Wheeler English

   Lines & Rhymes: Rhythm

   from The teachers and Writers Handbook of Poetic Forms, edited by Ron
   Padgett.
   and your text, Elements of Literature, Second Course (Holt, Rinehart)

   Rhythm is a musical quality produced by the repetition of stressed and
   unstressed syllables. Rhythm occurs in all forms of language, both
   written and spoken, but is particularly important in poetry

   The most obvious king of rhythm is the regular repetition of stressed
   and unstessed syllables found in some poetry.

   Writers also create rhythm by repeating words and phrases or even by
   repeating whole lines and sentences, as Walt Whitman does in "Song of
   Myself":

   I hear the sound I love, the soung of the hyman voice,
   I hear all sounds running together, combined, fused, or following,
   Sounds of the city and sounds out of the city, sounds of the day and
   night,
   Talkative young ones to those that like them, the loud laugh of
   work-people at their meals...
   [yellowrose_l.jpg]
   [whitedaisy1_l.jpg]

   People often use a combination of two words to describe regular rhythm
   or meter. For example, you might refer to the meter of a sonnet as
   iambic pentameter The first word, such as iambic, refers to the beat
   pattern, in this case an unaccented syllable followed by an accented
   syllable (the most common in English). The second refers to the length
   of the line. In the case of pentameter we mean five feet (or ten
   syllables, long.

   Below are some commonly used words to describe the meter of regular
   poetry.

                  The most common units ("feet") of rhythm in English are:

   The iamb, consisting of two syllables, only the second accented (as in
   "good-bye")

   The trochee, two syllables, only the first accented (as in "awful")

   The anapest, three syllables, with only the third stressed (as in
   "Halloween")

   The dactyl, one stressed syllable followed by two unstressed (as in
   "wonderful")

   The spondee, two consecutive syllables that are both stressed (as in
   "big deal")

   Many American poets in the past thirty years have written poetry using
   everyday language, and because much American speech is iambic in
   pattern, the poetry shows a lot of iambic rhythm.
   [golddaisy_l.jpg]

   Rhythm (or "measure") in writing is like the beat in music. In poetry,
   rhythm implies that certain words are produced more force- fully than
   others, and may be held for longer duration. The repetition of a
   pattern of such emphasis is what produces a "rhythmic effect." The word
   rhythm comes from the Greek, meaning "measured motion."

   In speech, we use rhythm without consciously creating recognizable
   patterns. For example, almost every telephone conversation ends
   rhythmically, with the conversants understanding as much by rhythm as
   by the meaning of the words, that it is time to hang up. Frequently
   such conversations end with Conversant A uttering a five- or
   six-syllable line, followed by Conversant B's five to six syllables,
   followed by A's two- to four-syllable line, followed by B's two to four
   syllables, and so on until the receivers are cradled.


Well I gotta go now.
Okay, see you later.
Sure, pal. So long.
See you. Take care.
Bye bye.
Bye bye.

   In poems, as in songs, a rhythm may be obvious or muted. A poem like
   Vachel Lindsay's "The Congo" consciously recreates the rhythms of a
   tribal dance:

Fat black bucks in a wine-barrel room
Barrel-house kings, with feet unstable,
Sagged and reeled and pounded on the table,
Pounded on the table,
Beat an empty barrel with the handle of a broom,
Hard as they were able
Boom, boom, BOOM,
With a silk umbrella and the handle of a broom,
Boomlay, boomlay, boomlay, BOOM.

   On the other hand, some "free verse" has underlying rhythmical patterns
   that, while variable and not "regular" like Vachel Lindsay's, do
   nonetheless give a feeling of unity to the work. For example, read
   aloud the following lines a few times:

A chimney, breathing a little smoke.
The sun, I can't see
making a bit of pink
I can't quite see in the blue.
The pink of five tulips
at five P.M. on the day before March first.
                                 -From "February" by James Schuyler


                                [1]suggested
                                 assignments
                                 [2]project
                                  [3]rhythm
                                  [4]rhyme
                                [5]repetition
                            [6]figures of speech
                               [7]schoolnotes
                                   [8]home

Références

   Liens visibles
   1. http://www.angelfire.com/ct2/evenski/poetry/assignments.html
   2. http://www.angelfire.com/ct2/evenski/poetry/finalproject.html
   3. http://www.angelfire.com/ct2/evenski/poetry/rhythm.html
   4. http://www.angelfire.com/ct2/evenski/poetry/rhyme.html
   5. http://www.angelfire.com/ct2/evenski/poetry/repetition.html
   6. http://www.angelfire.com/ct2/evenski/poetry/figuresofspeech.html
   7. http://schoolnotes.com/06359/gr8english.html
   8. http://www.angelfire.com/ct2/evenski/home.html

   Liens cachés :
   9. http://www.angelfire.com/index.html