dipodic

"The chief Lindsay poems," he asserts, "might be genealogically understood in terms of 'The Bells' and 'The Raven,' 'When Lilacs Last' and 'O Pioneers.' Poe is suggested by Lindsay's fondness for onomatopoeic effects and the more obvious phonetic devices (strongly marked rhythms, plentiful rhyme, alliteration); Whitman, by the search for an American myth, a democratic tradition made imaginative." (43) On the level of prosody, Warren argues persuasively that Lindsay's signature technical breakthrough involved the use of dipodic meter, which has its roots in popular balladry and nursery rhymes, and is related to public performance and emphatic sing-song rhythms (87-89).

Lindsay was, in fact, part of a "dipodic movement" whose adherents included Kipling and Masefield, and whose goal was to revitalize the poem and drastically expand its popular appeal.

Poets began to write more poems in triple and dipodic meters and to sprinkle extra syllables in the duple feet of iambic poems.

He cannot recognize that the Dylan Thomas poem he scans is syllabic, the Masefield one dipodic. When he runs against a line he cannot scan, his typical response is to suggest that the poet has been incompetent, instead of suspecting that his own ear may be faulty.