My Summary: Skeltonic Verse is:
Any number of lines
without a Stanza break
Each line consist of
two heavy stresses and any number of unstressed syllable
Lines are
mono-rhymed until the poet decides to begin a new rhyme.
The poem should have energy and be fun.
Skeltonic
Verse is named after its creator, English poet John Skelton (1460-1529),who
tutored King Henry the Eighth when he was just a prince, spent time in prison,
was censured by the Church and in general, seemed to have a great amount of
fun.
Sources I found
useful with more information you may appreciate.
Skeltonic Verse which today is sometimes
also referred to as Tumbling Verse, is from the 15th century when English poet John Skelton (1460-1529) created short lines which resemble the
hemistich of the Tumbling Verse of King James. It is a subgenre of Georgic, didactic verse, the verse
usually being instructional in nature. The lines are of irregular dipodic meter
with a tumbling rhyme.
Skeltonic Verse is:
- written in any number of dipodic lines without stanza break.
- dipodic which is a line with 2 heavy stresses and any number of unstressed syllables.
- rhymed, tumbling rhyme is any number of monorhymed lines until the rhyme runs out of energy then the lines switch to a new mono-rhyme series.
My thanks to Judi
Van Gorder for the great PMO resource.
Skeltonics
Type:
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Structure, Metrical Requirement, Rhyme Scheme
Requirement
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Description:
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Developed by John Skelton (Happy Hank, the Wife
Slayer’s poetic mentor and court poet), these are satirical rhymed dipodic
lines. It is also known as Tumbling Verse. This requires explaining the
difference between podic and accentual-syllabic verse. With
accentual-syllabic verse, every syllable counts, both stressed and
unstressed. If a line of verse is iambic pentameter, it will be ten syllables
alternating between unstressed and stressed as: da_DUM da_DUM da_DUM da_DUM
da_DUM.
“I dived beneath the desk to
hide from her.”
Podic verse was kind of a looser midway point
between the alliterative accentuals of the Anglo-Saxons and the
accentual-syllabics that Chaucer adapted into English based on French forms
that were rhymed and syllabic. So, podic verse is usually rhymed and has a
certain number of stresses in the line, but the number of unstressed
syllables doesn’t count. A dipodic line has two stresses. It might have from
zero to four unstressed syllables, so the line can vary from two to six
syllables and still be dipodic.
“Her eyes aflame
fire bright
cast her claim
all night.”
Although this quatrain varies between two and four
syllables per line, they are all dipodic.
Skelton’s rhyming was also inconsistent. He might
rhyme two lines in a row or ten, then he’d change rhymes for another
indeterminate length, and then do it again.
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Pasted
from <http://www.poetrybase.info/forms/002/272.shtml>
My thanks to Charles
L. Weatherford who frequently provides
more detail and insight than most.
My Example Poem
Dipodic What?
Dipodic Verse
Will be Terse.
Stress used just
twice
to keep it nice,
short or long
a lilting song
or sounding gong
that won't go wrong
if you adhere
to the rule here,
Now is that clear
My dear?
© Lawrencealot -
2013
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