For Dummies, Times Two

Did you know For Dummies is copyrighted and trademarked by John Wiley & Sons?  I learned this today as I coincidentally wound up at the same web site while pursuing two totally unrelated topics.  Not long ago, I decided that among the many possibilities that life offers to someone like me, fishing was one I needed to explore a little further.  It may be that I decided on this path while looking out the window in my current residence.

It seems on any given day, at almost any hour, a bateau may appear in the waterway behind us, with one to four occupants either holding the fisherman's end of a rod and reel or casting a net.  Fish, however, seemed to avoid the fish's end of the rod and reel as I never saw anyone reeling one in or anything else that successful fishermen do with fish they have caught.  The cast nets were being used to capture bait, so I think what they hauled in using the nets does not count as success in fishing.  With that said, I didn't consider asking any of these fisher-persons for advice on fishing--they weren't catching anything.

So, I asked myself, how have I learned most things?  I started by picking up a book and reading about it.  Somehow, that has always seemed to get me started in the right direction (or scared me off completely--see my short-lived interest in skydiving).  So, in looking for the right book, it came to me--there must be a Fishing For Dummies book somewhere.  After looking one up on Amazon, I decided I probably didn't want to wait several days to get my hands on it, so I logged on and found that my local B&N store had a copy.   I clicked on the "pick me up" button, and now I have my copy.  

But, instead of reading it, I decided I needed to pursue my alternate topic--the use of rhythm and meter in poetry.  I learned a few things along the way.  But I just can't hold it back anymore.  Do you know what I discovered?  In poetry, rhythm is all in the feet!  I mean, is it like tap-dancing?  It turns out that the patterns of stressed and unstressed syllables are contained in units called "feet." There are five kinds of feet--iambic (x-unstressed, /-stressed), anapestic (/xx), trochaic (/x), dactylic (/xx) and spondaic (//).  

Meter, on the other hand, refers to the number of feet in each line.  This can range from one to eight  (monometer, dimeter, trimeter....octameter).  So, with a little For Dummies.com magic, I found the following illustration of iambic pentameter.  The example they offered was the famous five iambic feet string below:                 

Christopher Marlowe's line from Dr. Faustus:

Duh-DUH-duh-DUH-duh

Which reminds me of a conversation I overheard a few days ago--
Dad:  Son, don't touch that cat!
Son:  D-a-a-a-a-d, why not?
Dad:  'Cause we're dog people, not cat people. 

Me, too.