Rhythm is the pattern of contrasts of emphasis. For ancient Greek and Roman poets, emphasis took the form of long syllables, and lack of emphasis the form of short syllables (one long = two short). However, in English, emphasis is found in stress - saying the syllable more loudly - and lack of emphasis in lack of stress. Yet by pretending that Classical long and short are equivalent to English stressed and unstressed, generations of English poets have set out to have fun with Classical metres in English.
 

Posted in Pffa in Challenges in the thread Anyone for Choriambs?.

The choriamb is a choree+iamb, and a choree is just another name for a trochee. So a choriamb is a foot of the form | x - - x |. In this comp you were allowed an optional unstressed syllable at the start and end of lines.
 

CHORIAMBS

Magic! You’re free!
The scow has disgorged into the waves
towers of dead files that you dumped,

cov’ring the thing
over with blue infinite ocean,
locking it up once and for all.

Now as you doze
balcony-soft, peaceful and still,
nothing of that ever intrudes.

*

What is that clanking
out on the sea? What is that huge
rusty red barge churning the mud?

Memory’s dredge!
Buckets in chains, biting obscenely
into the past, staining the water,

vomiting back
mouthfuls of time, bones of the living
notched with the hacks given and taken,

shadows to play
terrible scenes over and over -
swirls in the green, over and over.

Memory! Cursed
shark of your dreams! Now you might truly
envy the dead, resting in peace!

      2001
 

The next two were posted in Pffa in Scansion Mansion in the thread Metrical Challenge #11.

These are Sapphics, the metre associated with the poetess Sappho. Mainly trochaic, the pattern is three lines of | x - x - x - - x - x - | and a final line of | x - - x - |.
 

PARKING TICKET

Parking ticket? Pitiful little bastard!
Parasite poltroon in a leech’s ambush!
Roll your tickets into a tube and stick ’em
right up your arsehole!

      2002
 

McLUHAN

International telecommunications
build McLuhan’s vision. The Global Village
now homogenizes our tongues and cultures,
bleaching their colours.

      2002
 

Posted in Pffa in Watering Hole in the thread A question for Harry R.

The Cretic foot is the same thing as the amphimacer: | x - x |. Monometer means one foot per line, of course.
 

CRETIC MONOMETER

Waiter, please
bring some cheese;
also port
(just a snort).

None to sell?
Bloody hell!
Looks like we’re
chips-and-beer.

      2003
 

The next was posted in Pffa in Challenges in the thread Terse Verse (which required you to abbreviate a famous poem).

Homer’s Iliad is written in the metre of epic, dactyllic hexameter. This means there are six feet in a line. Each of the first four can be either a dactyl | x - - | or a spondee | x x |. The fifth must be a dactyl, and the last a spondee, though a trochee will do.

In this one the syllables are long and short in the Classical fashion (though phonetically, not as written, so that only pronounced sounds are involved), with the hope that if you read it without stress and unstress, you may get a rhythm different to the natural English one.

(More technicalities - a short vowel nonetheless makes a long syllable IF it’s followed immediately in the same line by two pronounced consonants.)
 

Homer
THE ILIAD

Great-armoured Greeks, you that have oared this wine-coloured ocean,
Now we’re here, let’s screw Troy - in slow sepia motion.

      2004
 

The last one was posted in Pffa in Scansion Mansion. It’s a re-write of an original I wrote for NaPo 05, Day 26.

It’s a limerick written in amphimacers | x - x | (which are the same thing as Cretic feet, as we saw above). The last line should be stronger than it is - sorry about that.
 

THOUGHTS ON PASSING THE CAPTAIN COOK HOTEL (II)

Captain Cook never met Donald Duck:
years and seas came between, such is luck.
      Still the two dance the beat
      using both cretic feet.
Such a ruck leaves a duck thunderstruck.

      2005