[John Shokna]

Hi, Would someone be so kind as to provide me examples of " accentual and accentual-syllabic " verse? I know iambic pentameter and I can infer quad, tetra or trimeter, but I havn't clue one about the above referenced disciplines.
Thank you. -- John

[Michael Cantor]

Have you tried Google?

[John Shokna]

I thought about that, but I figured that since I've only seen these terms here in the header of "Metrical Poetry", that here would be the place to start, so I wouldn't get the wrong idea from somewhere else. Would you, Michael, be so kind as to provide examples? Thank you -- John

Actually I followed your suggestion and googled it with satisfactory results. Thank you.

[Wintaka]

John:

As you know, meter measures something: syllables, alliterations, stresses/beats (accentual), feet (accentual-syllabic), et cetera.

An example of accentual [di]meter is Elizabeth Bishop's "Sonnet 1979".

An example of accentual heterometer (in this example, trimeter alternating with monometer) is W.C. Williams' "The Red Wheelbarrow".

An example of accentual-syllabic meter, along with most of the verse written in the last 8+ centuries, is Shakespeare's iambic pentameter "Sonnet LXXIII".

Examples of accentual-syllabic heterometer include "Amazing Grace" (iambic tetrameter alternating with trimeter, also called "common" meter) and T.S. Eliot's "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock" (iambic trimeter, tetrameter, pentameter, heptameter, with anacrusis).

HTH,

Colin