Winds of the Seasons An attempt at Trochaic Tetrameter with Trochaic Trimeter

[Thoughtjotter]

Breath of Life
2nd Edit

Trochaic Tetrameter alternating with
Trochaic Trimeter (Maybe?)

Raging winds took ship and lives, --It seems there's a problem with some of the subject verb agreement here.
prompts the poet's rhymes.
Singing to lost sailor's wives;
Songs proclaiming; "hope survives".
Warm winds blow and spring arrives,
life and better times.

Cooling brow, sweet summer breeze,
comfort for us all.
Unseen fingers through the trees;
Sways tree branch and rustles leaves. --There seems to be some awkward syntax here. It seems a word like the or a would be a good addition to put in an unstressed syllable (not sure about the stresses in "tree branch" but branches usually belong to trees so you may not even need the word tree) and straighten out the awkward syntax.
Morning frost upon the sheaves,
early feel of fall.

Through the canyon rock it screams,
forcing snow to fly.
Gale winds paint the winter's theme;
Waving aspen's golden sheen,
valley down below agleam,
up above, blue sky. -- Not sure how I feel about the omission of connecting words it is interesting and creates its own type of language.

All in all you've got some good imagery in this poem, but I would check your endings. A traditional Trochaic tetrameter line would have a feminine ending which means it is unstressed. Now I must admit that my knowledge gets a little iffy when dealing with three syllable feet but if you use three syllable feet a cretic would give you a stressed, unstressed, and then stressed. So if you write in a trisyllabic monometer (or any number of cretic feet I suppose) you could have a trochaic start with a masculine ending. Of course, I suppose a trochaic foot only applies to a two syllable system and I think that a cretic can also be used to transition between different meters. I find it useful to pin names on these things, because it allows for experimentation inside a system. There's my two cents you might want to check the info it may not be 100% accurate.

I appreciate you taking the time and effort to read and critique my attempt at trochaic tetrameter. I don't know why I called it "alternating" with trimeter. I don't even know how I came up with this off the wall rhyme scheme.
"Raging winds (subject) took (verb-past tense) ship and lives.
I'm not sure about "the" connecting words either. I omitted them for the syllable count. I'm not clear on all the rules for meter, stressed, unstressed, feminine and masculine and why in the world I even thought about attempting a Trochaic poem.
I will take what you have offered and study more on the subject, in the mean time I think (dangerous word for me) I may go back to basics.
Thank you again,
R T

---

There are a number of syllables that can be read as stressed or unstressed, most I gave the benefit of the doubt, however some I left un-bold to point out the weakness of the line. Such as "Through the canyon rock it screams" the last four syllables read as neutral to me, that is one does not seem more stressed than the other. I'm not saying it could not be read as trochee, I am just saying it could be read as all non-stressed. You are not alternating tetrameter and trimeter. It reads as tetrameter-trimeter-tetrameter-tetrameter-tetrameter-trimeter. Which is kind of odd with the xyxy rhyme pattern. This poem starts out as though in common meter, but only in trochee instead of iambs, but then instead of alternating the lines the third line, where one would expect a line of trimeter, one finds a line of tetrameter. I'm not saying there is anything wrong with doing so, however it does make it more difficult getting into the rhythm of the poem, and I think one should consider the rationale for doing so. Below is how I read/scan the stressed/non-stressed syllables, the stressed syllables in bold.

In terms of the content, the first two stanzas seems like a sea shantey, in content if not so much in form. However, the third stanza seems unlike the first two, although I understand you are talking about the wind, you have tied it too much to the environment, making that the focus rather than the wind itself.

Dale


Rag ing winds took ship and lives,
prompts the poet's rhymes.
Singing to lost sailor's wives;
Songs proclaiming; "hope survives".
Warm winds blow and spring arrives,
life and better times.

Cooling brow, sweet summer breeze,
comfort for us all.
Unseen fingers through the trees;
Sways tree branch and rustles leaves.
Morning frost upon the sheaves,
early feel of fall.

Through the canyon rock it screams,
forcing snow to fly.
Gale winds paint the winter's theme;
Waving aspen's golden sheen,
valley down below agleam,
up above, blue sky.

Thank you for taking time to read and critique my attempt at this hair pulling endeavor. I don't know why and where I came up with this rhyme scheme or why I called it alternating (just sounded better than jumping around I guess).

You are right about the stanza progression. I kinda got locked into my effort in making the rhyme scheme work. What I was hoping to do was bring the wind from the sea and a survivor with the news of the disaster. Then have buskers singing songs about this terrible disaster.
The wind would continue to do what the wind does by moving inland. After that I some how thought I would blend the the seasons into the mix with the wind involved with it's part in bringing the good, the bad and the beautiful.
Even though I did use a previous poem as a blue print for this endeavor, I should have changed the name, 'Winds for every season' maybe.

Should I have blended trochaic and iambic with the bad and good parts?
I'm sure I got in over my head with this one, here is how I was hoping it would turn out; Thanks again, R T

Rag ing winds took ship and lives,
prompts the poet's rhymes.
Singing to lost sailor's wives;
Songs proclaiming; "hope survives".
Warm winds blow and spring arrives,
life and better times.

Cooling brow, sweet summer breeze,
comfort for us all.
Unseen fingers through the trees;
Sways tree branch and rustles leaves.
Morning frost upon the sheaves,
early feel of fall.

Through the canyon rock it screams,
forcing snow to fly.
Gale winds paint the winter's theme;
Waving aspen's golden sheen,
valley down below agleam,
up above, blue sky.

---

Raging winds took ship and lives,
prompts the poet's rhymes.
Singing to lost sailor's wives;
Songs proclaiming; "hope survives".
Warm winds blow and spring arrives,
life and better times.

This feels rather too speedy for the solemn message of the "raging winds" taking "ship and lives". I may, however, only be reading it wrong.
No wait, the speediness does seem to work, if the focus be on the wind instead of the loss. Still, I think a better focus upon the wind may be achieved here, but I'm not sure how.

Cooling brow, sweet summer breeze,
comfort for us all.
Unseen fingers through the trees;
"Sways tree branches, rustles leaves" sounds somewhat better to me here.
Morning frost upon the sheaves,
early feel of fall.

The focus upon the wind is much clearer on this stanza. The imagery is very clear, too.

Through the canyon rock it screams,
forcing snow to fly.
Gale winds paint the winter's theme;
Waving aspen's golden sheen,
valley down below agleam,
up above, blue sky.

The final four lines of this stanza gets rather carried away with its imagery. Whereas the earlier to stanzas were speedy yet clear with their ideas of the wind's flow, taking at most two lines to convey one complete idea (ie one sentence), these final four lines take, well, four lines to convey their idea, and not even in a way that unifies the whole poem, or at least fits as the poem's conclusion. The focus shifts; it is stolen by the canyon's gleam.

Overall, it's a good poem, clear in its briskness, yet still conveying enough body to tickle the mind's eye. And the form does seem consistent, although I'm not really sure if this really is what the thread's title says this is (as in, I'm not sure if this is Trochaic Tetrameter alternating with Trochaic Trimeter). It doesn't sound like it.

Thanks RiverNotch,for taking time to visit and critique this (over my head attempt) at a very difficult endeavor. The rhyme scheme of a trochaic poem is inside out and backwards to the English language.
I did not really have a laid out plan for the way this turned out (quit obvious I'm sure). It started at sea with a storm and came inland and some how got mixed up with the seasons and their changes, brought in another storm at the end then decided to leave me with a beautiful blue sky.
I'm thinking of renaming it "Winds for all Seasons" or maybe, "R T tries to put a collar on a Porcupine"
Thanks again, looking forward to reading your poetry,
R T