Blank verse poetry relies on syllabic rhythm instead of rhyme, with iambic pentameter being the most common form. Different traditions and variations exist, including trochee, anapest, and dactyl patterns, with poets such as Shakespeare, Yeats, and Stevens using blank verse in their work.
Blank verse poems make up nearly two-thirds of the poems in the history of English poetry. This type of poetry does not rely on the repetition of sound patterns, such as rhyme, but instead relies on the rhythm of its syllables in relation to groupings of stressed and unstressed syllables. Using the natural accents of words, a poet can construct in a line of blank verse poetry a rhythm that repeats in each line or use variations of that rhythm across the lines of the poem. The most common form used in blank verse is known as iambic pentameter, the form used regularly by Edna St. Vincent Millay, John Donne, and William Shakespeare.
The different types of blank verse poems vary based on the prevailing traditions of blank verse schools around the world throughout history. The types also depend on how these rhythmic formulations have been used and varied by successive generations of poets. For example, iambic pentameter consists of lines that include five bars for each line, meaning five stressed syllables alternating with five unstressed syllables within a line. This would create a rhythmic line of di-dum, di-dum, di-dum, di-dum, di-dum, where “dum” is the stressed syllable and “di” is the unstressed symbol. An example of that rhythmic structure in a line of blank verse would be “The winds that have swelled the clouds of tears.”
Ancient Latin poetry created rhythms of blank verse by alternating long and short syllables of ten syllables per line. The old French school of blank verse used ten syllables, usually pausing at the fourth syllable, followed by another final unstressed syllable, forming lines of 11 syllables. Some of the Italian poets, including Dante, used this 11-syllable form, stressing the fourth or fifth syllable rather than pausing, however, as most Italian words have unstressed final syllables. William Shakespeare used the white line of iambic pentameter in his plays. English poets who used iambic or variations included William Cowper and John Keats; Irish poet William Butler Yeats and American poet Wallace Stevens used iambic blank verse poetry as their preferred form.
Although iambic pentameter with its five beat di-dum is prevalent in blank verse poems, other forms include trochee with a dum-di motif, anapest with a di-di-dum motif, and dactyl with a dum-di motif -Of . Any combination of these rhythmic patterns or variations on them may be used in blank verse. For example, sometimes a line may use what is known as a double jam where there are four syllables – di-di-dum-dum – comprising two of the five feet in a line. Another example would be a trochee tetrameter followed by what is called a tailless trochee: dum-di, dum-di, dum-di, dum.
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