Today, as I review Gerard Manley Hopkins for the upcoming GRE Lit exam (and hey, I did choose "God's Grandeur" for my Poetry mid-term), it seems that his trademark "sprung rhythm" is a good thing to explore while we sit around and ticktock over my TExES results (available in three hours).
As SparkNotes (linked above) so perfectly tells us, "In sprung rhythm, the poet counts the number of accented syllables in the line, but places no limit on the total number of syllables."
And that's why GMR can have lines that bang-bang-bang the stresspoints. (I guess.) Or even whiff-whiff-whiff with little stress at all. SparkNotes says it makes interesting effects in controlling the speed of the poem.
However, the HyperDictionary (and many other first-page-hits) just says that sprung rhythm mimicks speech. My GRE Lit notes go back to lines being organized according to number of stressed syllables, but what does that mean?
[...]
Okay. MSN Group Université de Nice says that you divide the feet so that the first syllable is stressed, meaning you get a single syllable, a trochee, a dactyl, or something called a "first paeon" that isn't really explained but a search led me to a Bartleby.com article that goes even more in-depth and would have me believe that sprung rhythm is always done in tetrameter. No, that can't be right. And ho, it isn't just an article but GMR's book itself.
Paeons rhyme with peons, it turns out, and now I feel very clever because in the short time since the last paragraph I've not only learned about paeons but about paeons that are designated primus, secundus, tertius, and quartus. By God but Latin makes me feel powerful.
[...]
Okay. I think I have it. It doesn't have to be tetrameter at all (GMR liked sonnets). It just has to have the same number of feet to each line. (Er, I think.) And we determine the feetsies by separating all of the stressed syllables. Got it.
10^20-Second Sprung Rhythm
Bug shrug if the in the why of the tug tug
vacuum nozzle wean a'cleaning on the rug.
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