THOUGHTS

Meter and Foot

March 4, 2019

Hard to believe that we are 4 days into the new month! In am in my count down mode to SPRING! Only 17 more days to go.

Subject today is meter and foot. According to what I looked up on the Internet, we get:

The basic unit of measurement of accentual-syllabic meter. A foot usually contains one stressed syllable and at least
one unstressed syllable. The standard types of feet in English poetry are the iamb, trochee, dactyl, anapest, spondee,
and pyrrhic (two unstressed syllables).

Wow, I don't know about you, but for me, those words are intimidating! So I must break them down to bite size. I am
going to look at dacty first, just because I like the way that one looks, ha, ha.

So it says that a dactyl = a metrical foot consisting of one stressed syllable followed by two unstressed syllables or
(in Greek and Latin) one long syllable followed by two short syllables. So I am looking and I see that a sample of a dactyl
would be the word bicycle, fabulous, melody and poetry! I found one example:

(Out of the Cradle Endlessly Rocking (By Walt Whitman)

“Out of the cradle, endlessly rocking
Out of the mockingbird’s throat, the musical shuttle
Out of the Ninth-month midnight …”

Whitman is using dactyl in the phrase, “Out of the …” as a pulse riding throughout this poem, which is generating a starting point for each new line.

So much fun to see the different names given to use of syllables used in the meter and foot. Tomorrow I am going to look at another; come join me.

Seabreeze