4 Poetry Questions from Week 1

[Kendall]

I have four questions. We are doing Week 1 using the Birthdays poem

1) Page 204 Imitating Iambic meter. Day 3 Imitating Skill Level 1 . Are the poems listed (Jack be nimble, Mary had a little lamb,) Iambic? If so than I am not getting the concept at all. It seems the emphasis is on Jack and the first syllable of Mary, etc.)

2) When replacing words do the students need to replace the blanks with the correct number of syllables (regardless of how many words that is) or only a single word with the correct # of syllables.

3) I understand that the meter is the overall feel and poems may have a slight break to the meter. It would help me to know if I am on the right track if I knew if the poem birthdays used in Week 1 has a break or change in the meter towards the end of the first line of the second stanza.

4) Day four Imitating. We were trying to identify the subject and verb of each clause or sentence in The poem _Birthdays_ 2nd stanza, 1st line.

Birthdays is the subject and will be is the verb. Strange is a predicate adjective. This is the main subject and verb in the sentence isn’t it? I’m not sure what to do with "How" and "to think" in terms of trying to diagram the sentence.

Thanks in advance,
Kendall

[Lene Mahler Jaqua]

Jack and Mary are both Trochaic poems.

WHen imitating at the level you asked about, it is always syllables we are looking for .

So if the meter to imitate is

I will take a little walk

the following sentence

Brontosaurus ambulates

would suffice. ALWAYS you are trying to reproduce the number of syllables and the stress pattern in those meter imitations.

As for Birthdays... 2nd stanze

How STRANGE to THINK birthDAYS will BE

Yes, the meter is a little off there. You don' t usually say birthDAYS... the conventional English stress pattern there is BIRTHdays.

As for the subject verb

How STRANGE to THINK birthDAYS will BE
When WE shall NEver ADD one MORE

(Birthdays will be) is the object complement of the infinitive to think..... INside the object complement
Birthdays is the subject
will be is the verb

The full sentence, if not truncated poetically would be

How strange (it would be) to think, that (some day) birthdays will be (at a time) when we shall add no more.

That is a very tricky sentence with an understood subject and verb (it would be) ... then strange (predicate adjective) (how) adverb, then (to think) an infinitive with the object ... to think that (birthdays will be when we shall add no more).

T'would make an awesome diagram. Certainly not the easiest sentence in the world to diagram.

Lene, with a very sick child, needing to get back to him.

[Kendall]

That cleared up everything - except that sentence diagram ha,ha!-I'll have to study that for a long while.

Thanks!

Kendall