- modified 15.02.26
A Bit of Theory
Poetry is a way to speak beautifully, to create beautiful words, to soar in your speech above the prose of life. The poet brings rhythm, imagery, rhyme and other expressive means into his speech. The poet writes down what he has created on paper, more or less observing traditions, spelling rules, plays with stanzas and meaning. To what extent? To any extent. A verse can be written in the most ordinary words, not abound in epithets, have no rhyme – and still be a verse, and a pretentious word-weaving – be one only in form.
But the majority of what we call poetry is characterized by the presence of rhythm, which prompted me to try to bring the technical means used in the creation of poetry in line with the possibilities of our time. Once upon a time, poetry was exclusively oral, then they learned to write it down on paper, now poetry trusts electronic means of storing and transmitting human thought. And we are no longer surprised that these tools are not entirely passive – they can check spelling... True, poetic thought sometimes soars above dictionaries, but spell checking is never superfluous.
I decided to add another option – a formal check of the rhythm of poems and (with less reliability) their rhyme. This electronic assistant should be trusted to the same extent as a computer spell checker, but I still hope that this technical tool will facilitate the exchange of thoughts about such an ephemeral matter as rhythm (for more details, see Appendix 3. A Few Words on the Rhythm of Poetry.
For simplicity of notation, we will denote stressed syllables with a slash or exclamation mark, and unstressed syllables with a hyphen. We will consider the disyllabic iamb (-!) and trochee (!-) and the trisyllabic dactyl (!--), anapest (--!), and amphibrach (-!-) to be basic meters. Pyrrhic (--) and spondee (!!) are deviations from disyllabic meters, and bacchial (-!!), antibacchial (!!-), amphimacre (!-!), tribrach (---), and trimacre (!!!) are deviations from trisyllabic meters (however, deviations are not necessarily errors). Many experts consider peons (four-syllable meters) to be merely variations of iambs or trochees with omissions of stress (pyrrhic meters), denying the right to be called such meters, as a long foot can be composed of two- or three-syllable feet.
Ideally, stressed syllables in words should appear in the ictus positions that form the chosen meter. For example, for iambic (-! -! -! -!...), these would be syllables 2, 4, 6, 8... But few people write perfect poetry.
The theory of versification is replete with approaches and nuances. I focused on the syllabo-tonic (syllabic-sound) system. In this case, the poetic line is divided into feet (groups of syllables) of equal length. In a foot, only one syllable (ict) can be stressed, the combination of which creates the poetic meter of the line.
The minimum rule, called the "prohibition of re-accentuation", states that the stress in a polysyllabic word and one of the ictuses of the poetic line must coincide. If this is done, then the space between the ictuses can be filled with anything – monosyllabic words (even if they create spondees) for iambic and trochee and mono/disyllabic words for dactyl, amphibrach and anapest. It is desirable that in long words the secondary stress coincides with the ictus (and if there are no secondary stresses, and the word is long, then it should also be located in the line, starting with the ictus)
Maximalists believe that "in case of rhythm failures or on a minor service word consisting of only one syllable, a significant stress falls, or, on the contrary, an important, significant monosyllabic or even disyllabic word turns out to be unstressed. In this case, the phenomenon of adjacent stresses often occurs, i.e. when two syllables in a row turn out to be stressed – at the end of the previous word and at the beginning of the next {...} If you have adjacent stresses in your work, then there is definitely a rhythm failure in this place." That is (in terms of this program), the appearance of the symbols "!!" in the rhythm picture is reprehensible if the second of the symbols is in the ictus position.
In search of a golden mean, I am inclined to believe that spondees are acceptable for iambic and trochee, but in minimal quantities. It seems that the dactyl (!--) and anapest (--!) coexist perfectly in the same line with the amphimacrum (!-!). Moreover, I have come across poems in which some dactyl feet were replaced by anapest, and this did not negatively affect the sound.
As for amphibrach (-!-), I have not yet formed an opinion. It is possible that it is omnivorous, accepting both bacchia (-!!) and antibacchia (!!-) feet in its lines, but still, sometimes in these cases, when the stressed position is occupied by a less significant word than the one preceding it, a certain roughness is felt in the rhythm.
I also believe that monosyllabic words (especially function words) can be both unstressed and stressed – if the logical stress in the line, punctuation marks, caesuras and emerging orthoepic words contribute to this. In any case, at the end of a poetic line, even monosyllabic function words are almost always stressed – unless the author gets too clever with a compound rhyme. But monosyllabic nouns are reluctant to part with stress. Pronouns have a dual nature: in the ictus position, monosyllabic pronouns are stressed, outside of it – unstressed.
If different feet are adjacent to each other in a poetic line, then such lines sound good either next to similar ones, or by creating a planned dissonance.
Now let's see what tools for checking the rhythm of a verse this program offers.