Do words such as
dactylic or
iambic ring a bell for you? How about
dactylic hexameter or
iambic pentameter?
Well, from what I have minimally learned, a dactyl (Greek for finger) in poetry is a metrical foot that sounds like DUM-di-dy, a long syllable followed by two short syllables. An iamb is a metrical foot consisting in a short syllable followed by a long one such as duh-DUH. I guess short and long syllables are not literally sound, so, one may use unstressed and stressed instead of short and long, respectively.
An iambic pentameter consists in five imabs:
duh-DUH duh-DUH duh-DUH duh-DUH duh-DUH
Iambic pentameter is one of the most commonly used measures in English and German poetry. For example, a sonnet has fourteen lines and each must be written in iambic pentameter. The rhyme pattern is ABABCDCDEFEFGG.
An elegiac couplet has two lines written in dactylic hexameter, with the second line having only an unaccented (unstressed, short) syllable in the third and sixth feet.
The blurred meanings of these words are getting more clear.
Sources:
Poetry for Dummies,
dactyl on Wikipedia,
iamb on Wikipedia
Labels: poetry
