Discipline
By ice rivers
- 1219 reads
Pentametric typing appeals to me.
I enjoy counting syllables per line
Which adds discipline to my poetry
And demands another beat after nine.
Sonnets consist of one jundred forty
Syllables exactly, not more nor less.
That was Bill Shakespeare's form of recording.
What's good for Will is good for me I guess.
Eight of ten lines are already complete
The last and this bring the total to ten
The number of toes we count on two feet.
Our rhyme schemes change as thoughts approach the end
One final touch we must never forget
End the affair with summary couplet.
- Log in to post comments
Comments
Yet pentametric typing on its
Yet pentametric typing on its own,
without iambic cloak to keep it warm,
in Winter's night is lost and so alone,
left sleeping in a cold and empty dorm.
And the hundred syllables blessed with yet
another forty more, would often yield
to excess or surrender some to debt,
dependant on the stresses in the field.
- Log in to post comments
You've had fun. I guess
You've had fun. I guess Scorpio is pointing out that your rhythm pattern isn't constant. Line 5 should have 'hundred' I presume! Rhiannon
- Log in to post comments
It's more a case that you can
It's more a case that you can have an extra sysllable (usually an unstressed one at the end of a line) or even drop a syllable if needed. Its the metre that really counts. In iambic pentametre its usually a non-stressed syllable followed by a stressed syllable. But if we did that all the time it all becomes a bit dum-dee-dum-dee-dum. So it gets varied and when that happens, some syllables can get dropped. So relying on syllable count on its own is fine but can leave the poem a little 'cold' because it takes no account of metre - and metre is the heartbeat of a sonnet.
Hope that helps.
- Log in to post comments
Counting syllables is fine,
Counting syllables is fine, but the stresses still have to come in the right place. If you can, get a copy of 'The Ode Less Travelled' - by Stephen Fry - you'd enjoy, and find really useful if you are interested in form.
- Log in to post comments