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[Iituem]

A poetic form intended to express grief over a chosen subject, originating in The Mists of Winding. The poem is a single couplet. It is always written from the perspective of a relative of the author. Use of metaphor is characteristic of the form. The second line of the couplet presents a different view of the subject of the first line. The first line concerns the past. It has five feet with a tone pattern of even-uneven-even. The second line concerns current events. It has four feet with a tone pattern of uneven-even-even.

Wine took her, slayer fell, soul be-crushed, smile swindled, hope guzzled.
Now she waits 'neath the well, smile guzzler, hell drinker.

More kenning than metaphor, but should work.  Not sure how to do the tones, not sure if English is actually a tonal language, so maybe not possible?


Edit:  Jesus effing Christ!

A reflective poetic form intended to satirize a chosen subject, originating in The Muddy Monsters. The poem is thirty-six nine-line stanzas. A form of parallelism is common throughout the poem, in that certain lines often share an underlying meaning. Each line has five feet with a syllable weight pattern of long-short (quantitative trochaic pentameter). The eighth line of each stanza reverses the word order of the fourth line. The rhyme scheme of the poem is ABCD1A1CD, where numbers indicate a refrain.

I'd be curious to see two stanzas of this done (the full thirty six would be a tad excessive, unless someone feels like writing epic poetry).

[Loimulohi]

I am not a master of English, unfortunately, nor did I have the time to create two stanzas, nor to even actually create proper trochee, but here we have something I tossed up. Toady, if you read this, I do not think you lazy, smelly, barely passable or that you watch porn while coding. It was, after all, supposed to be satire, though maybe it's a bit too much on the "insult" side than satire should be.

Great sir Toady looking barely passable
took to writing something new and schooling
thinking all of world will bow to dwarflike
poems forming while he looked at porn ey?
Oh the lazy guy he thought it cool, no?
Maybe would it be a slight bit likeable
Oh the lazy guy he thought it cool, no?
Porn he looked at while he formed the poems
clothes of master smell so hide I dare say

[Timeless Bob]

OK, what the heck is a poetic "foot"?

[Iituem]

A poetic foot is the combination of tones that make, for want of a better word, a single repeat.

For instance, iambic pentameter uses the 'iamb' for its foot - an unstressed syllable followed by a stressed one: da-DUM-da-DUM-da-DUM-da-DUM-da-DUM.  Since the form has five da-DUMs (iambs), it is called iambic pentameter.  If it has six iambs in a line, it would be iambic hexameter instead.

Iambic pentameter therefore contains five feet, as in this example:

Now is the winter of our discontent
Made glorious summer by this sun of York;
And all the clouds that lour'd upon our house
In the deep bosom of the ocean buried.*

*This last line has eleven syllables, adding an extra half-iamb.  This is known as a 'weak' or 'feminine' ending, as it leaves the listening slightly unsettled, and is often used by Shakespeare to indicate uncertainty or indecision.


A foot doesn't have to be iambic.  For instance, you could have a foot that goes 'da-da-da-DUM' and put three of them in a line, like this:

Always I want ice cream and chips or I kill nuns,
Kill with my gun, a broken convent, shattered nuns.

Thus each line has both twelve syllables and three feet (each foot having four syllables).

In tonal languages (such as Chinese), a foot may be distinguished by tone rather than stress, as in English.

[Skullsploder]

Wow 5 years of high school leave me baffled and you come along and explain iambic pentameter in half a post.

What is the difference between  tonal and stress-based languages?

[evictedSaint]

Stress based:

I never said she took my money.

I never said she took my money.

I never said she took my money.

I never said she took my money.

I never said she took my money.

I never said she took my money.

I never said she took my money.

Each of these sentences, though having the same words, mean completely different things depending on where the stress is placed.

[Loimulohi]

And the usual tonal example:

Shíshì shīshì Shī shì, shì shī, shì shí shí shī.
Shì shíshí shì shì shì shī.
Shí shí, shì shí shī shì shì.
Shì shí, shì Shī shì shì shì.
Shì shì shì shí shī, shì shǐ shì, shǐ shì shí shī shìshì.
Shì shí shì shí shī shī, shì shíshì.
Shíshì shī, Shì shǐ shì shì shíshì.
Shíshì shì, Shì shǐ shì shí shì shí shī.
Shí shí, shǐ shí shì shí shī, shí shí shí shī shī.
Shì shì shì shì.

Meaning in spoilers.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

In a stone den was a poet called Shi Shi, who was a lion addict, and had resolved to eat ten lions.
He often went to the market to look for lions.
At ten o'clock, ten lions had just arrived at the market.
At that time, Shi had just arrived at the market.
He saw those ten lions, and using his trusty arrows, caused the ten lions to die.
He brought the corpses of the ten lions to the stone den.
The stone den was damp. He asked his servants to wipe it.
After the stone den was wiped, he tried to eat those ten lions.
When he ate, he realized that these ten lions were in fact ten stone lion corpses.
Try to explain this matter.

[Iituem]

Wow 5 years of high school leave me baffled and you come along and explain iambic pentameter in half a post.

If you're still in high school, here's a trick I learned back when I was - if you don't know exactly what a word means (this applies for every word longer and more complex than 'go' and includes monosyllabic words like 'wend' and 'rout' [not the same as route]) then ask your teacher.  Yes, it may seem like you're slowing down the class, but if you aren't actually learning what things mean it becomes a waste of both your time and the teacher's.

And if they don't know, hold that as proof that you are more inquisitive (and therefore likely smarter) than them and then look the answer up so that you're not a hypocrite.  Rigorous curiosity is the best aid to learning there is, and it's fun.

If you're not still in school, take the same philosophy to heart and you'll love learning.  And probably be an utter geek as well, but that's cool.

Rant aside, in a tonal language (as excellently demonstrated in the Shi example), the same word can have multiple meanings depending on the changes in pitch within the word (e.g. high-to-low, same-tone, low-to-high).  Classically, 'ama' in Hokien can mean 'mother', 'grandmother', 'school' or 'horse'.  Alternately, the meaning of the sentence or the word's implication may change, as they did in the money-theft stress example.  Oriental writing accounts for this, but this subtlety tends to be lost when transcribing to the Occidental alphabet.

[Detros]

And the usual tonal example:

Shíshì shīshì Shī shì, shì shī, shì shí shí shī.
Shì shíshí shì shì shì shī.
Shí shí, shì shí shī shì shì.
Shì shí, shì Shī shì shì shì.
Shì shì shì shí shī, shì shǐ shì, shǐ shì shí shī shìshì.
Shì shí shì shí shī shī, shì shíshì.
Shíshì shī, Shì shǐ shì shì shíshì.
Shíshì shì, Shì shǐ shì shí shì shí shī.
Shí shí, shǐ shí shì shí shī, shí shí shí shī shī.
Shì shì shì shì.

Meaning in spoilers.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

In a stone den was a poet called Shi Shi, who was a lion addict, and had resolved to eat ten lions.
He often went to the market to look for lions.
At ten o'clock, ten lions had just arrived at the market.
At that time, Shi had just arrived at the market.
He saw those ten lions, and using his trusty arrows, caused the ten lions to die.
He brought the corpses of the ten lions to the stone den.
The stone den was damp. He asked his servants to wipe it.
After the stone den was wiped, he tried to eat those ten lions.
When he ate, he realized that these ten lions were in fact ten stone lion corpses.
Try to explain this matter.

This reminds me of Buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo.