Which poet is associated with inventing or popularizing Sprung Rhythm?

Which poet is associated with inventing or popularizing Sprung Rhythm?

• A. William Wordsworth
• B. Gerard Manley Hopkins
• C. Samuel Taylor Coleridge
• D. John Keats

Answer: (B)

Sprung rhythm is a way of shaping English verse that places a stressed syllable at the start of a foot, followed by a variable number of unstressed syllables, producing a buoyant, speech-like cadence. Gerard Manley Hopkins is the poet most closely linked with inventing and popularizing this technique, naming and developing it in his late-1800s work to capture the immediacy and energy of perception. He used lines that feel “sprung” forward, with rapid shifts and compressed sound that push the verse in unexpected ways. The other poets—Wordsworth, Coleridge, and Keats—are associated with more conventional meters and forms in their Romantic-era poetry, such as regular iambic pentameter or blank verse, rather than the distinctive sprung rhythm Hopkins championed.

Sprung rhythm is a way of shaping English verse that places a stressed syllable at the start of a foot, followed by a variable number of unstressed syllables, producing a buoyant, speech-like cadence. Gerard Manley Hopkins is the poet most closely linked with inventing and popularizing this technique, naming and developing it in his late-1800s work to capture the immediacy and energy of perception. He used lines that feel “sprung” forward, with rapid shifts and compressed sound that push the verse in unexpected ways. The other poets—Wordsworth, Coleridge, and Keats—are associated with more conventional meters and forms in their Romantic-era poetry, such as regular iambic pentameter or blank verse, rather than the distinctive sprung rhythm Hopkins championed.