Dickenson's Island

It is, by now, a well-known fact that most of the poems of Emily Dickenson can be sung to the tune of the Gilligan's Island theme song. Or the tune of 'Amazing Grace', or 'House of the Rising Sun'. Why? Because all those poems and those songs use common metre, a stress pattern of four and three iambs, as do countless poems and songs. But although common metre is, as the name suggests, immensely popular, there are a number of other metrical schemes that poems and songs can be written to.

This website attempts to prove that the number is finite.

Enter a poem, and the website will automagically determine its metre, then pull up a list of possible song matches to which the poem could be sung. It will also helpfully tell you the fancy names for the mterical patterns it finds in the poem, and mention if, say, it's in ballad metre and the list of possible tunes is very, very long. Stress patterns for poems and song lyrics are guessed using a dictionary; users can flag corrections.

Users can also, if they're feeling ambitious, add links to Youtube videos of themselves trying out the unusual combinations. Because you can't stop hearing 'Death' to the tune of 'Yellow Rose Of Texas' once it's pointed out. Why should you be the only one to suffer?