French alexandrine French alexandrine The French alexandrine () is a syllabic poetic meter of (nominally and typically) 12 syllables with a medial caesura dividing the line into two hemistichs (half-lines) of six syllables each. It was the dominant long line of French poetry from the 17th through the 19th century, and influenced many other European literatures which developed alexandrines of their own. According to verse historian Mikhail Gasparov, the French alexandrine developed from the Ambrosian octosyllable, by gradually losing the final two syllables, then doubling this line in a syllabic context with phrasal stress rather than length as a marker. The earliest
Modernist poetry in English U.S. modernist poets were concerned to create work in a distinctively American idiom. Williams, a doctor who worked in general practice in a working-class area of Rutherford, New Jersey, explained this approach by saying that he made his poems from 'the speech of Polish mothers'. In this, they were placing themselves in a tradition stretching back to Whitman. After her initial association with the Imagists, Marianne Moore carved out a unique niche for herself among 20th-century poets. Much of her poetry is written in syllabic verse, repeating the number of syllables rather than stresses or beats, per line. She also