LibGuides: Creative Writing: Poetry: Meter & Prosody

Meter

A normative and abstract idea of how the line of verse should behave. Meter is based on the formal auditory structure of a language. Hence in Greek, quantity (or length of vowel) determines the way syllables measure within metrical feet, but in English degrees of stress (relative emphasis given to some syllables in preference to others) perform this function. Meter as a term discriminates the stress-contour of verse from that of prose. Stress can be marked in prose, but prose cannot be scanned (i.e. metrically graphed) (Kinzie, 1999).

Prosody

Derived from the Greek word for accent and often used as the category for all effects of poetic sound. More strictly, the study of versification, that is, the auditory logic or rhythmic style of a poem when viewed as the interaction of the other elements of style with the poem's meter (Kinzie, 1999).

Resources for Meter & Prosody

Rules for the Dance by Mary Oliver
ISBN: 039585086X
Publication Date: 1998-07-27
"True ease in writing comes from art, not chance, / As those move easiest who have learn'd to dance," wrote Alexander Pope. "The dance," in the case of Oliver's brief and luminous book, refers to the interwoven pleasures of sound and sense to be found in some of the most celebrated and beautiful poems in the English language, from Shakespeare to Edna St. Vincent Millay to Robert Frost. With a poet's ear and a poet's grace of expression, Oliver shows what makes a metrical poem work - and enables readers, as only she can, to "enter the thudding deeps and the rippling shallows of sound-pleasure and rhythm-pleasure that intensify both the poem's narrative and its ideas."
Poetic Meter and Poetic Form by Paul Fussell
ISBN: 0075536064
Publication Date: 1979-01-01
Excerpts from distinctive poems illustrate the author's appreciation of the metrical and formal aspects of poetry.
The Sounds of Poetry by Robert Pinsky
ISBN: 0374266956
Publication Date: 1998-09-30
The Poet Laureate's clear and entertaining account of how poetry works. "Poetry is a vocal, which is to say a bodily, art," Robert Pinsky declares in The Sounds of Poetry. "The medium of poetry is the human body: the column of air inside the chest, shaped into signifying sounds in the larynx and the mouth. In this sense, poetry is as physical or bodily an art as dancing." As Poet Laureate, Pinsky is one of America's best spokesmen for poetry. In this fascinating book, he explains how poets use the "technology" of poetry--its sounds--to create works of art that are "performed" in us when we read them aloud. He devotes brief, informative chapters to accent and duration, syntax and line, like and unlike sounds, blank and free verse.
All the Fun's in How You Say a Thing by Timothy Steele
ISBN: 0821412604
Publication Date: 1999-04-30
Perfect for the general reader of poetry, students and teachers of literature, and aspiring poets, All the Fun’s in How You Say a Thing is a lively and comprehensive study of versification by one of our best contemporary practitioners of traditional poetic forms. Emphasizing both the coherence and the diversity of English metrical practice from Chaucer’s time to ours, Timothy Steele explains how poets harmonize the fixed units of meter with the variable flow of idiomatic speech. He examines the ways in which poets have used meter, rhyme, and stanza to communicate and enhance meaning. Steele illuminates as well many practical, theoretical, and historical issues in English prosody, without ever losing sight of the fundamental pleasures, beauties, and insights that fine poems offer us.
The Sound of Poetry - The Poetry of Sound by Marjorie Perloff (Editor); Craig Dworkin (Editor)
ISBN: 0226657434
Publication Date: 2009-11-01

Sound—one of the central elements of poetry—finds itself all but ignored in the current discourse on lyric forms. The essays collected here by Marjorie Perloff and Craig Dworkin break that critical silence to readdress some of the fundamental connections between poetry and sound—connections that go far beyond traditional metrical studies.