A poem can lift the spirits and nourish the soul. This week, let’s all learn one together! Meet your poem Rhythm and rhyme Made in N.Y.C. Greet the day Keep your poem By A.O. Scott and Aliza ...

We can call this different syllable emphasis stressed or unstressed. In the word ‘banana’, for example, the central syllable is longer, or stressed, when you say it naturally: ba-na-na.

Sanskrit Poetry adds a new dimension of length. In Sanskrit poetry, stressed syllables are called long syllables, and unstressed syllable is called short syllable.

Below is the second stanza of Sadakichi Hartmann’s six-tanka poem, titled simply “ Tanka ” and published in his 1904 collection Drifting Flowers of the Sea and Other Poems.