I quite like the image of the fish jumping from a your river of thoughts (and an interesting play on “stream of consciousness.” It’s also evocative, for me, of the lightening storm in Emily Dickinson’s “Tell the Truth, but Tell it Slant,” and also Lysander’s description of true love as a blinding flash lighting up the “collied night.”
One of the interesting things about literary criticism is you can consider those kinds of connections even if you didn’t intend them, because they become points of comparison. How does your “bright” light compare to Lysander’s? For one, it looks like yours leads to some sort of knowledge or redemption, but in Lysander’s the darkness quickly returns: “So quick bright things come to confusion” (1.1.151).
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- Blank Verse – Unrhymed lines of iambic pentameter
Don’t wait ill be very tardy
Shoes lost phone gone clothes scattered around
Awoke my anger and wasted time
Tired so I entered my bed
-Writing this was very difficult for me mostly because poems isn’t my favorite topic. It was quite challenging to come up with different words in order to make it fit to the type of poem I was writing. Even with so many corrections I’m unsure I wrote the poem right but I tried my best.
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Hmm…Your first line is eight syllables. Your next is nine. The last two are eight.
Are you writing in hexameter?
I think your quatrain shows why punctuation can matter. In your first line, the difference between “Don’t wait! I’ll be tardy…” and “Don’t wait I’ll be tardy” is so different! It also changes the rhythm (which is why I’m thinking about it). In the second line, that looks like a list. Is there a reason you’ve forgone commas?
In the same way, “Tired so I entered my bed” reads different than “Tired. So I entered my bed.” (I’m reminded of that poem in the rafters in Port Authority, when you walk through the subway tunnel to Times Square? You know the one… that tells you to go back home to bed?).
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Blank verse with bonus heroic couplet (for! emphasis!)
Professor holds class in harsh bitter snow,
Crowd of frost-dyed hair and cold-numbed cheeks,
Afraid to be tardy, a bruising glide,
He only came in to ask for a ride
Honestly, both living this experience and recording it was pretty draining. As someone with absolutely no natural rhythm, meter doesn’t come easily to me, which is probably evident. I don’t know if doing this gave me new insight on Shakespeare other than impressing upon me just how long one of his work must have taken to produce. Good going, Bard.
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Rhythm comes naturally to everyone–perhaps that’s why the iamb shares the same rhythm as a heart beat (da-DUN, da-DUN, da-DUN…). But you definitely have to build up the skill. I have one poet friend and one song-writing friend who can both sit down and write in pretty good lines straight away, and others who can spot a meter nearly instantaneously. I’m not nearly so good! Maybe that’s why I stick to prose, mainly…
I wand to know, though… who only wanted a ride? The professor? To where? Is there some other context??? This feels like a cliff-hanger ending.
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Heroic Couplets – Rhymed lines of iambic pentameter
The uptown train ran on a long delay,
I waited and my mind had gone astray.
Aboard the thought of where I must belong,
My wait had only managed to prolong.
- What I found to be kind of annoying, yet moderately tricky was trying to find the right words to fit the meter. However, once everything fit and I had completed the poem, I felt a sense of accomplishment. This was probably because I never tried to write a poem that fit any specific meter. Personally, I have always believed that poetry just comes naturally when feeling or thoughts want to be expressed in a stylistic manner. I have never taken into account the whole “fitting the meter” before this and it’s interesting to think about how it must have been hard for Shakespeare to do that throughout his works.
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It’s surprising to me how many of these poems are about people being bored… sitting in class, waiting in traffic, waiting for the train, writing this poem… Y’all should have more interesting lives!
Still… I’m a sucker for well-crafted rhymes about mundane experiences.
The type of poetry you’re describing is usually called lyric poetry–it’s poetry that expresses the personal feelings of the author (as opposed to Homer writing an epic history or Alexander Pope writing an essay in verse).
Most scholars agree that the 18th century-shift from aristocratic values to middle-class values, emphasizing freedom, individuality and equality, really changed the way we write poetry. Rather than being a form of expression that is highly refined, it was refashioned to make poetry reflect highly personal and individual language. Another way to put it might be that Shakespeare wants you to marvel at how long it probably took him to create such dense, well-executed lines, and most modern poets want you to marvel at the immediacy of their language.
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Blank Verse- Unrhymed lines of iambic pentameter
I hope to finish writing this by noon.
This is taking longer than expected.
I have other homework to complete as well.
I did not think this would be difficult.
As you can tell from my poem, this took me way longer than expected. It was difficult trying to find the right words to fit the meter. I really wanted to write about something else, but that wasn’t working it. Im truly surprised how Shakespeare makes this look so easy. When reading his plays, he makes it flow and feel natural. I think this was a helpful exercise in trying to make us understand how difficult it is to compose a piece based off these guidelines. Having said that, I’d hope to never try to do it again.
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Waking in the sunlight blinding,
Little consolation finding
In the breakfast Mama made me;
Guess another morning’s laid me.
(Rhymed couplets of trochaic tetrameter)
Like many others, I found this exercise fun, yet challenging. One of my all-time favorite poems is “The Raven” by Edgar Allan Poe, so as a tip of the cap to its meter, I thought I’d try my hand at trochaic meter. I used rhyming couplets because I agree with your point that rhyme adds some ‘oomph’ to the points made.
My first instinct, when writing the first line, was start it with “I woke up” instead of “Waking”; it made for a more fluent phrase. Doing so, however, would have tacked on an extra syllable, and “woke up” by itself has an indeterminate subject. After some tinkering, I settled on “waking”; it also has an indeterminate subject, but it fits with the following line’s verb, “finding”, which is also a gerund.
In this manner, I realized that poetry which is metrically faithful depends largely on attention to detail and throwing things at the wall to see what sticks. I had fun, though! I’d love to do one of these again and see if I can’t improve on this.
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An attempt at Blank verse
The pangs within are just too much but hey,
Ther’ll be no babes. And now to weep, and now
To moan– oh woe! I will complain
to his disdain. At least he’s not a dad.
I found the subject matter to come to be fairly easily because, as implied by the poem, I had pretty bad cramps. I was not surprised by how difficult it was to figure out the stress in each word. I was surprised that I could not find the stresses when I looked it up! Maybe I wasn’t Googling the right things. I also found that the words flowed out, but I was thinking of them in a sing-song voice, which made everything sound iambic! I think that Shakespeare probably had an easier time writing his works because he practiced this skill often. What I find admirable is that he stayed focus. When you’re so used to doing something, it can be easy to grow careless, but Shakespeare seldom strayed from a structured meter, which shows attention to detail.
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Sometimes the apostrophe is in the pronunciation guide to the word.
When you look up the word “defintion” in google you get this above the definition:
/dɛfɪˈnɪʃ(ə)n
That crazy bunch of syllables tells you how to pronounce the word, if you read IPA. You’ll see, though, that the apostrophe comes before the “n” sound: de-fi-ni-ssion.
Your poem made me laugh, the last line particularly. It an either be read as playful or as an emotional turn into something a bit darker, like a close call and a pregnancy. I think I prefer the latter reading because it contrasts so well with the sing-song lightness of the earlier lines.
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I attempted a Blank Verse iambic pentameter but instead ended with iambic hexameter. I would not be surprised if it does not even sound like it should.
I opened my eyes once I heard my alarm ring
I laid in bed and began to question my day
should I really go? is class necessary?
after a thousand of questions and thirty minutes
I developed the energy to get ready.
Writing poetry on the spot trying to fit the criteria was actually difficult. I think I wrote about 4 or 5 different four line stanzas and just deleted them right away. I tried to limit the meters I had but for some reason I always ended up with six. Then I realized I put certain stresses on words that others might not so I had to look up the correct syllables of each word on google to make it easier to understand or maybe I just made it worse.
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Blank Verse-unrhymed lines of iambic pentameter.
Here I sit trying to write in blank verse.
Now I understand how hard it is to do.
This must have taken Shakespeare really long.
All should understand how talented he was.
Based on the content of my poem it is obvious how if felt towards this exercise. I found it very challenging to write in blank verse, especially since our poems had to be four lines. I can’t imagine writing an entire play like this! This experience has definitely given me a greater appreciation for Shakespeare’s work because it enabled me to see the brilliance of the writing.
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It is hard! But you do a good job taking it head on. I especially like your third line because it’s rhythmically correct even though you used the difficult word “Shakespeare.”
Sometimes when you start lines with words like “Now” or “And” it changes the emphasis and I think some of your lines begin trochaic. This is maybe one solution (I’ve kept your third line):
I sit trying to write a line in verse,
and now I know how hard it is to do.
This must have taken Shakespeare very long,
so all should understand how great his skill.
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Heroic Couplet – Rhymed Lines of Iambic Pentameter
Titled: Last night
I wake and look up at the sky, it’s bright.
Perhaps I went too hard with friends last night.
Oh no, I know not even where I perch.
I should arise and walk myself to church.
-I found writing this poetry was really fun actually. It was a little tricky thinking about the stress, and there might be some words here that are in the wrong spot, but it was fun nonetheless. I really don’t know how people can write this though and make a story out of it. This process forces you to be really creative and think outside the box as it limits your word choice!
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Tricky, maybe, but you got the rhythm!
Is this about someone waking up outside after a night out drinking–I ask because otherwise how can the narrator look at the sky? I like the juxtaposition between the seriousness of a iambic pentameter and the ridiculousness of the image.
I also think it’s interesting that you had gotten into the feel of using different kinds of words (how else would you end up on “perch,” obviously that rhyme was important!). It seems to have gotten into your head enough that you chose “arise” in the last line rather than the more simple “get up“. “Arise” does kind of match the feel of “perch,” though.
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Blank Verse – Unrhymed lines of iambic pentameter
She found a bug in her delicious meal,
she saw her boyfriend dating with Annie!
She must be fit to be tied ,shout out loud :
‘I had a fucking bad day this morning!’
I can’t believe this exercise take me so long to do it , but it was enjoyable!
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I think you’ve managed to find one of those very rare spondees: “bad day.” To be sure, I think it fits the punch of the last line–it’s breaking of the rhythm almost shouts at you, but it doesn’t sound iambic to me. Similarly, “Ann-ie” seems trochaic (a lot of names are Trochaic in English), but maybe Eileen, Yasmeen or or Denise? What name sounds more like a home-wrecker?
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Heroic Couplets
Oh you who come to see the city of dreams,
Observe but do not stare at how it gleams.
Her residents abhor a merry soul,
So try to keep your tourist eyes controlled.
This poem was inspired by a tourist couple I saw on the E train yesterday. Everyone around them seemed turned off by how excited they were to visit the city (rolling eyes, weird glimpses, etc.) I’d be surprised if there wasn’t a mistake in here and if there was, I’d have to completely change the wording of the line to make it fit. This was super difficult and anyone who can write more than this deserves a medal and a very large monetary award.
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We hate tourists…. but do we hate people who have a “merry soul”? I hope not!
You have a polished quatrain here that tells a complete story and provides something interesting in every line. You also keep the rhythm, except maybe at the end of the first line. I think you have an extra syllable:
Oh you who come to see the ci-ty of
dreams,I also see that you need “dreams” to rhyme with “gleams.”
How about this:
Oh you who come to see an urban dream?
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Heroic Couplets – Rhymed lines of iambic pentameter
The little girl came home from school one day.
She did not want to do her work, just play.
She cried and cried until she got her way.
That is all I have to say for today.
I thought writing this poem would be way easier than it actually was. It took me a long time to get used to writing in this way. I admire Shakespeare and appreciate his work so much more now because I see how hard writing in this way can be. I can’t even imagine having to write a whole play like this!
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Heroic Couplets – Rhymed lines of iambic pentameter
Friday night, city lights so very bright
Look! People fighting what a scary sight
Oh so drunk I can’t see, therefore I fall
The sound of the music brings peace to all
This took longer than I expected. It was difficult to come up with lines with ten syllables and rhymes, getting my ideas to flow and make sense. I prefer free verse poetry where I can come up with my own verses without rules.
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What a dramatic scene captured an in impressionistic way.
Burned into my mind is the fact that Friday is trochaic, part because of the immortal stylings of Rebecca Black (perhaps you remember):
Fri-day, Fri-day, gettin‘ down on Fri-day…
Interestingly, your first line looks more more complicated to me than a simple line of iambic pentameter. This is how I read it:
Friday night, city lights <== (those both look like dactyls to me)
Finishing:
so v’ry bright! <== which looks like an anapest to me.
The whole line sounds like an Emily Dickinson poem:
<div>Wild nights – Wild nights!</div>
<div>Were I with thee</div>
<div>Wild nights should be</div>
<div>Our luxury!</div>
In fact, it almost reads to me as a kind of parody of the Dickinson poem (even if you didn’t know it!).
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Live life and never fold
Even when some nights seem awfully cold
its only up to you to stay bold
nothing is ever foretold.I definitely had issues writing a poem, its difficult to find words that both make your poem fluid and have a meaning. I know that some poems don’t necessarily need to rhyme or have a meaning but that is what I was going for. although it was time-consuming to come up with ideas I did find it enjoyable, I haven’t written a poem in quite a while. the last time I can remember writing a poem was in elementary school. I’m glad we got time to do something like this it was entertaining.
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Your first line makes me think of this old country song (I don’t even know where I know it from).
I notice you don’t write what meter your poem is in and I don’t recognize it. You have varying numbers of syllables.
What were you going for?
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Heroic Couplets – Rhymed lines of iambic pentameter
Always working every day
just received a promotion today
best at what I do, what can I say
Oh forgot to mention its pay day
I’m not a hundred percent sure if my poem follows with the meters requirements but I tried my best. One thing I can say from writing this poem was, it wasn’t all that bad. I was always fond of writing poetry but I’m not the best at it. Something that I struggled in was figuring out what a stressed and unstressed syllable is, eventually I figured out what it is all thanks to google. Also, I found out that a group of two or three syllables is equal to 1 foot and 1 foot is an iam if it consists of one unstressed syllable followed by a stressed syllable. An Iambic Pentameter consists of five iambs. Maybe all of these things were explained in class but because I wasn’t in class I had to learn for myself. Writing poems is a form of art when one writes a poem they write form their heart or write about something that relates to them and wanting the readers to figure out what they are trying to say. I never really knew that poetry can follow a particular form in the sense of all the types of meters that were presented, but it is interesting to know why these meters are beneficial to Shakespeare writing, the reason to why Shakespear is considered to be the best scriptwriter of his time.
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If your lines are in iambic pentameter, that means there are five iambic feet. As you write, each iambic foot is two syllables (unstressed/stressed). Therefore, a line of iambic pentameter will always be 10 syllables (5 feet x 2 syllables = 10 syllables/per line). Your lines vary in length and I’m not sure any are 10.
Sounds like you know what iambs are, so try again with the meter and add/subtract syllables until you get the right number per line.
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Blank Verse – Unrhymed lines of iambic pentameter
The Spring time is coming among us now
The awesome season of sports approaches
This adrenaline rushing through my veins
As my team approaches the finish line
While making this poem, the most challenging part was finding words with the right unstressed and stressed patterns to fit the type of poem I wanted to make. In addition, I often found myself having to add and switch around words to make it fit into the ten syllable, unstressed, stressed pattern. However, this made me change my view of Shakespeare’s writing, as I was often confused about why some lines were written and structured differently compared to others. This made me finally understand the structure that he implements to his literary work which gives a nice flow and rhythm while reading.
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Blank verse iambic pentameter
The plant, my love, who sits with me at day,
I watch it bloom too fast- its limbs too far
To stretch itself and catch the sun- which glints-
And tricks the fool who waits to prune the leaves.I enjoyed writing specifically in a specific meter because for this assignment I didn’t have to worry about content (and I did not, as this is a poem about my plant). I can certainly see how this is a challenge, and when I originally tried to tackle the poem by writing with content I ended up blocked and wrote this instead. Definitely helped me understand how talented writers who write in this form have to be in order to do it and do it well.
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What’s wrong with writing a poem about a plant?
I don’t know about you, but I don’t think things have to be particularly lofty to write a poem about them. Keats wrote one of his most famous poems about seeing an old pot in a museum.
Don’t sell your plant short.
In the first line I’d switch “at” for “all,” it’s the same number of syllables, but it makes more sense to me.
The rhythm is good, though, and I like the images. What a feisty plant!
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I need to take my puppy for a walk
It has been a long time since she has went
She has been running circles the time spent
Her big soulful brown eyes look up at me
Kimber, why aren’t you letting me pee?
She runs to the door and scratches the knob
Oh poor little puppy, how her head bobs
She continues to shake in urge to go
The door opens and then begins the flow
Those big brown eyes dart right back towards me
Oh dear lord thank you for letting me pee
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What a story!
For the most part, I think you stick with the rhythm. In a few sections you switch a foot.
I can see in the third line where you’ve followed Shakespeare’s lead and changed the word order to keep the rhythm:
She has been run-ning cir-cles the time spent.
To my ears, that line is difficult to read. How does this sound instead? It’s nearly identical (and maybe shows how much difference one little word can be!)
She has the time in cir-cles run-ning spent.
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Trochaic tetrameter
Gentle seeds beneath the grime, do
Lend the World a scent of Thyme, and
When the clock of nature strikes, its
Latest bird must state its likes, or-
Lose itself among new stories.
As a math major, I was certain that I would enjoy this exercise since it brings a bit of a mathematical twist to what is generally considered a “left brain” activity. And while I did in fact enjoy the playing with the idea of a meter, and choosing words that fit into my puzzle of a poem, I also managed to utterly confuse myself while doing it. There are a number of words which I have said aloud so many times at this point, that I am no longer certain of where the stress should be placed. I cannot imagine the effort that would be involved in writing an entire play composed mainly of metered lines. I have a newfound respect for the witches in Macbeth.
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I know exactly the feeling–that’s when I return to the dictionary.
You’ve certainly found the rhythm and, in fact, the enjambment you use to keep the rhythm gives me the sense of speeding up. I can’t help but zip through it, almost like a chant. It’s quite pleasing to say aloud and has the same kind of charm-like sound you might expect a spell would.
I like the sounds so much I almost don’t care that there’s little sense being made in the actual lines. For example, how could seeds buried in the ground (line 1) smell like thyme? Even if the seeds are thyme seeds, it’s the leaves of thyme that smells! The juxtaposition between the mechanical “clock” and the idea of nature is intriguing. You almost have a real bird acting as the cuckoo in an old clock.
I like it’s strangeness!
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Blank Verse – Unrhymed lines of iambic pentameter
Sunlight shines beside the bed in which I lay,
Toward my sleepy face as I debate,
If I arise or collapse back in my mattress,
But sloth engulfs me away to my dreams.
From my experience in writing this piece, I found it difficult to use the appropriate words to match what I wanted to write along with matching it to the pentameter. The experience was interesting since I was used to reading and writing things in a monotonous manner without paying too much attention so the difficulties I had helps me realize how amazing poets and playwrights are in being able to write in iambic and trochaic lines for their pieces while making it sound naturally flowing as people read it.
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It’s fascinating how differently this makes you feel when you’re writing the poetry. Your brain makes entirely different connections because you have constraints.
According to Merriam-Webster’s Dictionary, “Sun-light” is trochaic, and in fact I think the whole line is:
Sunlight shines beside the bed in which I lay,
Although, it has an extra half-foot at the end (an extra syllable), making it catalytic trochaic pentameter. You switch to iambic in the second line, though:
Toward my sleepy face as I debate,
In the third you keep the rhythm but have too many syllables again. One way to fix it:
a-rise or to col-lapse upon the bed, <== I don’t love this solution because you can’t collapse onto the bed (again) if you haven’t gotten up yet…. so maybe:
to fall a-gain a-sleep or to get up.
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Blank Verse- Unrhymed lines of iambic pentameter
I found a car in my garage to ride
I took it out to ride along the tracks
It was old-fashioned and had to be exported
It had to be a present certain for display.
I found this task extremely difficult actually, I’m pretty sure I did this completely wrong, to me what I wrote makes no sense, even though it took multiple attempts, the concept of the stressed and un stressed really confuses me.
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For all your worry about the rhythm, you did pretty well. The only obvious mistake I see is in the third line… it has 12 syllables, so it can’t be in iambic pentameter. It reads like an iambic line though, so you just have an extra foot.
What is it about? Is it about receiving a vintage car as a gift?
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Heroic Couplet Iambic Pentameter
I take the shot, but always miss the way
She is so beautiful, in every way
I find promise in her eyes, when I say
I love in every way to this day babe
This was extremely confusing for me, I found myself questioning every single line I wrote, I am still confused on whether or not I did this correctly. Poets now have all my respect for this kind of work. To be able to understand the language well enough to this often is just unbelievable to me. On the other hand, it was still really cool to have to put so much thought into what you are writing, it isn’t the random rhymes that you wrote when you were younger this is way more than that, it is quite interesting because of that.
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I’m deeply disappointed you didn’t end your last line with “Bae.” You robbed us of the rhyme (and the second heroic couplet)! I’m kidding…
Your rhythm is right on, though. Some more punctuation may make it a bit more readable, too. Especially at the end of the second line, maybe a period?
It’s a nice quatrain, though. Is it about taking a photo of someone but not being able to capture exactly what you’re seeing in the person?
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- Heroic Couplets – Rhymed lines of iambic pentameter
- After the writing of the poems, I figure out it is challenging to write in rhyme or iambic pentameter. It take me a long time to choose what rhymed words that I should use and have no idea what to write about. It is hard to connect the rhymed words in the poem that make sense to each other. This change my view of Shakespeare’s writing that he is a genius in the literature and take a lot of practice for the good work.
- Oh my brain is in pain
- The class difficulties is insane
- Almost faint when class begin
- Always wonder when school close again
- And complain when coursework gain
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I’ll assume (of course) you’re not writing about my class!
I think it’s important to remember that in English, we count stressed syllables. Iambic pentameter lines are always 10 syllables long. None of yours are, so you know you need to add syllables. The hard part is also retaining the rhythm.
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When the school bell ring my brain is in pain
The classwork difficulties is insane
I almost faint at the beginning of class
And I Always wonder when school close again
And I can’t stop complain when coursework gain
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Heroic Couplet Iambic Pentameter
The fresh cut grass it smelt like memories past
Children so young we grew older to fast
The bat and ball was all we thought in fall
A swing a hit a blast its gone HomerunNot completely sure if I did this correctly, it seems very hard to do so. I give so much credit to the way Shakespeare writes he’s a true genius. It took me a while to put all the pieces together I can’t even imagine a whole play
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So many folks while writing didn’t think about punctuation! Maybe it says something about how hard people were thinking about the rhythm…
This is certainly a somber piece! Are you wishing for those halcyon days of your summer-time youth?
I think you get the rhythm right for the most part, with the exception of “Chil-dren,” which reads to me like it’s trochaic. What do you think?
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Heroic Couplets- Rhymed lines of Iambic Pentameter
The masses cannot just stand idly by
While the planet is killed and children die
We must unite to destroy the elite
The rebirth of mankind we’ll all soon meetI wrote this based on the word revolution. As of late, I have been learning more about Marxism, and the disenfranchisement of women and people of color. With such ideas fresh in my mind, I decided to write a revolutionary quatrain. To be honest, I was surprised with how relatively quickly I was able to make this up. With the guidelines of iambic pentameter and rhyming couplets, I was sufficiently challenged. However, having all those political ideas floating around definitely helped. What was most challenging was realizing I had made a poem with the wrong rhyme scheme (abab instead of aabb) and having to switch out stanzas. I kept the first and last stanzas so I wouldn’t have to start from scratch, and was met with the issue of making two lines that not only rhymed respectively but also made sense regarding the overall theme. I do not have a different opinion about Shakespeare after writing this, but that’s because I’ve had similar exercises in the past that have made me appreciate the effort and skill it takes to write entire plays with such rhyme and meter.
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If you’re reading Marxist theory, you may be interested in the short paragraph from Alan Sinfield about Hippolyta’s Silence I’ve posted but also handed out in class. It’s not Marxist, but does have elements of materialist theory (specifically related to marriage roles). There’s also a short paragraph about the difference between how the aristocrats and the mechanicals view love that I’ve also posted. It’s also not Marxist, in part because it’s from 19th-century writer, but it’s a German critic and so he’s thinking through some of the same things Marx is at the same time.
I think you switch around your rhythm a bit. For example, in the third line, to my ears it reads this way:
We must u-nite to de-stroy the e-lite
You seem to want to read it de-stroy? (this is why it’s hard!).
Maybe you could do this:
We must u-nite a-gainst all of e-lites.
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Herioic Couplets- Rhymed lines of iambic pentameter
On my way to the concert
I am going to burst
Can’t believe I’m in the front row
This line is moving way too slow
I was actually writing this poem on my way to a concert during the weekend and it was definitely not easy. I kept writing different lines in the train and wrote the last line while waiting in line. I am not sure if I did it right but this was a challenging assignment for me because I still get confused with the type of poems and the different types of writing styles. I respect not only Shakespeare but others poets // writers who make it seem easy.
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I’m not sure I can be as generous as you are: there are poets I absolutely don’t like. There are poets I can respect (but not enjoy), and then there are some that are horrible. I might be one of them (ha!).
Crucially for this assignment, though, it’s important to notice that you identify your verse as iambic pentameter, none of your lines are 10 syllables long, which means none of them are in iambic pentameter.
Your first line, for instance, has 7 syllables, making it three short of the 10 needed for a line of pentameter.
On my way to the con-cert
(I also think it’s an independent clause and so I’d put a period at the end, making it end-stopped).
One way to fix it might be this:
At last I’m on my way to see the show.
It’s 10 syllables, made up of 5 iambs, and it even adds to the rhyme scheme you develop in the final heroic couplet.
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Blank Verse – Unrhymed lines of iambic pentameter
The rain began to drizzle then it spewed
From high above the bright blue sky which made no sense
As to why but my dull green socks did not
Stay away from that horrid blue rain
This assignment was more technical than I thought it would be. I’m not even sure if I followed the meter correctly. The interesting part of this assignment was how Shakespeare did this for more than four lines. I struggled to even reach four, and Shakespeare seems like he’s doing it for fun. This makes me appreciate not only his writing, but also his story telling, the fact that he wrote such compelling plays using this meter is amazing.
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There’s another aspect of this, too, and that’s who someone else might read your poem (maybe I should give this assignment???).
Once you’ve struggled to put words into the rhythm, you let someone else read it and they start to make connections that you may not have. For instance, I notice that your poem has no punctuation at all, making all the clauses run together (perhaps like rain soaked clothes? Or just writing quickly on a phone?). You mention blue twice, one the sky (presumably it’s a sun shower?), but the rain is also blue. The other color in the poem is green (your socks). Blue rain from a blue sky is indeed odd (I’m not sure I’ve ever seen blue rain, but I’ve heard Purple Rain).
This is a slightly absurd close reading (or beginning of one), but it shows how poems start to build up meanings beyond, perhaps, what we intended!
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Blank Verse
Tick-tock goes the numbing click of the clock.
Criss-cross my eyes roll back as my sight blurs.
“Just one more sentence,” my weary mind chants.
But the wretched lure of rest has won tonight.
Writing this poem was very interesting for me. I was surprised by how much trouble I was having with the stressed/unstressed portion of the poem (I’m still not sure if I got it right). I also found it hard to have to switch around words and replace them with others just to get the foot count and syllables accurate. I don’t know if I like writing poetry in a way where I have to fit a certain format. I feel like I would fare better in trying to match this style if I had a poem written already, and I was going back to switch around some words to make the beat less awkward. I don’t think I like writing a poem that has to fit into the specific beat from the get-go, it feels a little stifling.
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It’s interesting you call it stifling–I think in part it’s about practice. You do, after all, have the choice to write in verse and which one (if I chose to put on this stuffy shirt, can I blame the shirt?).
The rhythmic aspects of this are very hard. And as I’ve written to so many people… I’m not even that good at (although I get better with practice).
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Trochaic tetrameter (unrhymed)
Time to wake up and start the day!
I check the clock. Oh no, it’s late.
Should not have stayed awake till dawn.
Now I missed my first class today.
I had a fun time writing this verse because after class, I really understood the types of verses that there are and I was eager to try it out at home. What surprised me when writing it was that it didn’t take me that long to come up with something. Sometimes, one of my lines would have 7 syllables instead of 8, which meant that I would have to stop and think about it again to see if I needed to add another syllable or change the entire line. It was a little frustrating when that happened, but I still had a great time writing verses in meter and I think I might keep on doing it for fun whenever I have the chance.
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In ENGL 152, I often have students read Benjamin Franklin’s Autobiography. Franklin wanted to be a poet, actually, but his father told him “verse-makers were generally beggars” (I guess that’s why Ben became an inventor and publisher). Before he gave up his dream though, he used poetry to expand his vocabulary because it does exactly what you describe–it makes you think more carefully about your language and you grow your flexibility with language. Ben writes: ” I found I wanted a stock of words, or a readiness in recollecting and using them, which I thought I should have acquired before that time if I had gone on making verses; since the continual occasion for words of the same import, but of different length, to suit the measure, or of different sound for the rhyme, would have laid me under a constant necessity of searching for variety, and also have tended to fix that variety in my mind, and make me master of it. Therefore I took some of the tales and turned them into verse; and, after a time, when I had pretty well forgotten the prose, turned them back again” (Franklin, Part I).
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