Trochaic meter feels bouncy: 8 things I learned about poetry

This week, I learned about writing and reading poetry. (The entries are bit shorter and have less commentary than usual for this series.)

Other 8 ideas posts I’ve written:

• 8 ideas on SaaS metrics & growth — week of Mar 8
• 8 ideas on drawing & sketching — week of Mar 1
• 8 ideas for PMs building machine learning products — week of Feb 23
• Week of Feb 16
• Week of Feb 9

A quote

I requested that my students bring in to class something that had a personal meaning to them. With their objects on their desks, I gave them three prompts: first, to write a paragraph about why they brought in the item; second, to write a paragraph describing the item empirically, as a scientist might; and third, to write a paragraph in the first-person from the point-of-view of the item.

The first two were warm-ups. Above the third paragraph I told them to write “Poem.”

from “What is a Poem?” in The Atlantic

Top 3 🏆

1. Trochaic meter feels bouncy and light-hearted (& how other meters feel)

Rhythm is what makes poetry “poetic,” and it has two pieces: stresses and pauses. Pauses are easy to understand, so let’s focus on stresses.

Linguists talk about poetry in terms of meter, which is a measurement of stressed and unstressed syllables.

(In case you’re not sure what’s meant by a “stressed syllable,” here’s a quick explanation. When we say words, we vary the stress we place on each syllable. For example, with “apple,” we say “AP-ple” and not “ap-PLE.” There’s an unstressed syllable followed by a stressed one.)

There are two components to a meter: 1) the pattern of the stressed and unstressed syllables (the type of foot) and 2) the number of feet in a line. So iambic pentameter (a meter made famous by Shakespeare) means poetry written in iambic meter with five iambic feet per line.

Here are a few different types of feet and the effect they can have:

• Iambic: daDUM (2…