Okay, /lit/. I have a problem. I'm studying English Lit at uni atm, but I'm absolutely fucking retarded when it comes to poetic metre. I've been avoiding my poetry module for this reason. If I'm asked to work out the prosody of the poem I'm either 100% right or completely off the mark. I'm sort of 'tone deaf' when it comes to analysing stressed and unstressed syllables. I know all the correct terms once I figure out the beat (dactyls, iambic, etc.), but I just can't work out stressed and unstressed syllables for the life of me. Do any of you have any advice on how to count stressed and unstressed syllables correctly? I'll read the same poem aloud three times and each time I'll come out w/ a different metre for each line.
I'm not sure how anyone could give advice over this as it's so obvious. I have a strong Welsh accent, so that might be why I'm getting confused.
>>7738032
Stephen Fry's The Ode Less Travelled. Read it, listen to it, love it.
poetic metre doesn't matter anymore.
>>7738032
I am too. But I think I can match meter alright:
The clouds rain on the soft porch,
the brain plays with the blue torch.
This is just stupid,
This is just ruin.
It's hard to say how it works but it just does.
Anyone feel free to correct my meter.
>>7738044
it matters when i have an essay to write on it, m8.
>>7738035
this is in my uni library. i'll check it out tomorrow. thanks.
>>7738068
What do you have to write the essay on?
>>7738032
i read a shitton of poetry and i still have the same issue OP. never really found a good solution besides dogged stubbornness and evne then im still off occasionally. wish i had something better to offer.
monitoring this thread closely for suggestions.
>>7738073
It's a critical analysis of an early twentieth-century poem. I don't know what it is yet, the questions haven't been released, but I need to get working on my prosody knowledge now or I'm fucked.
Right now I'm working on a short piece to send to my tutor to check my understanding. It's a comparison between Thomas Hardy's 'The Fallow Deer at the Lonely House' and Edward Thomas's 'Out in the Dark'.
>>7738108
Huh just tried doing meter on the second one. Not even a fucking chance.
I can write it but can't recognize it if my life depended on it.
>>7738136
The metre is all over the shop on the second one, I'm just trying to work out the rhythm for it to see if it matched the first (which I've probably done wrong). I'm assuming they have similarities in prosody if my tutor highlighted them for comparison. She's godly at this shit.
>>7738108
I can do the meter on the first one though:
()=stressed
(One) with(out) looks (in) to-(night)
(Through) the (cur)tain-(chink)
(From) the (sheet) of (glis)tening (white);
(One) with(out) looks (in) to-(night)
(As) we (sit) and (think)
By the fender-brink.
(We) do (not) dis(cern) those (eyes)
(Watch)ing (in) the (snow);
(Lit) by (lamps) of (ros)y (dyes)
(We) do (not) dis(cern) those (eyes)
(Wond)ering, a(glow),
(Four)footed, tip(toe).
>>7738149
Sick, I had something v. similar. I see "wondering" and "four footed" as three syllables each tho, but I'll put that down to accent differences.
It's definitely in iambs tho, I had that down. Great, that's comforting.
>>7738190
trochee* i mean
