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ongoing action

Concept
Pronunciation

Understanding ARPABET Pronunciation

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The pronunciation guide uses the ARPABET phonetic system—the same system used in speech recognition and text-to-speech applications.

Vowel Examples:
AE1 = cat, bat
EH1 = bed, head
IY1 = see, me
OW1 = go, boat
UW1 = boot, do
Stress Numbers:
0 = no stress (unstressed)
1 = primary stress (loud)
2 = secondary stress (medium)
Example:
AH0 TH IY1 N AH0
= a-THEE-na (Athena)

The stressed syllable (marked with 1) is pronounced louder and clearer than others.

Quick Definition

A grammatical or poetic construction that conveys ongoing, incomplete action—often through progressive verb forms—to suggest immediacy or continuity.

Detailed Definition
Ongoing action refers to verb forms or constructions in poetry that emphasize the continuous, progressive, or extended nature of events rather than their completion or instantaneous occurrence. This temporal quality affects how readers perceive the poem's action and can create effects ranging from immediacy to timelessness. Poetry employing ongoing action emphasizes process over product, becoming over being, or duration over discrete moments. This choice reflects philosophical attitudes toward time and experience, and can create particular tenses or moods from urgent presence to meditative continuity, depending on context and implementation.
Example
Example in poetry:
ongoing action: In Whitman’s “Song of Myself,” “I celebrate myself, and sing myself” continues through cataloging; Ginsberg’s “Howl” uses anaphora to sustain manic energy; Lucille Clifton’s “won’t you celebrate with me” builds identity through present-tense assertion; contemporary poet Danez Smith’s “not an elegy for Mike Brown” uses continuous present to resist closure; ongoing action conveys immediacy and unresolved tension; it often employs present participles and enjambment.
Additional Notes
ongoing action|Depicting actions as continuous or in progress; contributes to immediacy and unfolding motion in verse.
Also Known As
continuous motion durative event progressive occurrence Continuative aspect
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