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Wow, your search engine project sounds really neat! What a cool idea. Thanks for the tips re: Shakespeare and Hopkins. I'll definitely dig in there. One of the

Wow, your search engine project sounds really neat! What a cool idea. Thanks for the tips re: Shakespeare and Hopkins. I'll definitely dig in there. One of the tricky things with poets like Shakespeare is that many of his sonnets' lines I personally wouldn't consider to be iambic pentameter. Take the first line of Sonnet 29 for example: if I were reading that without affectation I'd put emphasis on "When" and "men's," while iambic requires that those be unstressed. I don't know if speech patterns were different enough in Shakespeare's day that it sounded more natural with different stresses than we'd use today, but if I were evaluating that poem blind and didn't know it was Shakespeare I'd give it low marks for requiring a relatively forced inflection. Just my opinion, though!

pjungwir 7y ago
I was an English major in college, so maybe I'm taking some background for granted here: no one expected that good poetry had 5x14 da-DUMs without relief. (Certainly you wouldn't want to force Shakespeare to sound that way when you read it aloud.) But the most common variations were well-known and tended to feel right, letting the poet vary things enough to avoid sing-songiness but still not stand out as wrong. So a trochee in the first foot is very common. Same with a spondee in the last foot. Other feet can flip to become trochees too, but people have pointed out that it is more common in some feet than others. For example (IIRC but it's been a long time) I don't think the fourth foot flips very often, because it's hard to make it not sound bad. But those changes are "allowed" and so "it's still iambic pentameter." So it'd be cool if your algorithms could acknowledge those deviations, e.g. maybe give the line a purple-and-white shading instead of just white, or an asterisk. EDIT: A quick Google turned up this article that has a lot of the patterns I remember: https://versemeter.wordpress.com/2016/09/20/iambic-pentameter-the-principles-of-metrical-variation-part-1-feminine-endings-simple-variations/ https://versemeter.wordpress.com/2016/09/20/iambic-pentamete...
- jacobevelyn 7y ago
  Wow, your comment plus that link is a treasure trove of information! I have very little formal poetry education so I really appreciate your insight here. I'd love to make Versepad smart enough to handle these variations (similar to how it currently handles catalexis, for example). Thanks!
- krutulis 7y ago
  One of my own favorite explanations of meter in English is Timothy Steele's All the Fun's in How you Say a Thing: An Explanation of Meter and Versification [0]. I'd be interested if anyone has other recommendations? [0]: https://www.ohioswallow.com/book/All+the+Fun%E2%80%99s+in+How+You+Say+a+Thing https://www.ohioswallow.com/book/All+the+Fun%E2%80%99s+in+Ho...
- FreakLegion 7y ago
  This thread take me back. > but people have pointed out that it is more common in some feet than others You might enjoy this: http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.149.8792&rep=rep1&type=pdf http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.149... And the follow-up, a longer examination of iambic pentameter: http://linguistica.sns.it/RdL/9.1/Hanson.pdf http://linguistica.sns.it/RdL/9.1/Hanson.pdf

pjungwir 7y ago

I was an English major in college, so maybe I'm taking some background for granted here: no one expected that good poetry had 5x14 da-DUMs without relief. (Certainly you wouldn't want to force Shakespeare to sound that way when you read it aloud.) But the most common variations were well-known and tended to feel right, letting the poet vary things enough to avoid sing-songiness but still not stand out as wrong. So a trochee in the first foot is very common. Same with a spondee in the last foot. Other feet can flip to become trochees too, but people have pointed out that it is more common in some feet than others. For example (IIRC but it's been a long time) I don't think the fourth foot flips very often, because it's hard to make it not sound bad. But those changes are "allowed" and so "it's still iambic pentameter." So it'd be cool if your algorithms could acknowledge those deviations, e.g. maybe give the line a purple-and-white shading instead of just white, or an asterisk. EDIT: A quick Google turned up this article that has a lot of the patterns I remember: https://versemeter.wordpress.com/2016/09/20/iambic-pentameter-the-principles-of-metrical-variation-part-1-feminine-endings-simple-variations/ https://versemeter.wordpress.com/2016/09/20/iambic-pentamete...

jacobevelyn 7y ago
Wow, your comment plus that link is a treasure trove of information! I have very little formal poetry education so I really appreciate your insight here. I'd love to make Versepad smart enough to handle these variations (similar to how it currently handles catalexis, for example). Thanks!
krutulis 7y ago
One of my own favorite explanations of meter in English is Timothy Steele's All the Fun's in How you Say a Thing: An Explanation of Meter and Versification [0]. I'd be interested if anyone has other recommendations? [0]: https://www.ohioswallow.com/book/All+the+Fun%E2%80%99s+in+How+You+Say+a+Thing https://www.ohioswallow.com/book/All+the+Fun%E2%80%99s+in+Ho...
FreakLegion 7y ago
This thread take me back. > but people have pointed out that it is more common in some feet than others You might enjoy this: http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.149.8792&rep=rep1&type=pdf http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.149... And the follow-up, a longer examination of iambic pentameter: http://linguistica.sns.it/RdL/9.1/Hanson.pdf http://linguistica.sns.it/RdL/9.1/Hanson.pdf