The Zingara Project

Tag: Poetry Revision

  • Find Your Rhythm

    I’m never one to impose rigid patterning into or onto a poem, but if a rhythmic pattern exists, the poet may want to take advantage of it.

    Scan several poems you wrote in April and determine if they have a natural rhythm and/or meter.

    Did you serendipitously write a poem in iambic pentameter or some other meter?

    Do your lines seem to consistently contain a certain number of syllables?

    Whatever you discover about your poems’ rhythms, lean into those rhythms and make them more intentional, more deliberate.

    Once you identify a poem’s pattern, interrupt it once or twice to create interest and tension.

    For example, if your poem contain 8 syllables per line, revise or write a line or two that contains 7 or 9 syllables.

    If your poems seems to utilize anapestic hexameter, throw a dactyl or a heptameter into the mix.

    Remember to keep the rhythm as natural as possible to avoid slipping into sing-songi-ness or Yoda speak.

    Below is a quick review of feet and meters for reference.

    See what arises for you, but don’t feel compelled to force anything.

    Feet in Poetry

              Iamb: a metrical foot containing two syllables, the first of which is unstressed and the latter of which is stressed (e.g., “today”).

              Trochee: a metrical foot containing two syllables, the first of which is stressed and the second of which is unstressed (e.g., “matter”).

              Spondee: a less common metrical foot in which two consecutive syllables are stressed (e.g., “A.I.”).

              Anapest: a metrical foot containing three syllables, the first two of which are unstressed and the last of which is stressed (e.g., “unaware”).

              Dactyl: a metrical foot containing three syllables, the first stressed and the following two unstressed (e.g., “Waverly”).

    Meter in Poetry

    The length of poetic meter is described using Greek suffixes:

              Monometer – one foot, one beat per line

              Dimeter – two feet, two beats per line

              Trimeter – three feet, three beats per line

              Tetrameter – four feet, four beats per line

              Pentameter – five feet, five beats per line

              Hexameter – six feet, six beats per line

              Heptameter – seven feet, seven beats per line

              Octameter – eight feet, eight beats per line

  • Stanza Is Another Name for Room

    Revise a poem by reorganizing its stanzas considering how each choice affects the poem’s structure, language, syntax, continuity, rhythm, chronology, and imagery as you work.

    Some approaches worth exploring include:

    • Breaking a single-stanza poem into multiple stanzas.
    • Conversely, placing a multi-stanza poem into a single stanza.
    • Creating uniform stanzas that contain the same number of lines: couplets, tercets, quatrains, quintains, sestets, octets, Spencerian (9-line stanza), or dizains.
    • Disrupting uniform stanzas by varying the number of lines in each one.
    • Creating a pattern using indentation. For example, indent every other line of a stanza or every other stanza; center some lines but not others; use right marginalization, etc.
    • Rearranging the stanzas — backward, forward, from the inside out.
    • Experimenting with multiple approaches then returning the poem to its original form but with new content created during the process.

    As you might guess, the goal is to discover the poem’s “about-ness” through serious play and experimentation. Aim for process rather than product, change over predictability.