Cadence

Cadence is often neglected when constructing a poem. For Ezra Pound, one of the initiators of the Imagist school of poetry, cadence was essential to the form.

Think of it like this...a runner has 2 minutes to run 2 laps. If the first lap takes 1 ½ minutes, the second must only take 30 seconds. The distance is the same for both laps, but the cadence is greatly varied.

I kept this point in mind while writing a poem in the Imagist model for a British poetry class.



Being



Groggy...      morning...      waking...      slowly....

Yawn...       long...

Fist to eye and foot to floor

"Being": noun to verb