SAMPLE ANSWERS - POETRY
QUESTION NO. 9
Answer the following questions. (Structural Elements of a Poem)
(i) How many types are there of verse form?
Ans. There are more than 50 types of verse form. Famous verse forms include: ballad, blank verse, dramatic monologue, elegy, epic, epithalamion, free verse, limerick, ode and sonnet etc.
(ii) What do you understand by rhyme scheme?
Ans. A rhyme scheme is the pattern of rhymes at the end of each line of a poem. Words that have different beginning sounds but whose endings sound alike are said to rhyme. Examples: time, slime, mime/ revival, arrival, survival/ greenery, machinery, scenery.
(iii) What is rhythm?Ans. Rhythm is the pattern of flow of sound created by the arrangement of stressed and unstressed syllabls in accentual verse or of long and short syllables in quantitative verse. Rhythm is a pattern of beats, while meter organizes these beats in an understandable way.
(iv) What is a couplet?
Ans.A couplet is a unit of verse consisting of two successive lines, usually rhyming and have the same meter and often forming a complete thought or syntactic unit. This is the shortest stanza. A couplet may be formal (closed) or run-on (open).
(v) What is a heroic couplet?
Ans. A heroic couplet is a traditional form for English poetry, commonly used in epic and narrative poetry. It refers to poems constructed from a sequence of rhyming pairs of lines in iambic pentameter. For example: "Know then thyself, presume not God to scan/ The proper study of Mankind is Man".
(vi) Define a stanza?
Ans. A stanza is a grouped set of lines within a poem, usually set off from other stanzas by a blank line or indentation. It is equivalent of a paragraph in an essay. One way to identify a stanza is to count the number of lines. Thus: couplet (2 lines), tercet (3 lines), quatrain (4 lines), cinquain (5 lines), sestet (6 lines), septet (7 lines), octave (8 lines).
(vii) What is a quatrain?
Ans. A quatrain is a type of stanza, or a complete poem, consisting of four lines. There are twelve possible rhyme schemes but the most traditional and common are: AABB as in A.E. Houseman's "To an Athlete Dying Young" and ABAB as in Gwendolyn Brooks' "Sadie and Maud".
(viii) What is a sestet?
Ans. A sestet is a group of six lines of poetry, especially the last six lines of an Italian or Petrarchan sonnet. Common rhyme schemes of a sestet include CDECDE or CDCCDC.
(ix) What is an octave?
Ans. An octave or octet is a group of eight lines of poetry, especially the first eight lines of an Italian or Petrarchan sonnet. Common rhyme scheme of an octave is ABBAABBA.
(x) What is a blank verse?
Ans. Blank verse is a category of poetry based on unrhymed lines and a definite meter, usually iambic pentameter. Examples of blank verse can be found in Shakespeare, William Cullen Bryant and Robert Frost.
(xi) What is a free verse?
Ans. Free verse is an open form of poetry. It does not use consistent meter pattern, rhyme or any other musical pattern. It thus tends to follow the rhythm of natural speech. Examples of free verse can be found in Mathew Arnold, T.S. Eliot and Ezra Pound.
(xii) Define meter.
Ans. Meter is the rhythmical pattern of stressed and unstressed syllables in verse. The predominant meter in English poetry is accentual-syllabic. Falling meter refers to trochees and dactyls while iambs and anapests are called rising meter. Each unit of stress and unstressed syllables is called a "foot".
(xiii) What is an iamb?
Ans. An iamb is a metrical foot consisting of an unstressed syllable followed by a stressed syllable. The words "unite" and "provide" are both iambic. It is the most common meter in all the plays and poems of William Shakespeare. In Robert Frost's "After Apple Picking", the iamb is the vehicle for the "natural", colloquial speech pattern.
(xiv) Define iambic pentameter.
Ans. Iambic pentameter is a kind of rhythmic pattern that consists of five iambs per line, almost like five heartbeats: daDUM daDUM daDUM daDUM daDUM. Many of Shakespeare's works are great examples of iambic pentameter. For example, If MUsic Be the FOOD of LOVE, play ON. (Twelfth Night)
(xv) What is foot is poetry?
Ans. A foot is a unit of meter, consisting of a combination of stressed and unstressed syllables. A combination of feet makes up a line of meter. The most common feet in English are iamb (daDUM), trochee (DUMda), dactyle (DUMDUM) and anapest (dadaDUM).
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