The Daily News
1 I'm freeeeeee!!!!!!!
2 Anybody lookin?
3 Yesterday was meeting day, but then you all know my thoughts on that.
4 So if I have read the cards correctly, today is 3-12, a Thursday.
5
6 Too soon?
7
8 I'm still cool dude.
9 Ha.
10 I did get a tad sentimental yesterday (or was it the day before? Oh bother!)
11 I got sentimental yesterday I introduced my students to what we Shakespeare nerds call iambic pentameter.
13 If I may: Shakespeare wrote in tight rhythms .
14 I brought one of my classic lessons to the front yesterday.
15 In short, it's sort of about the rhythm of Shakespeare's stuff.
16 To explain the poetry, I introduced the "de dum." The de dum is simply a heartbeat with the stress on the dum.
17 Listen:
Consider the word omit. It begins with an unstressed "O" and bangs home the syllable "mit." The unstressed "O" joins the stressed "mit" to force a heartbeat of rhythm which becomes what I refer to as a de-DUM, with the stress on the DUM.
18 The rhythm of "omit" is the same rhythm as the "de-dum."
19 de-DUM. Omit. de-DUM.
20 The word penta means five.
21 The word meter means essentially the beat, or measure of rhythm in poetry.
22 If you say the word omit five times, you have created a pentameter.
23 Each de-dum is considered a de-dumbic foot.
24 To illustrate, I drew five feet lined up next to each other with the word "de-dum" in each foot. They were based on my own feet, which are similar in line to Fred Flintstone's, only more graceful.
25
26 If you read it, it said, "de-DUM" "de-DUM" "de-DUM" "de-DUM" "de-DUM."
27 Similar to saying the word "omit" five times in a row.
28 If you put those lines together as singular sentences, they would be written in what we call dedumbic pentameter.
29 There's only one catch: the snobs who thought of what to call all this stuff decided that instead of calling a de-DUM a de-DUM, they randomly called it an iamb.
30 Why an iamb? Nobody knows, so far as I know.
31
32 When Romeo first meets Juliet at a masquerade party, he falls instantly in love with her.
33 The only reason this head case is at the party is he had been sniveling over being rejected by some chick named Rosaline, so much so that he would walk around a sycamore grove all night sighing and crying over this gal, come home, and lock himself in a dark room crying throughout the day.
34 He gets dragged to this party by his friends, but he goes only because he knows Rosaline will be there. All he wants to do is to bear a torch and look at Rosaline.
35 This is not a healthy lad.
36 At one point, he sees the absolutely sensational Juliet, and instantly falls in love with her.
37
38 There are holes in the script, not gonna lie.
38 He flirts with her for about eight lines of poetry, and then the party ends.
39 After the party, he jumps a wall to see Juliet's balcony. His friends stand outside screaming his name and mocking his love for Rosaline.
40 He says in a low voice, "He jests at stars that never felt a wound" which sounds grammatically incorrect, but we'll let it slide.
41 But that line is iambic if you count each syllable on your fingers.
42
43
44 Some of you just did. Don't EVEN lie.
45 He then looks up to the balcony; the crickets chirp; the lighting is beyond Rapunzel, and then sees a light turn on in the window of the balcony.
46 He then says silently, "But soft! What light through yonder window breaks? It is the East, and Juliet is the sun!"
47 I erased everything in the five feet and syllabled that out for my students. It looked German. "but soft" "what light" "through yon" "der win" "dow breaks?"
48 And then
"it is" "the East" "and Jul" "(yet) is" "the sun."
49 Like how I cheated on the Juliet syllables? If you say it as written it is eleven because clearly Shakespeare couldn't count, and had no sense of rhythm.
50 Anyway, I had this entire schtick where I tell my class about a time a guy playing Romeo in a skit at school heard this lesson, and got so pumped that he walked into the scene, crickets and all, and shouted "But SOFT what LIGHT through YON der WIN dow BREAKS it IS the EAST and JUL yet IS the SUN!" and I yelled, "STOP!!!!"
51 "This guy is in LOVE with this girl. If you went out to some house that had a balcony, and you were wearing tights and hiding in the bushes, and you screamed up at the window of the girl you love, she'd throw a brick at you and call the cops!"
52 "Soften it."
53 And my story continued that we re-did the scene, softened the mood, brought in the crickets, and then Romeo entered, looked up and said plaintively, "But soft, what light through yonder window breaks? It is the East, and Julyet is the sun..."
54 Yesterday after our meeting I was approached by a teacher who told me that she was teaching iambic pentameter to her support class. One kid who is really shy in my class popped up and said, "That's iambic pentameter! Mr. H taught it to us today!"
55 He's not a guy who does a lot of work, and hardly ever talks in class.
56 You have those moments.
57 Sometimes I'm glad I'm retiring.
58 I'll miss those moments.
59 Gottago. Thought I'd share.
60 See you again.
21 The word meter means essentially the beat, or measure of rhythm in poetry.
22 If you say the word omit five times, you have created a pentameter.
23 Each de-dum is considered a de-dumbic foot.
24 To illustrate, I drew five feet lined up next to each other with the word "de-dum" in each foot. They were based on my own feet, which are similar in line to Fred Flintstone's, only more graceful.
25
26 If you read it, it said, "de-DUM" "de-DUM" "de-DUM" "de-DUM" "de-DUM."
27 Similar to saying the word "omit" five times in a row.
28 If you put those lines together as singular sentences, they would be written in what we call dedumbic pentameter.
29 There's only one catch: the snobs who thought of what to call all this stuff decided that instead of calling a de-DUM a de-DUM, they randomly called it an iamb.
30 Why an iamb? Nobody knows, so far as I know.
31
32 When Romeo first meets Juliet at a masquerade party, he falls instantly in love with her.
33 The only reason this head case is at the party is he had been sniveling over being rejected by some chick named Rosaline, so much so that he would walk around a sycamore grove all night sighing and crying over this gal, come home, and lock himself in a dark room crying throughout the day.
34 He gets dragged to this party by his friends, but he goes only because he knows Rosaline will be there. All he wants to do is to bear a torch and look at Rosaline.
35 This is not a healthy lad.
36 At one point, he sees the absolutely sensational Juliet, and instantly falls in love with her.
37
38 There are holes in the script, not gonna lie.
38 He flirts with her for about eight lines of poetry, and then the party ends.
39 After the party, he jumps a wall to see Juliet's balcony. His friends stand outside screaming his name and mocking his love for Rosaline.
40 He says in a low voice, "He jests at stars that never felt a wound" which sounds grammatically incorrect, but we'll let it slide.
41 But that line is iambic if you count each syllable on your fingers.
42
43
44 Some of you just did. Don't EVEN lie.
45 He then looks up to the balcony; the crickets chirp; the lighting is beyond Rapunzel, and then sees a light turn on in the window of the balcony.
46 He then says silently, "But soft! What light through yonder window breaks? It is the East, and Juliet is the sun!"
47 I erased everything in the five feet and syllabled that out for my students. It looked German. "but soft" "what light" "through yon" "der win" "dow breaks?"
48 And then
"it is" "the East" "and Jul" "(yet) is" "the sun."
49 Like how I cheated on the Juliet syllables? If you say it as written it is eleven because clearly Shakespeare couldn't count, and had no sense of rhythm.
50 Anyway, I had this entire schtick where I tell my class about a time a guy playing Romeo in a skit at school heard this lesson, and got so pumped that he walked into the scene, crickets and all, and shouted "But SOFT what LIGHT through YON der WIN dow BREAKS it IS the EAST and JUL yet IS the SUN!" and I yelled, "STOP!!!!"
51 "This guy is in LOVE with this girl. If you went out to some house that had a balcony, and you were wearing tights and hiding in the bushes, and you screamed up at the window of the girl you love, she'd throw a brick at you and call the cops!"
52 "Soften it."
53 And my story continued that we re-did the scene, softened the mood, brought in the crickets, and then Romeo entered, looked up and said plaintively, "But soft, what light through yonder window breaks? It is the East, and Julyet is the sun..."
54 Yesterday after our meeting I was approached by a teacher who told me that she was teaching iambic pentameter to her support class. One kid who is really shy in my class popped up and said, "That's iambic pentameter! Mr. H taught it to us today!"
55 He's not a guy who does a lot of work, and hardly ever talks in class.
56 You have those moments.
57 Sometimes I'm glad I'm retiring.
58 I'll miss those moments.
59 Gottago. Thought I'd share.
60 See you again.
~H~
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