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08-11-2009, 03:51 PM
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Alcaics, redux
I'm making good on my promise (threat?) to start a thread in which we revisit the discussions about alcaics that took place in the past and add our new thoughts, perhaps with additional examples.
If I use the search function, with "alcaic" and "alcaics" as the keywords and search the Mastery board, I find these threads:
http://www.ablemuse.com/erato/showthread.php?t=555
http://www.ablemuse.com/erato/showthread.php?t=556
And of course there's the recent discussion on the Horace thread from the Translation Bakeoff just ended:
http://www.ablemuse.com/erato/showthread.php?t=8367
I need to read the older threads over to see if they reveal more questions to me. But the question I have at the outset is simply this: What's the best way to compose new alcaics in English, so that readers know what you're doing and don't mistake your meter for something else? What are the most effective roadsigns?
I may not get back to this thread today, but I'll be very pleased if others decide to pick it up and run.
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08-11-2009, 09:25 PM
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For what it's worth, I hear the Robinson, the Tennyson, the Clough, & the Stevenson on the linked Alcaics thread as actual alcaics. Mezey's "To the Americans," and Auden's elegy on Freud, excellent poems though they are, do not strike my ear as being in this measure. Which goes to show that for me at least it takes more than an 11-11-9-10 syllable count to have an alcaic. Maryann, besides Stephen's Horace on DG, I would study those four, if you're now itching to write English alcaics, as you seem to be. I assume you can hear there's more going on than just accentual tetrameter?
Chris
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08-11-2009, 09:54 PM
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Chris, having read through the example poems quickly, paying attention to the ones you point out, I'm still feeling muddled.
Bottom makes the point that the first two lines of the alcaic stanza are hendecasyllabics. My undying model of the hendecasyllabic line in English is Frost's "For Once, Then, Something," but in many of the model alcaics, I don't hear that pattern in the first two lines. This has to mean I don't yet have a feel for what substitutions are permitted.
For me, we need Alcaics 101. How many different ways can we construct one of these lines and still have it qualify as a hendecasyllabic line?
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08-12-2009, 09:18 AM
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All hendecasyllabic means is 11 syllables; so the first two lines of the alcaic, the first three lines of the sapphic, and the Catullan line Frost uses in "For Once Then Something" are all technically hendecasyllabic lines, though we only use the name for the latter. As Jody points out in the other thread, the difference between the Catullan version (the hendecasyllabic proper) and the other two is the placement of the dactyl. So whereas Frost writes:
Others TAUNT me with HAVing KNELT at WELL-curbs
and the second foot is a dactyl, the sapphic goes like this:
ALL the NIGHT sleep CAME not upON my EYElids,
SHED not DEW, nor SHOOK nor unCLOSED a FEATher, etc.
Where the third foot is a dactyl. So the only difference between these two is where you put the dactyl. The alcaic simply takes that unstressed final syllable from the end of the sapphic line, and sticks it at the beginning:
conFUSED, he FOUND her LAvishing FEMinINE
I think it's crucial that the alcaic line ends on a stress, or at least, a secondary stress. I guess you don't HAVE to stress the last syllable of "feminine" if you don't want to, but I hear promotion. Compare this line from the same poem:
and WHY were DEAD years HUNgrily TELling HER
So the line ends on a stress, or at least, a secondary stress. It is really an iambic pentameter line with an extra unstressed syllable in the fourth foot.
.....
The difference then, the only difference, between the alcaic and sapphic hendecasyllabic, is that the alcaic starts on an unstress and ends on a stress, & the sapphic does the opposite, starts on a stress and ends on an unstress. But the dactyl is in the same place.
One more thing. Unlike the sapphic, but like iambic pentameter, the English alcaic allows substitution in the first foot. You can start with an iamb or a trochee; c.f. Stephen's first line in Ode to Bacchus:
BACchus, beLIEVE me, DIStant posTERiTY
The other thing, which is true of both sapphics and alcaics, is that in between beats 2 & 3 (DEAD and HUNGrily in the Robinson alcaic, NIGHT and CAME in the Swinburne sapphic above) it is nice and classical (though certainly not required) to put another heavy syllable that takes a while to say (years, sleep).
ALL the NIGHT (SLEEP) CAME not upON my EYElids,
and WHY were DEAD (YEARS) HUNgrily TELling HER
You don't have to feel (SLEEP) and (YEARS) as beats, but it is good to feel the *duration* of those three syllables (night sleep came, dead years hung) anchoring the line. That's it for alcaic lines 1 & 2. Lines 3 & 4 are another matter.
I understand Stephen will be shortly on his way with a poem and a learned disquisition which will hopefully clarify this whole thing for you, if I have still failed to do so.
Chris
Last edited by Chris Childers; 08-12-2009 at 09:40 AM.
Reason: extensively edited for clarity of presentation
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08-12-2009, 09:39 AM
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For some other modern/contemporary alcaics, I think Hollander has some, and Jay Rogoff.
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08-12-2009, 05:43 PM
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I suspect that some of Michael Hamburger's translations of Holderlin might hold pretty tight to the meter as well. Though I was less then well-versed at the time I read them, I sensed something going on there.
Nemo
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08-12-2009, 09:15 PM
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Would this be right then, and if it isn't would somebody mend it? I'm thinking, how about RHYMED Alcaics, but I haven't yet worked out whatwould rhyme with what and what liberties I would have to take.
Bloody good place, the High Street in Whitstable –
See what you get for one and elevenpence.
Bought me a hat to wear for cricket,
Bought me a pair of fantastic wellies.
It's true about Whitstable High Street but of course they don't use the old money any more.
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08-12-2009, 10:01 PM
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I would fix your first line thus:
Quote:
Originally Posted by John Whitworth
A bloody good place, High Street in Whitstable –
See what you get for one and elevenpence.
Bought me a hat to wear for cricket,
Bought me a pair of fantastic wellies.
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The rest works, I think, though the first two lines could perhaps be clearer metrically. Sounds like you had a nice day of shopping...
Chris
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08-13-2009, 04:01 AM
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Thanks Chris. I seem to get the message from various learned geezers on the net that Greek and Latin alcaics are a little bit different and that (maybe) my first line is OK if you're Roman, not OK if you're Greek. Is that so?
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08-14-2009, 08:37 AM
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Just to pick up on A. E. Stallings's kind mention of my poem in Alcaics, it's called "The Guy Who Passed Me Doing 90 MPH and Playing the Trumpet," & it's in The Long Fault (LSU, 2008). You can find an earlier version of it at AGNI online: http://www.bu.edu/agni/poetry/print/2007/65-rogoff.html. One revision I can recall is that the final word of line one changed from "the" to "his."
Jay
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