A Poetic Sojourn

The trees are swaying sweetly in the breezy breeze and the beautiful birds are sweetly tweeting among the leaves.

Have you ever tried to write poetry? Lyrics to a song? Hopefully it wasn’t as cliched as the above line. Perhaps you already know what alliteration, metre, near rhymes and other poetic devices are. We’re going to explore the world of poetry today, in the hopes it might inspire you to write some poems of your own. It could be a fun way to help improve your writing skills or perhaps even kill two birds with one stone and win back a lover with your romantically poetic songs.

Rhyme

You probably already know what a rhyme is, for example: ‘today you are you, that is truer than true’, here Dr. Seuss is rhyming the ‘ooo’ vowel sound four times in one sentence. In the opening line of this article we find the ‘eee’ vowel sound five times, (sweetly, breezy etc.). Let’s look at another, more complex example in Leonard Cohen’s lyrics for the song, One Of Us Cannot Be Wrong:

I heard of a saint who had loved you, so I studied all night in his school, he taught that the duty of lovers, is to tarnish the golden rule,

and just when I was sure, that his teachings were pure, then he drowned himself in the pool, his body is gone, but down here on the lawn, his spirit continues to drool.

We can first notice the rhyming scheme or pattern used is AABA AABCB. These letters refer to how different rhymes are repeated at the end of each line within a stanza,

…...A (you ‘ooo’)

…...A (school ‘ooo’)

……B (lovers ‘uh’)

……A (rule ‘ooo’)

……A (sure ‘or’) ……A (pure ‘or’)

……B (pool ‘ooo’)

…...C (gone, lawn) ……B (drool ‘ooo’)

There are other devices at play in these lines, for example, the increasing speed generating tension, like in a film when the background music gets faster or higher at dramatically more intense moments. How do these lines achieve this? By placing rhymes closer together further towards the end of the section - notice how we have two rhymes within the 8th line. Try reading this section out loud yourself to practise pronouncing it and notice the effect of increasing dramatic speed in the lines. Then you can try singing it along with the song linked below if you want!

Alliteration

Have you heard of this famous nursery rhyme that also doubles as a tongue twister?

Peter Piper picked a peck of pickled peppers,

a peck of pickled peppers Peter Piper picked;

if Peter Piper picked a peck of pickled peppers,

where’s the peck of pickled peppers Peter Piper picked?

Try saying it out loud to practise your constant production. It features a lot of alliteration, which is the purposeful close repetition of consonant sounds. We also saw it in the opening line of this article: swaying sweetly, (repeating ‘sw’ twice), and beautiful birds (repeating ‘b’ twice). Some might say ‘swaying sweetly’ is a naff line, or perhaps even cliched. Some might even say most poetry is naff, and perhaps they would be right, I’ll let you decide.

Metre

Metre could be said to be the rhythm section of the written word. It relates to the number of syllables used and how they are stressed. A famous type of metre is the ‘iambic pentameter’, which is used often by Shakespeare:

To be or not to be, that is the question: whether ‘tis nobler in the mind, to endure the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune.

Notice how there are five (in bold) stressed syllables in each line, this is why we call it pentameter. The penta- meaning five, also found in the word pentagram, a shape with five sides, or a pentatonic scale, a musical scale with five notes per octave. In other words, each line has five ‘bits’, or what in poetry are called ‘feet’.

To be / or not / to be / that is / the question

Each foot might have two syllables or more, the first four feet of this line have two syllables and the last foot has three syllables. So we can see most of the feet (bits of the line), have one unstressed and then one stressed syllable. This is why we call it iambic; an iamb is exactly that: an unstressed followed by a stressed syllable. People liken this to a heart beat; da-dum da-dum.

Note that the last foot in the line is not strictly an iamb, it is actually called an amphibrach.

I tried / to scream

But my head / was under / water

They called me / weak

Like I'm not / just somebody's / daughter

These lines are taken from Billie Eilish’s song, Everything I Wanted. Notice the section has alternating metres; the first line has two feet, the second three feet, the third two feet and the fourth three feet. Can you find any amphibrachs in it?

So that brings us to the end of this short sojourn into the world of poetry. So get ready to write your own poems or lyrics and practise your writing skills. You could start by trying to write in strict iambic pentameter, or just write freely and try to notice what poetic devices you are using without even realising!

Sit by my side, and let the world slip:

we shall ne’er be younger. - Shakespeare

Language Focus:

A definition has been given for each of the phrases, however, if you click on the phrase/word, you will be linked to online dictionaries which also give example sentences.

Glossary 1

Cliche = when something has been said or used so many times (a lack of originality) Kill two birds with one stone = when one action achieves two wanted outcomes Rhyming scheme/patterns = how rhymes are arranged and repeated within a poem/lyrics etc. Stanza = one unit/section of a poem (usually four to six lines) Tongue twister = a phrase known or designed to be difficult to speak out loud, sometimes used to warm-up the voice e.g. repeating unique New York Naff = without refinement or style, or lacking in subtlety

Glossary 2

Rhythm section = instruments in a band that provide the rhythmic backing, e.g. bass and drums, or additionally piano and guitar

Syllable = a unit/division within words, usually corresponding to a single speech action and containing a vowel e.g. in the word ‘simple’, sim is the first syllable, ple is the second.

Stressed = (in a literary/language context) the part of the word that is spoken more loudly/with more emphasis

Feet = (in a literary/language context) a unit that a line of words is divided up into, often one foot is equivalent to two or three syllables.

Amphibrach = the name given to a unit of language that has one unstressed syllable, followed by one stressed, followed by an unstressed. E.g. I saw her

Sojourn = a small amount of time spent somewhere, sometimes suggesting a pleasant stay in a foreign or not often visited location

Ne’er = never (used in literary or old literary texts)

Exercise 1

Write a poem or song and pay attention to the literary devices that have been mentioned in this article. And remember, you can send them in for corrections and suggestions. See the services section of this website.

Exercise 1:

Write a poem or song and pay attention to the literary devices that have been mentioned in this article. And remember, you can send them in for corrections and suggestions. See the services section of this website.

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