On my website, I'm currently running a poetry workshop for those wishing to learn more. Each week I post two lessons with a choice of prompts at the end so those taking the workshop not only are taught the material but how to use the material. This particular lesson write-up is rhythm, something I struggled with when I first started, and at times, still do. But once you have it under your belt, there are endless possibilities. Here is the write-up and one of the prompts:

Rhythm is a sonic pattern that's determined by the stressed and unstressed syllables in a piece of writing. Many rhythms are well established and known, the most familiar meter being the iamb. The iamb is an unstressed syllable followed by a stressed, a rising rhythm, such as 'A bee' or 'The cat.'

Another familiar meter is the trochee. The trochee is a stressed syllable followed by an unstressed and, sort of reversed to that of the iamb, a falling rhythm. A great example is "double, double, toil and trouble" or voodoo, hoodoo.

[Now there's the term 'foot' which is a unit of two syllables, hence pentameter meaning five feet, ten syllables; trimester, three feet, six syllables, and it can be useful in identifying rhythm.]

To look at rhythm, we're going to use a great piece from an even greater poet, Edgar Allan Poe. Identifying stresses can be difficult, even for those who seem like a pro at it. However, this piece, The Bells, will be quite simple to identify. But to make it easier, you can exaggerate the sound of the words.

I.
        "Hear the sledges with the bells—
                 Silver bells!
What a world of merriment their melody foretells!
        How they tinkle, tinkle, tinkle,
           In the icy air of night!
        While the stars that oversprinkle
        All the heavens, seem to twinkle
           With a crystalline delight;
         Keeping time, time, time,
         In a sort of Runic rhyme,
To the tintinnabulation that so musically wells
       From the bells, bells, bells, bells,
               Bells, bells, bells—
  From the jingling and the tinkling of the bells."

Each line ends with a stressed syllable, and dealing with a trochee, that means every odd syllable will be stressed; one, three, five, seven. Then every even beat, unstressed. And this ending on stressed tells us that there's an odd number of syllables; have an even number of syllables and the rhythm changes.

A bit of a bonus: as mentioned before, trochee is a falling rhythm, and like in Poe's poem, it gets unique and interesting using a falling rhythm when writing with the falling of a mood.

Poe also uses repetition to create more sound and to change the rhythm, and it works wonderfully. Just the continued line of "bells, bells, bells, bells, bells, bells," creates the sound of those bells ringing, a ding, ding, ding. And because it's changed the rhythms, you don't have that fall anymore, no end, so it seems the bells just continue to carry, dragged on and on. Pretty clever, huh?

Your first prompt for this week is to stem off Poe's use of trochee, a falling rhythm, to describe a falling mood or situation. Or you can do the reversed, use the rising rhythm, iamb to lighten a mood. Repetition is optional, but try to experiment with it sometime.