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Questions and Answers to Poetry Exam
1. What is poetry?
a) Emotive writing.
b) Profound writing.
c) Humorous writing.
d) Memorable speech.
Memorable speech, as opposed to forgettable prose. We recite poetry. Prose? Not so much.
2. Is a line more or less rhythmic as it goes along?
Lines find their rhythm. Inversions (e.g. a trochee in an iambic line) and extra syllables are rare after the first foot.
3. Does one scan poems from left to right or from right to left?
Because metrical lines find their cadence as they go along scanning from right to left is more reliable. Lines with a lot of missing (acephaly) or extra (anacrusis) syllables at their beginning will backscan easier than they forescan.
4. Can we replace all the accented syllables in a foot with unaccented ones? Or all the unaccented syllables in a foot with with accented ones?
Yes. A trochaic (DUM-de) or iambic (de-DUM) binary foot can become a pyrrhic (de-de) or spondee (DUM-DUM). Similarly, a dactyl, amphibrach, or an anapest can become a tribach (de-de-de) or a mollosus (DUM-DUM-DUM, "wine dark sea"). Thus, you can add or remove stresses but not "move" them (e.g. switching an iamb into a trochaic inversion), especially after the first foot.
5. Hard sounds add pop, kick, and "toot", especially before a vowel rather than at the end of a syllable, but do they raise, lower, or not affect the tension level?
Harder sounds (e.g. k, p, t, ch, hard g in "got", etc.) raise the level of tension. Softer sounds (e.g. m, n, sh, l, etc.) lower the excitement.
6. Hypermetrical syllables are those before (anacrusis) or after (hypercatalectic) the meter. Do they typically use hard or soft sounds?
Extra syllables should be inconspicuous and, therefore, softer sounding.
7. Is Blake's "Tyger" iambic or is it trochaic?
Tyger Tyger, burning bright,
In the forests of the night;
What immortal hand or eye,
Could frame thy fearful symmetry?
In what distant deeps or skies.
Burnt the fire of thine eyes?
On what wings dare he aspire?
What the hand, dare seize the fire?
And what shoulder, & what art,
Could twist the sinews of thy heart?
And when thy heart began to beat.
What dread hand? & what dread feet?
What the hammer? what the chain,
In what furnace was thy brain?
What the anvil? what dread grasp.
Dare its deadly terrors clasp?
When the stars threw down their spears
And water'd heaven with their tears:
Did he smile his work to see?
Did he who made the Lamb make thee?
Tyger Tyger burning bright,
In the forests of the night:
What immortal hand or eye,
Dare frame thy fearful symmetry?
"Tyger" has a lot of ambiguous 7-syllable meters. It is iambic [tetrameter] because it has six perfectly iambic lines and no examples of trochee.
8. Is "The Red Wheel Barrow" by W.C. Willams metrical or not (e.g. free verse)?
So much depends
upon
a red wheel
barrow
glazed with rain
water
beside the white
chickens.
A meter is an identifable pattern of quantification of something: beats, feet, alliterations, tempos, etc. The Red Wheel Barrow has 2 stresses for the odd numbered lines, one in the even numbered ones. That is accentual dimeter then monometer or, if you wish, accentual heterometer. It is also "lexometric" because it has two words, then one. (Ever wonder WCW broke "wheelbarrow" into two words?) "Free verse"? This is arguably the most metrical poem ever written.
9. Are all song lyrics poetry or does their content matter?
All songs are poetry, if only because they certainly aren't prose. They might not be good poetry, though.
"Anything that is too stupid to be spoken is sung." - Voltaire
10. Does assonance (or consonance or alliteration) apply only to accented syllables?
Yes. It follows that, in general, we should avoid repeating sounds in unstressed syllables wherever worried about overassoance, overconsonance, or overalliteration.
11. Does quantity (i.e. line duration) matter more in spoken verse or songs?
Music will have regular bar lengths, keeping up with the beat, so line duration matters more in song lyrics. (We bear in mind that, through melisma, we can extend or "run" syllables while singing.)
12. Metrical verse usually uses one cadence. Free verse uses rhythm strings. Which uses more substitutions?
The metrist is trying to mix the headbanging tempo up with variations: extra or removed unstressed syllables or filling the foot with only stressed or unstressed ones, etc. The free verse is trying to establish one rhythm string, often before transitioning to another. These snippets may use arrhythmic text between these strings but not within them.
13. What is terminal dieresis? What is its effect?
Terminal dieresis involves ending a stanza with a cadential word, usually with few or any such words before it. Take this example from DPK's "Beans", which ends on the only iambic word in the stanza:
September came like winter's
ailing child but
left us
viewing Valparaiso's pride. Your face was
always saddest when you smiled. You smiled as every
doctored moment lied. You lie with
orphans' parents, long
reviled.
14. Can the same words be both poetry and prose? If so, how? If not, why not?
"God is alive, magic is afoot" was published as prose in Leonard Cohen's second novel "Beautiful Losers". Buffy Ste. Marie read those words, set them to music, and had a hit song.
How was it poetry? Because Buffy sang it? No. Chanting a phone book won't turn it into "Songs from the Portuguese". What made it poetry was the fact that people, beginning with Buffy Ste. Marie, memorized it. (This leads us to discussions about who creates poetry: poets or audiences?)
15. When and why did poetry (other than song lyrics) die?
Something started the ball rolling in the 1880s (Algernon Swinburne? Bern copyright laws? Unclear.) What we do know is that starting in 1923 radio songs subsumed spoken poetry. By 1962 poetry fundamentals were no longer taught in primary schools and the last iconic English language poem (a limerick about a man from Nantucket) had been published.
16. In what meter is Gordon Lightfoots "Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald"?
Amphibrachic (i.e. de-DUM-de) tetrameter.
17. What is unusual about "Tecumseh?
"Tecumseh" by EG
(aka "Shooting Star" or "Panther that Crouches in Wait")
You, Canadian? The greatest
American? You fought to be neither,
but nor were you panther
that crouches in wait. You were egret,
your feet in the mud as you stood
above weeds. Both
your fathers would leave you
to war. Brock would say no more
valorous warrior exists. Sure
as apple trees bud, the pleas
of a peacemaker can't be imparted
while even your traplines
have got to be guarded. Time
is gravity, a shooting star descending. Time
is charity; too soon you'll see it ending.
The cities were the bellows of the wind
that blew at Prophetstown,
across the rivers,
over you. Gray wolves surround the egret.
Foxes slink
away, their turn tail coats the colour of your blood.
You'd say: "Sing your death song and then die
like a hero returning home." Yours was the song
of that egret, your life
like a burning poem.
It is in 5 meters, including all five binary and trinary cadences, disguised (i.e. curginated) with free verse linebreaks:
1 Anapestic Hexameter
2 Amphibrachic Tetrameter
3 Trochaic Hexameter
4 Iambic Hexameter
5 Dactyllic Pentameter
18. Cryptocrappers abide by Earl Gray's 2nd Law: "If you can't be profound be vague." Everyone else goes by Earl's 12th Law, which is: "___ __ __ __________ ___ _______."?
19. What is the Egoless Motto? Hint: "If you don't think your poetry is competing against the works of others ___'__ ________ _____."
20. What is The Elizabeth Alexander Rule? Hint: "Poetry's only selling point is that it is _______ ____ ____ ___."
We hope you enjoyed our Poetry Test.
