Poet Quest 6

Inspiration

Use imagery to describe your family ties. What brings you together? What threatens to break those ties? Why do you believe you will always be together? What physical matter are those ideas like?

Knowledge

Prose - Ordinary language that people speak with. It does not follow a structure or rhyming pattern.

Trochaic Meter - A trochee is a metrical foot beginning with a stressed syllable followed by an unstressed syllable. (Trochaic Meter is the reverse of Iambic Meter.)

Written:

DUMda or / u

For example:

/ u / u / u / u / u

Poker Andy antes my pajamas

For example, a stanza from ‘The Tyger’ by William Blake:

/ u / u / u / u

Tyger Tyger, burning bright,
In the forests of the night;
What immortal hand or eye,
Could frame thy fearful symmetry?

The final “da” is a longer pause while reading. Skipping to the last word in the stanza “symmetry,” the “da” lands on “try.” Read the poem out loud with no pauses and then read the poem with a pause after the first three lines. What sounded better to you?

Encouragement

If you’re stuck, then search for two-letter words that are trochees like poet, shadow, candy, tiger, sitting. Many of the words that rhyme with these words will also be trochees!

Challenge

Write two different trochaic couplets. Don’t worry about rhyming them (bonus points if you do, though!)

Part 1. Find two and four-letter words that are trochaic and piece together a poem about family. Use one and three-letter words as you need them to help make sense of your poem. This is more of a rhythm drill, so don’t worry about being grammatical, rhyming, or even making that much sense.

Part 2. Write freely about something that brings your family (or friends) together. Don’t worry about being trochaic at first. Then, after you write your two lines, begin finding the trochaic words to edit your original draft into a well-metered trochaic couplet. This may take some time to do. There’s no rush. Take your time. You are developing the tools now so that it becomes easier later.

Then, if you’re up for it, share your favorite (of the two poems you wrote) in the comments or send it to me via carrier pigeon (e-mail) here for feedback.

P.S. Did you notice that trochee is a trochee?