dipodic

Notice all those light monosyllables that allow you to skim across the line, and quickly get into that dipodic swing.

Dipodic Verse : A.E. Stallings : Harriet the Blog : The Poetry Foundation 2007

Note the difference between (a) descriptions and examples of dipodic metre as a particular kind of metre – one that goes with, or can also be scanned as, long and rapid iambics – and (b) claims that English or English-language verse or metre is always “really” dipodic (rather than being always “really” iambic, as Frost thought, or always “really” nothing in particular, with metrical bases that may vary completely among possible groupings of poems).

Dipodic Verse : A.E. Stallings : Harriet the Blog : The Poetry Foundation 2007

Rap songs are often dipodic in nature — again, words spoken or chanted over a rhythmic ground — Greek rap (yes! it exists!) certainly is.

Dipodic Verse : A.E. Stallings : Harriet the Blog : The Poetry Foundation 2007

Steve has broached a subject close to my heart — dipodic meter — and I thought it might deserve a little space of its own here on Harriet.

Dipodic Verse : A.E. Stallings : Harriet the Blog : The Poetry Foundation 2007

These examples have a military marching rhythm to them, but it is possible, with alliteration, assonance and heavier syllables in those unstressed positions, to give the verses a more ambiguous feel, so that they seem to go back and forth more readily between a straight iambic (or trochaic) and a dipodic sound — such as the Hardy poem Steve discusses in his post.

Dipodic Verse : A.E. Stallings : Harriet the Blog : The Poetry Foundation 2007

In the third and fourth forms the difficulty in coördinating the unaccented initial elements has resulted in the substitution of a dipodic division for the anapæstic structure of triple rhythms with final accent.

Harvard Psychological Studies, Volume 1 Containing Sixteen Experimental Investigations from the Harvard Psychological Laboratory. Various 1889

Acceleration of the speed at which a simple trochaic succession is presented results thus, first, in a more rapid trochaic tempo, until the duration of two rhythm groups approaches more nearly to the period of subjective rhythmization, when -- the fundamental trochaism persisting -- the previous simple succession is replaced by a dipodic structure in which the phases of major and minor accentuation correspond to the elementary opposition of accented and unaccented phases.

Harvard Psychological Studies, Volume 1 Containing Sixteen Experimental Investigations from the Harvard Psychological Laboratory. Various 1889

In the same way a triplicated structure replaces the dipodic as the acceleration still continues; and likewise of the dactylic forms.

Harvard Psychological Studies, Volume 1 Containing Sixteen Experimental Investigations from the Harvard Psychological Laboratory. Various 1889

Hmmm. I’m not really sure how English meter could always be “really dipodic” – unless it is another conception of dipodic – but I haven’t read the book in question!

Dipodic Verse : A.E. Stallings : Harriet the Blog : The Poetry Foundation 2007