PS - Rhyme and Rhythm in Poetry Lesson

Rhyme and Rhythm in Poetry

Poetry Analysis

Once you understand the various literary devices that authors use to create meaning within their poems and images in the minds of the readers, you are ready to learn how to analyze poetry. To "analyze" means to break apart, and analyzing poetry means that you will break apart the poem in order to clearly understand the poem. Before starting the analysis process, we need to discuss rhyme and rhythm further.

Rhyme Scheme

The first lesson mentioned that rhyme and rhythm creates a flow or melody for the reader. Many types of poems have a certain rhyme scheme. The rhyme scheme is the pattern of lines that comes at the end of each verse or line.

View the video below that explains rhyme scheme:

When analyzing poetry, you can label the rhyming words or lines with various letters in order to determine the rhyme scheme.

Poetic Rhythm

Along with rhyme schemes, poetry has rhythm. Notice that when you speak, your voice inflection places emphasis, or stress on certain syllables. Then, some syllables do not receive the emphasis, and they are unstressed. The pattern of stressed and unstressed sounds that each word makes is called "poetic feet" and creates the rhythm or meter.

Before learning about the different types of poetic feet, view the video below to learn about the purpose of meter in poetry:

There are different kinds of patterns that poets use to create rhythm. In order to determine the type of pattern, or feet, a poet uses you will go through the process of "scansion", or identifying the syllables that receive stress, or emphasis, and the syllables that do not receive the stress, or emphasis. View the video below for how to determine poetic feet through stressed and unstressed syllables (also known as scansion):

Line Length and Poetic Feet

Now that you understand how to scan a poem for rhythm, view the chart below to view the names of different line lengths based on the number of poetic feet in poetry:

Along with line lengths, there are different types of stressed and unstressed combinations, or meter, that appears in lines of poetry, as well.

In order to recognize the different patterns of stressed and unstressed syllables in lines of poetry, view the following types of feet below:

Types of Meter

After reviewing the elements that create rhythm, view the video below for a review of how to recognize the various types of meter—especially Iambic Pentameter—in poetry:

Along with the different types of meter, poetry can also appear in blank verse. Blank verse is a meter of un-rhyming verse written in iambic pentameter. So, the poem will have the meter of iambic pentameter, but the poem will not rhyme. View the example below:

Poetic Meter Self-Assessment

Now you will have the opportunity to practice your understanding of Poetic Meter below:

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