Bruce N H
Active Member
Hey Corey or other people who know poetry terms,
Is there a term for missing syllables in poems? In our discussion of "I sit beside the fire and think" we talked about this poem being alternating lines of iambic tetrameter and iambic trimeter. But in music, this really wouldn't be alternating bars of 4/4 and 3/4 time - instead it would just be 4/4 with that 8th beat being a rest, or maybe holding out the last word of the second line as a half note. This was how Mad Violinist set it to music and it just feels natural. When I read this aloud, I don't say "...of all that I have seen of meadow-flowers...". Instead I say "...of all that I have seen - pause - of meadow-flowers..." and that pause is the same amount of time as any of the iambs. To me it feels like it's just iambic tetrameter, but the last iamb of every other line is silent.
I guess what I'm asking is there a term in poetry for what would be a rest in music? Is poetic analysis just about the words, or does it also include the spaces around the words?
Bruce
Is there a term for missing syllables in poems? In our discussion of "I sit beside the fire and think" we talked about this poem being alternating lines of iambic tetrameter and iambic trimeter. But in music, this really wouldn't be alternating bars of 4/4 and 3/4 time - instead it would just be 4/4 with that 8th beat being a rest, or maybe holding out the last word of the second line as a half note. This was how Mad Violinist set it to music and it just feels natural. When I read this aloud, I don't say "...of all that I have seen of meadow-flowers...". Instead I say "...of all that I have seen - pause - of meadow-flowers..." and that pause is the same amount of time as any of the iambs. To me it feels like it's just iambic tetrameter, but the last iamb of every other line is silent.
I guess what I'm asking is there a term in poetry for what would be a rest in music? Is poetic analysis just about the words, or does it also include the spaces around the words?
Bruce