Talk:Accent (poetry)

I have some problems with this page

First of all, that doesn't seem to be poetry at all. That's a passage from the Bible, which wasn't even written originally in English, so it's definitely not a poem.

Second of all, I don't see how putting a stronger emphasis on "Our" suddenly means there's more Gods - as far as I can tell, it would just be emphasizing the fact that He (or She, or what have you) wanted to make Man in his (or Her, or whatever) image - the plural is just a way of referring to oneself, in a kind of royal or exalted sense.

In addition, I don't see how stressing "they" would suddenly make it seem like there were people already there - I would think, rather, that it would be emphasizing the fact that the to-be-newly-created-Man would be the ones to have dominion, as opposed to anyone else who might want to.

I also have no idea what the article is talking about when it says stressing various other words "sums it all up nicely" or something like that... (emphasizing "the birds of the air" would just make it seem like the speaker was referring explicitly only to birds, and making careful note to exclude all other creatures of the air.)

All in all, this hardly seems to be about stress in poetry, but rather about how emphasis can change meaning of sentences in general, and I find it very strange to use an excerpt from the Bible to show this, as it could easily be shown with a simple sentence of "I went to the store." since you could say it as "I went to the store" (as opposed to not going to the store, I suppose) or "I went to the store" which would clarify specifically where the speaker went, as opposed to any other place...

I'm sorry for this big rant, but I'm a little bit confused about the whole purpose of this particular article. Can anyone fill me in on what it's actually talking about and what that has to do with poetry?

I was actually looking for something that would help me determine whether words should be stressed or unstressed when reading poetry, aside from simply "knowing" it's supposed to be in "iambic pentameter" or whatnot... I mean, sometimes "to" is considered stressed and sometimes it isn't, so I was looking for something to help clarify. So this was unexpected. JC 14:00, 15 February 2006 (UTC)