Renée M. LaTulippe: What Dodo Birds Can Teach Us about Meter

Dodo head by Cornelius Saftleven, public domain

Source: Wikimedia

Confession: sometimes when I read my first drafts, I feel like a big ol' dodohead.

If that's true for you, too, you might feel better after reading today's post by TLD Contributor Renée LaTulippe.

Take it from Robyn Campbell:

I want to sing verse like Renée
she treats you to a lyrical buffet
her poetry's a golden chain
in relation mine gives tummy pain.

© 2015 Robyn Campbell. All rights reserved.

                                                                                                                       * Surprise, Renée! *

Yes, there IS a clerihew for every occasion!

Believe it or not, our Ditty of the Month Club wrap-up is NEXT FRIDAY. Let's see if we can knock Kwame Alexander's socks off.  You can find details on how to participate HERE. Our featured clerihews this week were by LeeAnn Blankenship, Tabatha Yeatts, Rosi Hollinbeck, and yours truly.

Now, about those dodo birds.... 

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

What Dodo Birds Can Teach Us about Meter

One of the questions I’m often asked by students is whether monosyllabic words can be either stressed or unstressed in a line of verse.

That one is easy to answer: yes. 

All words have ONE primary stressed syllable. Look at these words:

PAN-cakes           re-VIEW           hi-BIS-cus         CON-tra-ry

If that is so, and it is, then it stands to reason that monosyllabic words consist of one stressed syllable. But when put into a line of metered verse, the placement will decide whether the word is stressed or unstressed within the context of the line.

Let’s take the word baked and see how the stress changes when used in different positions in the same meter.

iambic:  

• she BAKED a THOU-sand COOK-ies
• she CAN’T bake ALL those COOK-ies

dactylic:

• THOU-sands of COOK-ies baked OUT in the SUN
• THOU-sands of COOK-ies have BAKED in the SUN  

You could continue this exercise for other meters, too.

The same is true for multisyllabic words: it all depends on position. Take the word never. All by itself, it is a trochaic word: NEV-er.

But in this dactylic line, it would work as two unstressed syllables:

BOB nev-er SAT on a TACK in his LIFE

Stressed syllables are just like real estate: location, location, location. The important thing is that you don't mess with the stress. That is, you don’t force a stress where it shouldn’t go, as in this iambic line:

will BOB sit ON a TACK? nev-ER!

We just can’t make people say nev-ER, and that’s that.

I’ve also had students think that if a word is naturally trochaic (or iambic, dactylic, anapestic), then it can only be used in that meter – so the word never could only be used in trochaic meter. As we see from the dactylic line above, this is not so. Location, location, location.

I’ll leave you with a few more examples of how a word or phrase can work in any meter if you get the placement just right. Please welcome my lovely assistant, the elusive dodo bird.

Here it is in dactyl form:

Frederick William Frohawk, 1905. Public domain. Source: Wikimedia

And here iambic:

Edwards' Dodo, Roelant Savery, 1626. Public domain. Source: Wikimedia

And here anapestic:

Frederick William Frohawk, 1907. Public domain. Source: Wikimedia

And here trochaic:

Hugh Edwin Strickland, 1848. Public domain. Source: Wikimedia

Give it a try!

Write a line of verse in each of the four major meters using one of the following words (or one of your own). Feel free to share your lines in the comments.

chocolate           sneeze               carousel               resent               bench

© 2015 Renée M. LaTulippe. All rights reserved.

Read more of Renée's posts on Today's Little Ditty:

• Mood, Effect, and Emotion: Sentence Transformation (Nov 2014)
• Sound Bites: Making Writing Musical (Aug 2014)

An editor and writer, Renée LaTulippe has co-authored nine early readers and a collection of poetry titled Lizard Lou: a collection of rhymes old and new (Moonbeam Children’s Book Award) and has poems in several editions of The Poetry Friday Anthology. She developed and teaches the online course The Lyrical Language Lab: Punching Up Prose with Poetry and blogs on children’s poetry at NoWaterRiver.com.

Today's Poetry Friday roundup is being hosted by the fabulously talented Robyn Hood Black. (I wonder if she's ever had a dodohead moment?) You can find her at Life on the Deckle Edge.

Looking for creative ways to celebrate National Poetry Month? Jama Rattigan is your go-to for NPM festivites at Alphabet Soup.