Tag Archives: dactyl

Duni

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Pathways for the Poet by Viola Berg (1977) is a book for and by educators. Classic poetic forms as well as many invented forms which appear to have been invented as teaching tools or exercizes for use in workshops or classrooms are included. Some of these invented forms I have found in use in internet poetry communities, a testament to their staying power. On this page I include the metric invented forms found there in which appear to be exclusive to the community of educators from whom Ms. Berg drew her support. I have yet to find these in any other source. …. Whether classroom exercise or sharpening your skill as a writer, some of these forms can be fun to play with.

• The Duni has a complicated metric pattern and includes a pivot or change of thought in L6.  Created by Mildred Dewey. 

The Duni is:
○ a heptastich, 7 line poem.
○ metered, 
L1 1 dactyl followed by 2 trochees and an Iamb 
L2 3 iambs
L3 a trochee followed by an anapest and 2 iambs
L4 3 iambs
L5 3 iambs
L6 4 iambs
L7 1 iamb, followed by an anapest and an iamb
○ composed with a pivot or change of thought in L6.
○ rhymed, rhyme scheme abcacba.

Pasted from http://www.poetrymagnumopus.com/index.php?showtopic=1199#dionol
My thanks to Judi Van Gorder for years of work on this fine PMO resource.

My example

Selective Perception Advised (Duni)

Paying attention makes lots of sense.
It’s socially astute.
Notice your wife’s nails or her French-braid
and she’ll take no offense.
But man, I’d be afraid
to note another’s wife is cute.
Observing that’s somewhat dense.

© Lawrencealot – September 9, 2014

Visual template

Duni

Cycle

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Pathways for the Poet by Viola Berg (1977) is a book for and by educators. Classic poetic forms as well as many invented forms which appear to have been invented as teaching tools or exercizes for use in workshops or classrooms are included. Some of these invented forms I have found in use in internet poetry communities, a testament to their staying power. On this page I include the metric invented forms found there in which appear to be exclusive to the community of educators from whom Ms. Berg drew her support. I have yet to find these in any other source. I have included the syllabic invented forms on a separate page. Whether classroom exercise or sharpening your skill as a writer, some of these forms can be fun to play with.

• Cycle appears to be an exercise in meter and rhyme. This invented verse form was created by Paul Emile Miller.

The Cycle is:
○ stanzaic, written in 3 quatrains.
○ metric, L1 and L3 tetrameter made up of a trochee followed by a dactyl and 2 iambs; L1 and L3 often use feminine end words. L2 and L4 are iambic trimeter. “Pathways” description and example are in conflict, the description of meter here fits with the example poem.
○ rhymed, abab cbcb dbdb.

Pasted from http://www.poetrymagnumopus.com/index.php?showtopic=1199#dionol
My thanks to Judi Van Gorder for years of work on this fine PMO resource.

My example

Naturally Selected (Cycle)

Defunct vestigials are proof I reckon,
(denying dogma’s claims)
demonstrating clearly changes beckon,
in life’s ambiguous game.

Natures monologue denies we’re molded,
pre-cast, annealed in flame.
Mankind draws then repeats, hand un-folded –
survival’s life’s whole aim.

Limitations, norms, exceptions, changes
responding – not the same.
Bio plasma slowly rearranges,
without thought, overcame.

© Lawrencealot – September 4, 2014

Visual template

Cycle

Aeolic Ode

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Aeolic Verse refers to meters commonly used in the lyrical works of Sappho and Alcaeus. Aeolis was the west and northwestern region of Asia Minor which included most of the Greek city-states and the Island of Lesbos in the 8th to 6th centuries BC, the Greek Dark Ages. Four classic meters are known from that culture, the Alcaic Stanza, the Sapphic Stanza, Glyconics (the basic form of Aeolics) and Hendecasyllabic Verse. The verse is quantitative, usually hendecasyllabic, employing 11 syllables and often includes an anceps, a quantitative metric foot that includes a syllable that could be interpreted either long or short. The meter helped set a tranquil or contemplative tone. Aeolic poetry.

• The Aeolic Ode is the earliest of the Odes, the product of an ancient Greek culture but I’ve found little descriptive information other than some quantitative scansion showing a similarity to the Adonic line of the Sapphic strophe. It is said to have a contemplative or tranquil tone.
• An asclepiad is one of the Aeolic meters attributed to Asclepiades of Samos. The aclepiad follows a particular metric pattern. It is built around the choriamb (metric pattern of LssL). The common example is a spondee followed by 2 choriambs and an iamb. LL LssL LssL sL, (L = long syllable, s = short syllable) the meter was used by Horace and others in Latin.

An example in English is: In Due Season by WH Auden
Springtime, Summer and Fall: days to behold a world
Antecedent to our knowing, where flowers think
Theirs concretely in scent-colors and beasts, the same
Age all over, pursue dumb horizontal lives.
On one level of conduct and so cannot be
Secretary to man’s plot to become divine.
Lodged in all is a set metronome: thus, in May
Bird-babes, still in the egg, click to each other “Hatch!”;
June-struck cuckoos go off pitch when obese July
Turns earth’s heating up; unknotting their poisoned ropes.
Vipers move into play; warmed by October’s nip,
Younger leaves to the old give the releasing draught.
Winter, though, has the right tense for a look indoors
At ourselves and with First Names to sit face to face,
Time for reading of thoughts, time for trying out
Of new meters and new recipes, proper time
To reflect on events noted in warmer months
Till, transmuted, they take part in a human tale.
There, responding to our cry for intelligence,
Nature’s mask is relaxed into a mobile grin,
Stones, old shoes, come alive, born sacramental signs,
Nod to us in the First Person of mysteries.
They know nothing about, bearing a mess from
The invisible sole Source of specific things.
COPYRIGHT 2007 Long Island University, C.W. Post College
Pasted from http://www.poetrymagnumopus.com/index.php?/topic/1402-aeolic-odeaeolic-verse-asclepiad-meterglyconics/
My thanks to Judi Van Gorder for the wonderful PMO site. It is a wonderful resource.

Other Odes: Aeolic Ode, Anacreontic Ode, Choral Ode or Pindaric Ode or Dorian Ode, Cowleyan Ode or Irregular Ode, Horatian Ode, Keatsian or English Ode, RonsardianOde

Thematic Odes:

Elegy, Obsequy, Threnody Ode
Elemental Ode
Genethliacum Ode
Encomium or Coronation Ode
Epithalamion or Epithalamium and Protholathiumis
Palinode Ode
Panegyric or Paean
Triumphal Ode
Occasional Verse

Dear Readers,

The information taken from above and elsewhere leaves me in a state of confusion and despair. It seems that since the forms of that Greek and Latin era were both quantitative and irregular, and based upon long-short sounds that English (outside of music) does not do well, emphasizing instead stressed vs unstressed syllables – that I must take the bull by the horns and announce that since 21st century poets are
transformative (as all poets have been), I shall herein transform.

I have devised for my structure of the Aeolic Ode the following metric. It incorporates:
(1) Adonic line – a verse line with a dactyl followed by a spondee or trochee; supposedly used in laments by Adonis.
(2) Hendecasyllabic lines,
(3) A choriamb, to approximate an asclepiad.
(4) A foot that possesses an optional stress (approximating an anceps)
(5) The four metric feet include two, three, and four-toed metric feet. That alone is irregular.
(6) Rhyme is purely optional, in use and position.
(7) Stanza length and number is left to poets discretion.

First foot: A Dactyl
2nd foot: Either a spondee or a trochee|
3rd foot: A Choriamb (DUM da da DUM)
4th foot: An Iamb

Below is my example poem, and a visual template for my version of the Aeolic Ode for the 21st Century.

Ode to a Three-toed Sloth (Aeolic Ode)
Praise now the three-toed sloth who’s a folivore.
Hang he does, upside down, in a tranquil way
Eating the leaves and shoots and not needing more.
Cockroaches, moths and algae and ciliates,
beetles and fungi call his hair home sweet home.
He is a happy host for a range of life.
Eating what other cannot abide, he takes
Much time for every action for little food
value has leaves. Digestion requires a month.
Though he’ll descend each week just to take a leak
poop and then cover up the latrine he dug,
he’s most content up high. Do you wonder why?
Everything’s done upside down because of claws
made for that task, including a nap and sex.
Even some sloths who died have remained attached.
Half of the muscle mass that’s allotted to
beasts of their same size saves that hard- gleaned glucose
Therefore a sloth’s sloth screams “elegant” design.
© Lawrencealot – August 15, 2014
Visual template for this particular form.
Aeolic Ode

Alcaic Stanza poetry form

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Alcaics “gives an impression of wonderful vigour and spontaneity”. The 1911 Edition Encyclopedia. The stanzaic form is attributed to the poet Alceaus 6th century BC and is an Aeolic classic meter.

Alcaics stanzaic form is:
• stanzaic, any number of quatrains may be written.
• metric, quantitative verse. The first 3 lines are 5 metric feet and the last line, 4 metric feet with a specific combination of trochees and dactyls. There are variations on the rhythm of the Alcaics quatrain but the following (one source refers to it as the dactyl Alcaic quatrain) seems to me the most common as demonstrated in Alfred Lord Tennyson’s Milton.

(acephalous refers to the missing 1st syllable of an iambic foot)

L1 & L2 acephalous iamb, 2 trochees and 2 dactyls;
L3 acephalous iamb, 4 trochees;
L4 2 dactyls 2 trochees in that order

Quantitative Verse
L-Ls-Ls-Lss-Lss
L-Ls-Ls-Lss-Lss
L-Ls-Ls-Ls-Ls
Lss-Lss-Ls-Ls

Milton Part I by Alfred Lord Tennyson 1891
O mighty-mouth’d inventor of harmonies,
O skill’d to sing of Time or Eternity,
God-gifted organ-voice of England,
Milton, a name to resound for ages;
Whose Titan angels, Gabriel, Abdiel,
Starr’d from Jehovah’s gorgeous armouries,
Tower, as the deep-domed empyrean
Rings to the roar of an angel onset–
Me rather all that bowery loneliness,
The brooks of Eden mazily murmuring,
And bloom profuse and cedar arches
Charm, as a wanderer out in ocean,
Where some refulgent sunset of India
Streams o’er a rich ambrosial ocean isle,
And crimson-hued the stately palm-woods
Whisper in odorous heights of even.
Pasted from http://www.poetrymagnumopus.com/index.php?showtopic=1250
My thanks to Judi Van Gorder for years of work on this fine PMO resource.

My example poem

Middle Class Morass (Alcaics)

O Yes! The rich have bankable balances;
O Yes! they choose the candidate’s policies.
Not those for whom the dole is dribbled,
though they contribute the votes those men need.

© Lawrencealot – August 3 , 2014
Visual Template
(4 lines or multiple)
Alcaics

Classical Hendecasyllable

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Classical Hendecasyllable
Type:
Line, Metrical Requirement
Description:
This is a trochee, a dactyl, and three trochees. The first and last trochees can be spondees.
Origin:
Greek
Schematic:
XX Xxx Xx Xx XX or
Xx Xxx Xx Xx Xx
Line/Poem Length:
11
See Also:
Status:
Incomplete
To contact us, e-mail thegnosticpoet@poetrybase.info.
Copyright © 2001-2013 by Charles L. Weatherford. All rights reserved.
Thanks to Charles for the wonderful resource above, which after investigation is frequently the only one I need.
I found these in quatrains with abab rhyme, and in a single 15 line unrhymed stanza by Robert Frost. “For Once, Then, Something” the only such he ever wrote in this form.
Example Poem
Extinguished          (Classical Hendecasyllable)
Glowing embers ignite when fanned with ardour
left alone they conserve by self-containment.
Love’s lost heat can be flamed by trying harder
Or, ignored and then settled by arraignment.
(c) Lawrencealot – March 2, 2014
Visual Template

5/3 Meter Poetry form

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A poem consisting of an odd number of quatrains (15 lines or more)
I have no idea if this form has been otherwise named, if you know please advise.
Alternating lines of 5 and 3 syllables, where
the odd lines consist of  an IAMB and an ANAPEST
da-DUM da-DUM-da
and the even lines consist of a DACTYL
DUM-da-DUM

Each stanza uses individual rhyme pattern –abab
where the b-rhymes are always feminine rhyme

The first stanza is a refrain, repeated as the final stanza. 

 

Example poem:

Paradise Kept   (5 3 Meter)

Such colors are not
 accidents
 so birds then forgot
 abstinence.

Their evolution
manifest
a bright solution
was the best.When foes are but few
we evolve
with different view,
with resolve.

Most survive with ease
but compete
to awe and appease–
the elite.

They sung and they played
and they danced
their colors arrayed
to enhance.

Let man not destroy
thru his greed
the habitat of joy
where.they breed.

Such colors are not
accidents
so birds then forgot
abstinence.

© Lawrencealot – March 30, 2013

Visual Template
5-3 Meter
 
 
 

Double Dactyl

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A dactyl is a term used in formal English poetry to describe a trisyllablic metrical foot made up of one stressed syllable followed by two unstressed ones. Matador, realize, cereal and limerick as well as the word poetry itself are examples of words that are themselves dactyls. A double dactyl can therefore simply mean two consecutive dactyls.
A double dactyl is also a verse form, also known as “higgledy piggledy”[citation needed], purportedly[1] invented by Anthony Hecht and Paul Pascal in 1961, but having a history as a parlor word game earlier in the century. Like a limerick, it has a rigid structure and is usually humorous, but the double dactyl is considerably more rigid and difficult to write. There must be two stanzas, each comprising three lines of dactylic dimeter followed by a line with a dactyl and a single accent. The two stanzas have to rhyme on their last line.
The first line of the first stanza is repetitive nonsense. The second line of the first stanza is the subject of the poem, a proper noun (marked in these examples with a single asterisk, *, or where not exactly a proper name with a parenthesized asterisk (*)). Note that this name must itself be double-dactylic. There is also a requirement for at least one line of the second stanza to be entirely one double dactyl word, for example “va-le-dic-tor-i-an” (marked with two asterisks, **). Some purists still follow Hecht and Pascal’s original rule that no single six-syllable word, once used in a double dactyl, should ever be knowingly used again.[1]
A self-referential example by Roger L. Robison:
Long-short-short, long-short-short
Dactyls in dimeter,(*)
Verse form with choriambs
(Masculine rhyme):
One sentence (two stanzas)
Hexasyllabically**
Challenges poets who
Don’t have the time.  (Source: Wikipedia)
Example Poem
Dedicated to Ms Moore (Double Dactly)
Nickitty Pickity
Octagenarian
normally worrisome
abstinent gent.
Enlivened due to a
fan-fuckingtastical
Sexy Librarian’s
erotic bent.
(c) Lawrencealot – May 22, 2012
Author’s Note:
The 6th line above is an invented portmanteau created by inserting the common crude cultural expletive “fucking” inside of the existing word “fantastical”.
Visual Template
8 lines, rhyming xxxaxxxa

Tempo Composto

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Tempo Composto means “time’s up” in Latin.
A form invented by L. Allen Bacon, aka Allen a Dale of Allpoetry.
The first three stanzas of a “tempo composto” are made up of
1) A Spondee (DA-DA)
2) two lines of Dactyl (DA-da-da)
3) 12 syllables free verse.
The fourth stanza differs in that the final line is only
4 syllables of free verse.
The rhyme pattern is
a-a-x-x
b-b-x-x
c-c-x-x
d-d-x-x
Looks good centered, but that is not a requirement.
Example Poem

Ride in the Country
Roadside
countryside
Lemonade
For sale sign draws me in to find they have just corn.
Quite hot!
Day is shot.
I have got
no lemonade. Drive on looking for the next stand.
Need gas,
Still I pass
twenty-one
stations looking for fruit stand, then run out of gas.
Walk back!
Station sez,
Out of gas,
Got lemonade.
(c) Lawrencealot – May 30, 2012
Visual Template