Why are comics and poems alike 5: metrics p3

SOUNDS AND PREFIXES

According to the number of syllables in a verse, we will add prefixes to refer to diverse existing numeral giving names to verses:

bi-tri-tetra-penta-hexa-hepta-octo-enea-deca- endeca-dodeca-trideca-tetra deca[1] syllabic/meter.

And here is when things GET A LOT DIFFERENT THAN IN SPANISH.

Whilst Spanish counts syllables and gives the poem a name based upon the number of syllables in a line[2] (verse); English counts the stressed[3] and unstressed and takes the order of them into account to call it a foot. English names verses after the foot.

<<In accentual-syllabic prosody the basic unit of poetry is the line, clearly visible on the page, which may be defined as ‘a single sequence of characters read from left to right’. Lines are analysed by breaking the metre, the rhythmic pattern, down into the repetition of a basic unit, a foot, and saying how many feet make up a line.>>

The poem handbook John Lennard. Oxford University Press, second edition 1996, 2005.

SYLLABLES OR NOT SYLLABLES

<<Poetry was spoken before it was written, and rhyme, the coincidence of sounds, has prehistoric origins in ritual, celebration, and memory training. Most Westerners learn nursery rhymes or children’s chants, and know a fair number of simple rhymes giving information (red sky at night, shepherd’s delight) or advice (if you can’t beat ’em, join ’em). […].  Vision is now our primary sense, and for many to hear clearly how rhyme works in a poem means seeing a rhyme-scheme. >>

The poem handbook John Lennard. Oxford University Press, second edition 1996, 2005.

Whatever. It doesn’t really matter at the moment. Iambic, pentameter or pentasyllabic, Alexandrian, or minor art verse, verses share a quality: they either rhyme or not and here is where light starts to shine upon the damned topic because rhyme is not just a sound thing. Or it is a sound thing but it is also something that CAN BE SEEN.

TO BE CONTINUED

---

[1] Called Alejandrinos, the quantum may care why.

[2] As usual, the verses can be popular or intellectual. A verse minor to 8 syllables is a minor art verse and a longer one a major art verse. In the end, one wonders why the heck musicians are to receive a Nobel in literature but such is Spanish; not English.

[3] Any need to complícate it even more? They’re called ictus.