Rhythm in poetry is the patterned recurrence of stressed and unstressed syllables, creating a flow that guides how a poem is read or heard. It can be described as the “beat” of a poem, and it is a fundamental aspect of its structure, contributing to musicality and emotional resonance in poetry.
Poets achieve rhythm through the deliberate arrangement of words, syllables, and line breaks, using techniques such as meter, repetition, and pauses to achieve their auditory effects.
Rhythm is a literary device that varies depending on the style of the poem and the poet’s intention. While some poetry adheres strictly to traditional metrical patterns, such as iambic pentameter, others embrace free verse, allowing rhythm to emerge organically from the natural flow of language. The following is an example of rhythm established through traditional meter.
Blake, The Tyger (1794):
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?
The poem is primarily written in trochaic tetrameter. This is a metrical pattern that consists of four "feet" (or units) per line. Each trochee begins with a stressed syllable followed by an unstressed one. The result is a strong rhythmic beat. The rhythm and rhyme in the poem combine to form a song-like trance that reflects the mystery associated with the creation of the tiger, which the poem references. The regular beat also suggests the rhythmic hammering one associates with a smith, which is also mentioned in the poem.
Why Writers Use Rhythm
1. To Create Musicality and Aesthetic Appeal. Rhythm makes poetry pleasing to the ear, drawing readers and listeners into the work. Its patterns imitate natural speech and song. This results in sonorous effects for the reader.
2. To Evoke Emotions and Set the Mood. Different rhythmic patterns can evoke specific emotions or establish the tone of a poem. A steady rhythm might convey calmness or stability, while a sudden break or irregular pattern can suggest tension, excitement, or chaos.
3. To Reinforce Themes and Meaning. Rhythm helps emphasize key ideas or themes in a poem. By varying the pace or stress of certain lines, poets draw attention to particular words or phrases.
Examples of Rhythm in Poetry
1. Robert Frost’s Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening
Whose woods these are I think I know,
His house is in the village, though;
He will not see me stopping here
To watch his woods fill up with snow.
Frost employs iambic tetrameter. This is a rhythm where each line contains four pairs of unstressed and stressed syllables. The steady rhythm contributes to the sense of quiet stillness one associates with snowy woods.
2. William Shakespeare, "Sonnet 18":
Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?
Thou art more lovely and more temperate:
Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May,
And summer’s lease hath all too short a date.”
Shakespeare uses iambic pentameter, a rhythm of five pairs of unstressed and stressed syllables per line. This structured rhythm adds a musical quality to the sonnet and underscores the enduring beauty described in the poem.
3. Walt Whitman, "Song of Myself" (1892):
I celebrate myself, and sing myself,
And what I assume you shall assume,
For every atom belonging to me as good belongs to you.
I loafe and invite my soul,
I lean and loafe at my ease observing a spear of summer grass.
My tongue, every atom of my blood, form’d from this soil, this air,
Born here of parents born here from parents the same, and their parents the same,
I, now thirty-seven years old in perfect health begin,
Hoping to cease not till death.
Creeds and schools in abeyance,
Retiring back a while sufficed at what they are, but never forgotten,
I harbor for good or bad, I permit to speak at every hazard,
Nature without check with original energy.
Most of the examples that we have looked at so far are poems written in regular meter. Above, we have an example of free verse from Walt Whitman's famous "Song of Myself." Instead of relying on regular meter, free verse of this sort relies on the natural rhythms of speech and rhetoric. This includes repetitions and slight variations within phrases that are repeated.
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Cite this EminentEdit article |
Antoine, M. (2024, November 20). What Is Rhythm? https://www.eminentediting.com/post/what-is-rhythm-in-poetry |
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