Home › Glossary › Letter W

water-power verse

Form
Pronunciation

Understanding ARPABET Pronunciation

Want to hear it? Click the Listen button to hear the browser speak the word using text-to-speech!

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

Verse marked by fluid rhythm and imagery suggesting movement like flowing water

Detailed Definition
Poetry that harnesses imagery of water’s force, such as floods or surging waves, to convey power, change, or overwhelming emotion; water-power verse typically pairs strong beats with vivid hydrological metaphors.
Example
Example in poetry:
In “The Seafarer,” Old English poetry uses water-power verse to mirror oceanic rhythm and exile: “The salt waves tossed me”; In “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner,” Coleridge’s meter mimics wave motion: “Water, water, every where”; In “Ode to the West Wind,” Shelley links wind and water as elemental forces: “Thou who didst waken from his summer dreams / The blue Mediterranean”; In “Middle Passage,” Hayden uses water-power verse to evoke the Middle Passage’s horror and fluidity; Contemporary poet Craig Santos Perez uses water-power verse in “from unincorporated territory” to reflect Pacific Islander ecology and colonialism.
Additional Notes
Water-power verse links aquatic imagery with themes of force, renewal, or resistance. Related to river verse and earth-divination poetry. Avoid cliché by focusing on specific water behaviors (flood, turbine, drought) as metaphors for social or emotional energy.
Also Known As
Hydro-energy poem Water-force verse River-power stanza Aquatic dynamic poetry
Skip to main content