From long experience with teaching undergraduates, I infer that high-school English teachers are instructing their poetry students to count syllables. I don’t know when this started; perhaps with the ...

Do you hear a regular beat da-DUM, da-DUM? This rhythm is very common in poetry and it even has a name: it’s called iambic. Poets often choose to write in this rhythm. Rhythm can help to strengthen ...

Space to play or pause, M to mute, left and right arrows to seek, up and down arrows for volume. Well, in that case, I won't… No, I will use, uh… Oh, forget it. Have a look. It's a worm. If you want ...

You’ve heard of rhyme schemes, the various ways you can arrange sounds to link lines and create sequences of motion. In this article, I want to look at rhythm’s ability to do the same thing: sometimes ...

Somashekar Jois is a practitioner of konnakkol, an ancient language that has been mentioned in Indian scriptures and the Vedas. Although konnakkol once enjoyed pride of place in Carnatic concerts, ...