The lines of poetry in English are almost never made up of syllables. They are measured in “feet,” which are combinations of syllables. There are seven main feet out of which a line of poetry is built. Of these seven feet (or poetic measures), four have two (2) syllables each, two have three (3) syllables each, and one has only one (1) syllable.
The feet with TWO syllables are these:
Iamb (unstressed syllable followed by stressed syllable): Jeanine, return, enclosed.
Trochee (stressed syllable followed by unstressed syllable): Alice, doughnut, current.
Spondee (used less often; two stressed syllables): Hi-ho, tick-tock, knock-knock.
Pyrrhic (rarely used; two unstressed syllables): of the, and the.
The two feet containing THREE syllables are these:
Anapest (two unstressed followed by stressed syllable): Twas the NIGHT, before Christ- mas and ALL / through the HOUSE not a creature was STIRring not Even a MOUSE.
Dactyl (one stressed followed by two unstressed): Merrily, syllable, CARry me.
The foot containing only one syllable is this:
Monosyllabic (one stressed syllable, but used as a foot): GO, SO, No, too.
However, finding out if a foot has one, two, or three syllables is not a mechanical thing; you must determine or feel the rhythm of the line. At times, you have to borrow a syllable from the preceding or the next word in order to get your foot and so get the line measure right.
Note
Iambs and anapests are called rising meters (not to be confused with rising action in fiction; see “Meters” in the “Glossary) because they start low and go up. They sound positive and happy.
Trochees and dactyls are called falling meters (not to be confused with falling action in fiction) because they start high and go down. They tend to suggest negativity, death, depression, unhappiness. So, if you are writing a poem about someone who died, it helps to use a good number of trochaic and dactylic feet.
The most common line in English is the iambic pentameter, a line made up of five iambs.
Ex.: “I feel my fate in what I cannot fear.” “I learn by going where I have to Go.”
Now, the assignment: Digesting all of the above, and using capitalization to represent the stressed syllables:
(1) Show the five feet in the following iambic pentameters (don’t forget to borrow a syllable from the previous or the next word if you need it to make your iambic foot):
Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?
Thou art more lovely and more temperate.
Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May.
If ever two were one, then surely we.
If ever man was loved by wife, then thee.
Be a poet. Write four iambic pentameters of your own creation. Describe or comment on household objects, a place you know, feelings you have about a thing or person, etc. If you wish, your four iambic pentameter lines
(a) may be connected in theme, thus making a four-line stanza or “quatrain” (see p. 1098) and
(b) may have either one of these rhyme schemes: aabb, abab, or abba.
BOOK; Literature and the Writing process 11th Edition pearson
