WORKING WITH RHYTHM

     On yesterday's post of my poem SNAKE SNACKS I mentioned that the meter was off in a few places.  I said I'd show you a nifty way to work on that.  Does your computer have a spread sheet program?  If not you can make yourself a grid sheet of boxes like a spread sheet.  Use one row of the grid for each line of your poem.  Put the un-accented syllables in lower case and the accented words in UPPER CASE.  This will quickly let you see if you are forcing any of the words into unusual accents and you'll see if your line lengths are uniform.  It also makes it a lot easier to count the metrical feet in each line.

Here is what I did using the spread sheet with my poem.  See where the problems are?  Then once you can see the problems, it is a lot easier to fix them.

my	PET	snake	if this is an iambic line snake is unaccented.
i	CALL	him	DRAKE	IAMBIC
he	LIKES	to	EAT	my	SNACKS.	iambic
he	EATS	my	CHEESE	See how this line matches line2?
he	EATS	my	NUTS
he	EATS	all
my	PEA	nut	BUTT	er	CRACK	ers.
my	SNACKS	he	SAYS
are	de	LISH	us	See the problem?
lip	SMACK	ers

So your challenge for today is to take one of your poems and try putting it into a spread sheet.  If this sounds like too much trouble for a Sunday, write a poem instead and save this idea for another day.  But I must say it is fun to put the words into the little boxes.  Sooner or later you have got to try it.