Daily Log

Wednesday, October 29

We compared the poetic form of "Casey at the Bat" with that of "Amazing Grace," and concluded that if we broke each line of "Casey" in half, the two poems can be seen to share the same form -- four line stanzas of iambic verse, alternating four-foot and three-foot lines. The only difference is that in "Casey" the first and fourth lines do not rhyme (abcb as compared with abab). Mr. Potratz explained that "Amazing Grace" is in the form known as common meter or hymn meter, while "Casey" is an example of ballad meter. (It is no accident that the poem's subtitle is "A Ballad of the Republic . . .".)