What is Rhythm?

Rhythm is a music effect in the poetry which can't be apparently seen as meter; rather it can be grasped through the quality of music. Usually rhythm is flourished with the use of alliteration, assonance and other punctuation mark.

Rhythm is a temporal pattern formed by the succession of strong and weak elements. All language has its own natural rhythm. Meter is simply a rhythm that has been chosen by the poet and which he repeats and uses consistently over the length of a stanza or complete poem. If you read poetry out aloud, you will notice that different poems have different patterns of stress. A shorter line of a poem usually has quicker rhythm; a long line usually has a slower rhythm. These differences can be called differences in the rhythm of poetry.

Published on 24 Jan. 2014 by Kedar Nath Sharma

Related Topics

Alliteration: Introduction

Rhyme: Introduction

Meter: Introduction