Stress, Rhythm And Metre Analysis

Poetry Assignment – Critical Analysis
Stress, Rhythm and Metre
When poems have a detectable stress pattern and rhythm, it forms a metre. An example of this would be a poem with ten syllables on each line, where five of which are stressed, and five are unstressed. This would make the metre pentameter, which often consists of five-stress duplets. Carol Ann Duffy’s Shakespearean sonnet, Rapture, is a good example of a poem with an organised, detectable rhythm, which forms a metre. Most lines appear to have five-stress duplets, as shown in line eleven: “from earth to heaven after rain. Your kiss”. The stress falls on every other syllable in the line, as iambic or weak-strong duplets. However, others appear to have a slightly more irregular stress pattern, for …show more content…
It appears the stress would fall on “how”, both syllables in “happen”, and on “lives” and “drift”. This leaves two consecutive unstressed syllables of “does it” and “that our” in the line, potentially on purpose to make the poem flow easier and more naturally, rather than forcing an unstressed-stress pattern and throwing off the rhythm of the poem. Most of the lines in the poem appear to be pentameter, and even though some lines are not, they still contain ten syllables and five stresses. In contrast, To a Chameleon by Marianne Moore has no detectable regular rhythm, as each line has a different amount of stresses, making a metre impossible to identify for the poem in its entirety. This is shown when we compare line one, “Hid by the august foliage and fruit of the grape-vine”, and line two, “twine”. Line one appears to have five stresses, on the first syllable of the words “hid”, “august”, “foliage”, “fruit” and “grape”, while line