Rules for the Dance: A Handbook for Writing and Reading Metrical VerseFor both readers and writers of poetry, here is a concise and engaging introduction to sound, rhyme, meter, and scansion - and why they matter. "The dance, " in the case of this 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, Mary Oliver helps us understand 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." |
Contents
Breath | 3 |
Patterns | 6 |
More About Patterns | 19 |
Line Length | 29 |
Release of Energy Along the Line | 36 |
Rhyme | 40 |
Traditional Forms | 50 |
Words on a String | 57 |
Mutes and Other Sounds | 60 |
The Use of Meter in NonMetric Verse | 62 |
The Ohs and the Ahs | 65 |
ImageMaking | 67 |
Reading the Metrical Poem | 87 |
Then and Now | 103 |
Common terms and phrases
A. E. Housman anacrusis anapestic Annabel Lee anthology ballad Beauty begins Blake breath bright catalexis Chambered Nautilus cloud Copyright couplet create dactyls dance dew was gone dream earth Emerson emphasis energy eyes feel feet final foot flow hear heart Heaven heavy stress iamb iambic pentameter inflection Keats language light stress line is called line length lips metrical pattern metrical poem metrical poetry Millay Milton moon Moriturus natural never night Nokomis o'er poets quatrain reader Rhodora rhyming pattern rhyming sound rhythm Richard Wilbur Robert Frost scansion sense Shelley sing slant rhyme sleep Song of Hiawatha sonnet Sonnet 18 Sonnet 29 spondee stanza star Stopping by Woods style sweet syllable thee thine thing thou art thought tion tone trimeter trochaic trochee true rhyme Tuft of Flowers Tyger verse voice wall Wander'd Lonely Wilfred Owen William Shakespeare wind wings words Wordsworth writing