This week's topic: Summer.
I don't know what the weather's like in whatever places you are all living, but over here, it's been warm and muggy all month. After the cold dreariness of the past few months, with everyone complaining about the cold and the rain, we've therefore reached the time for our annual summer tradition of complaining about the heat and the humidity. In order to all get your into a proper summer mood, write poem for this week's prompt that in some (small or large) way can be linked to summer.
As always, feel free to post whatever poem (of your own making) you like in this thread, as long as it is in some way connected to the week's prompt. For people that like a little friendly competition, I'll include a (newly scrubbed-clean) points list which each thread. If you post a poem in one of these threads, you'll receive one point. I'll also include an optional requirement each week (See below), that'll give you another point if properly fulfilled.
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This week's optional requirement: Incorporate Dactyls and/or Anapests in your poem.
In the very first week of these prompt threads, we discussed metre in (English-language) poetry, and the fact that this 'rhythm' of a poem is made up of alternating stressed and unstressed syllables. We thereby discussed both iambs (a pair of unstressed-stressed syllables, da-DUM) and trochees (stressed-unstressed, DUM-da).
Though iambs and trochees lie at the basis of many forms of poetry, the constant drone of two-syllabled pairs can sometimes become a bit boring after a while. Therefore, to spice things up a bit, the logical next step would be to take a look at three-syllabled metric elements, in the form of Anapests and Dactyls.
Basically speaking, both anapests and dactyls continue on from the earlier iambs and trochees, by adding an extra unstressed syllable to either. For example, whereas iambs (da-DUM) start with one unstressed syllable, an Anapest consists of two unstressed syllables, followed by a stressed syllable (da-da-DUM). A good example of anapests in 'real' poetry would for example be Poe's 'Annabel Lee' (e.g. "For the moon never beams without bringing me dreams"). The stressed syllables are thereby bolded.
If the anapest is the logical step up from an iamb, the step from a two-syllabled trochee (DUM-da) is the three-syllabled Dactyl (DUM-da-da), made up of one stressed syllable, followed by two unstressed ones. Though dactyls are used a bit less frequently than anapests, an example of a dactylic poem could be Browning's 'The Lost Leader' (e.g. "Just for a handful of silver he left us").
As the line from Browning's poem already somewhat shows, it could sound a bit weird to only use dactyls and anapests in your poem, and it often sounds better to cut an unstressed syllable somewhere (Browning ends on a trochee), or otherwise mix them up with other metric elements. For example, in poems that rely heavily on anapests, the first line often starts with an iamb, to provide some necessary variety in the rhythm. An example of this could be:
While dancing away to the song of the birds
I was singing along to their song without words.
There are plenty other examples to give, and forms of metre to discuss, but this post is already getting quite long. And besides, it's often better (and decidedly more fun) to experiment with different forms of metre on your own. The only thing you have to remember for the purpose of this exercise is:
Anapest: a set of three syllables, unstressed-unstressed-stressed.
Dactyl: a set of three syllables, stressed-unstressed-unstressed.
Have fun writing!
