Repetition. Repetition is the use of a sound, word, or group of words more than once. As you read “Nothing but Drums” and “Three/Quarters Time,” look for use of repetition.
Rhythm. Rhythm is the pattern of beats in a line of poetry or prose. Stress, or accent, is the amount of emphasis given to a syllable. The pattern of stresses determines the poem’s rhythm. Some syllables are described as being strongly or weakly stressed, and accented or unaccented. The strongly stressed syllables are marked with slash marks (/) placed directly above those syllables. After you’ve read “Three/Quarters Time” a few times, carefully identify and mark each of its stressed syllables. Try clapping out its rhythm, clapping louder on the stressed syllables. To help the hyphenated words in the poem sound as a unit, you’ll need to clap them slightly faster while slowing down or prolonging the words between them. As you clap the rhythm of this poem a few more times, listen for a point where the rhythm changes, dividing the poem into sections. To show the rhythm visually in “Three/Quarters Time,” make a graphic organizer like the one to the right.
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• Cultural Connection. Drums are musical instruments found in practically every culture. They are known to have existed since at least 6000 bc. Drums commonly have a strong ceremonial, sacred, or symbolic importance. A drum consists of one or two stretched membranes that are held taut across a frame and are sounded by striking the instrument with the hands or with sticks. The conga are single-headed drums of Afro-Cuban origin.
• Music Connection. In much of ballroom dance music the most basic rhythmic unit is the beat or pulse, which is a recurring time pattern that resembles the ticking of a clock. Individual beats are organized by larger recurring units called measures, which stress the first in a series of two or more beats: for example, ONE two, ONE two, or ONE two three, ONE two three. A “time signature” is a sign used in music to indicate the pattern in each measure.
You may want to use color to highlight stressed syllables in the poem.
Describe one thing you already know about poetry and one thing you’d like to learn about it.
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