“It Doesn’t Always Have To Rhyme”:

A Poetry Pathfinder

 

 

Jan Simpson

Graham Middle School

ORCLISH/Central Ohio Special Education Regional Resource Center

Poetry

6th Grade

Language Arts

Poetry:  Meter, Rhyme and Special Forms

 

This pathfinder was created for a heterogeneously grouped 6th grade language arts class.  The students will be studying meter and rhyme in poetry and will be writing haiku, cinquain, acrostics, and concrete poems.

Dewey Decimal Numbers: 800s and 300s

Poetry

 

 

“It Doesn’t Always Have to Rhyme”

 

Usually, when we think about poetry, we think about rhymed verse.  Rhymed verse is poetry that contains regular meter and rhyme.

 

  • Meter is a device of sound (You can hear it.) which involves the pattern of stressed syllables in lines of verse.  Meter is “measured” in feet.  But a metrical foot doesn’t have 12 inches; it has two or three syllables.  A line is described by the number and type of feet.

 

Read Robert Louis Stevenson’s poem “At the Sea-side” at the website below:

 

http://bartleby.com/188/104.html

 

Notice how every other syllable beginning with the second syllable gets more stress.  The feet in this poem have two syllables:  the first one unstressed and the second one stressed.

 

When I was down be side the sea

A woo den spade they gave to me

To dig the sand y shore.

 

Because the stress is on the second syllable, the foot is called an iambic foot. 

 

In these lines from William Shakespeare’s play MacBeth, you’ll notice that, again, every other syllable gets more stress.  But this time, the stress starts with the first syllable. 

Eye of newt and toe of frog

     Wool of bat and tongue of dog

 

These lines illustrate another kind of two syllable foot, the trochaic foot.

 

Some feet have three syllables.  Notice in the following lines how the stress is on every third syllable beginning with the third syllable.

 

With the sheep in the fold and the cows in their stalls

 

Because the stress is on the third of three syllables, the foot is an anapestic foot.

 

This line from Henry Wadsworth Longfellow’s poem Evangeline again has the stress on every third syllable, but, this time, the stress begins with the first syllable.

This is the for est prim e val.

 

Because the stress is on the first of three syllables, the foot is a dactylic foot.

 

Sometimes, as in the above line, a poet will use more than one kind of foot in the same line.  Notice that the third stressed syllable has only one unstressed syllable after it.   Because there are two syllables in that foot and it is the first syllable that is stressed, this line ends with a trochaic foot.

 

A line of verse is described by the type of feet and the number of feet it has.  For example, the line “With the sheep in the fold and the cows in their stalls” has four feet, and the feet are anapestic feet.  This line is called anapestic tetrameter.  You will learn about tetrameter and the other terms that identify the number of feet in a line later.

 

 

·         Rhyme is a device of sound which involves the similarity of sound existing between syllables. 

 

In Robert Louis Stevenson’s poem “At the Sea-side,” the word sea at the end of the first line rhymes with me at the end of the second line.

Here is the second part of that poem:

 

My holes were empty like a cup.

In every hole the sea came up,

Till it could come no more.

 

In this part of the poem, cup, at the end of the first line rhymes with up at the end of the second line.  If you look at the entire poem, you’ll notice that shore at the end of the third line in the first part rhymes with more at the end of the third line in the second part.    These rhymes establish the pattern of rhyme for the poem.

 

Although rhyme usually occurs at the end of lines, it can also occur in the same line.  For example, “listen” to the rhyme in this line from Edgar Allen Poe’s poem “The Raven.”

 

Once upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered weak and weary

 

Dreary in the middle of the line rhymes with weary at the end of the rhyme.

When the rhyming syllables are at the end of the line, the rhyme is called end rhyme.  When they occur within the same line, it is called internal rhyme.

 

The meter and rhyme of a poem help create a certain mood or tone for the poem and add to its overall effect.

 

For more information about meter, rhyme, and other poetry terms, check the following web site.

 

http://www.poeticbyway.com/glossary.html

 

 

Now that you know a little bit about meter and rhyme, it’s time to start reading some poetry.  Before you begin, learn how to enjoy poetry at the following web site:

 

http://www.poeticbyway.com/tips.html

 

Following the directions you just read (except you’ll have to read silently if you’re in class or in the library), read at least 20 poems from the following books on the cart from the library:

 

 

Collections

Adshead, Annis L. and Gladys Duff, eds.,  An Inheritance of Poetry    821.08 ADSA

Arbuthnot,, May Hill,  ed., Time for Poetry  821.08  ARB 

Baxter, Nicola, ed., The Children’s Classic Poetry Collection  821.08  BAX

Bolin, Frances Schoonmaker, ed., Poetry for Young People:  Emily Dickinson   811.4 DIC

Davis, Mary Gould, ed., The Girl’s Book of Verse   821.08 DAV

Carroll, Lewis, The Walrus and the Carpenter & Other Remarkable Rhymes   821 CAR

De Regniers, Beatrice Schenk, ed., Sing a Song of Popcorn:  Every Child’s Book of Poems   821.08 DER

Dickinson, Emily, Songs of Youth   811 DIC

Ferris, Helen, ed., Favorite Poems Old and New   808.81 FER

Fish, Helen Dean, ed., The Boy’s Book of Verse   821.08 FIS

Fisher, Aileen, In the Woods, in the Meadow, in the Sky   811 FIS

Frost, Robert, You Come Too:  Favorite Poems for Young Readers   811 FRO

Guest, Edgar, Rhymes of Childhood   811 GUE

Holdridge, Barbara, ed., Under the Greenwood Tree:  Shakespeare for Young People   822.3 HOL

Lear, Edward, The Complete Nonsense Book   821 LEA

Millay, Edna St. Vincent, Edna St. Vincent Millay’s Poems Selected for Young People   811 MIL

Sage, Alison, Treasury of Children’s Poetry   811.81 SAG

Viorst, Judith, If I Were in Charge of the World and Other Worries   811 VIO

Wright, Blanche Fisher, illus., The Real Mother Goose   821.08 FIS

 

Single Poems

Blake, William, The Tyger   821 BLA

Child, Lydia Maria, Over the River and through the Wood   811 CHI

Coltman, Paul, Tog the Ribber; or, Granny’s Tale   821 COL

Conover, Chris, Froggie Went a-Courting   811 CON

Geisel, A. S. (Dr. Seuss), The Butter Battle Book   811 GEI

Longfellow, Henry Wadsworth, Hiawatha   811 LON

Longfellow, Henry, Paul Revere’s Ride   811 LON

Noyes, Alfred, The Highwayman   821.912

Stevenson, Robert Louis, Block City   821 STE

Tennyson, Alfred Lord, The Charge of the Light Brigade   821.912 TEN

Thayer, Ernest Lawrence, Casey at the Bat  (illustrated by Christopher Bing)   811 THA

Thayer, Ernest Lawrence, Casey at the Bat (illustrated by Patricia Polacco) 811 THA

Yolen, Jane, An Invitation to the Butterfly Ball, a Counting Rhyme   811 YOL

 

Want to hear a poem being read?  The library has Ernest Lawrence Thayer’s poem Casey at the Bat on cassette (AC 811 THA).

 

From the poems you have read, choose and make a copy of the one that you like the best or that has the most meaning for you.  (It must have at least ten lines.)  You will be doing a class presentation of this poem following directions from Mrs. Shreve.

 

 

So far, all of the poems we have read have been rhymed verse with regular meter and rhyme.  But, as the title of this page says, “[I]t doesn’t always have to rhyme” to be poetry.  Some poems have regular meter but no rhyme.  Some have neither regular meter nor rhyme.  We will be learning about and writing four kinds of poems that don’t rhyme but do have certain requirements for form.  These poems are haiku, cinquain, acrostics, and concrete poems.

 

 

We’ll begin with haiku, a three line Japanese poem usually containing seventeen syllable broken down as follows:  Line  one has five syllables.  Line two has seven syllables.  And line three has five syllables.  True haiku captures a single moment in nature.

Find out about haiku at the following web page:

 

http://www.gigglepoetry.com/poetryclass/Haiku.html

 

Using the instructions on the web page and the worksheets provided by Mrs. Shreve, write your own haiku.

 

Here’s a page that has some Harry Potter haiku.  Check it out!

 

http://factmonster.com/spot/haikuharry.html

 

The next special form is cinquain.   A cinquain has five lines.  (Cinq means five.)  Originally, a cinquain had two syllables in its first line, four in its second, six in its third, eight in its fourth, and two in its fifth.  The form used in elementary and middle schools puts more emphasis on the kinds and numbers of words in each line than on the number of syllables.

Find out about cinquain at the following web page.:

 

http://www.writingfix.com/leftbrain/cinquain.htm

 

Using the instructions on the web page and the worksheets provided by Mrs. Shreve, write your own cinquain.

 

The third form is the acrostic.  Acrostics can have any number of lines and any number of syllables, but the first letters of each line should spell the word which is the subject of the poem.  Some acrostic poems have the last letter of each line or the middle letter of each line spelling the subject of the poem.

Find out about acrostics at the following web page.

 

http://www.gigglepoetry.com/poetryclass/acrostic.html

 

Using the instructions on the web page and the worksheets provided by Mrs. Shreve, write your own acrostic.

 

Finally, there is the concrete poem.  A concrete poem is set up so that it forms a picture of its subject.  It may have any number of lines and any number of syllables.

Find out about concrete poems at the following web page:

 

http://www.poetrytodayonline.com/SEPTDonJ_today.html

 

(Note: There is an underline between J and today in the above URL.  The underline doesn’t show up on this page.)

 

Using the instructions on the web page and the worksheets provided by Mrs. Shreve, write your own concrete poem.

 

Now that you are officially a poet, you should have your poems published.  Choose the best of the poems you have just written.  These will be your contribution to a poetry anthology you will be working on with the other students in your class.  Mrs. Shreve will give you specific instructions about this anthology.

 

You might also want to submit your poems to publications such as Stone Soup or to Internet sites that publish student-written poetry.  Who knows.  Maybe they will publish yours.