[Tony Barnstone]

Okay, so the first line of "The Death of the Hired Man," a poem written in blank verse, is:

Mary sat musing on the lamp-flame at the table

The poem proceeds pretty regularly, with only standard substitutions, such as a troche at the start of line, but this line reads to me as six beat:

MA-ry / sat MUS /ing ON / the LAMP / -flame AT / the TA-ble

I hear that the ON is clearly promoted and the AT seems to be as well, because the FLAME is weaker than LAMP and so is demoted, creating three unstressed in a row with AT in the center.

Well, that's six feet, right? If it were stress meter, you could argue it goes like this:

MA-ry / sat MUS /ing ON / the LAMP / -flame at the TA-ble

or even

MA-ry / sat MUS /ing on the / LAMP FLAME /at the TA-ble

where the third foot and fourth foot are sort of a double iamb with an extra syllable.

Or one could argue that flame-at is elided, as is the-ta, but that seems stretching it to me.

I'm struggling to convince my students that Frost did not screw up, but I'm not entirely convinced myself.

Thoughts?

Best, Tony

[Aaron Poochigian]

Hey, Tony,

Frost starts the second stanza (paragraph) with an Alexandrine as well: "When was I ever anything but kind to him?"

Better to concede that Frost used these two Alexandrines in a blank verse poem purposefully and in a novel way (usually an Alexandrine shows up at the end of a poem in pentameters).

I know of some poets (Wilbur, for example) who prefer to start poems with metrical ambiguity, and these Alexandrine lines may work in that way. The poem begins ambiguously and the form comes into focus with the second and third lines.

[Tony Barnstone]

Hey Aaron,

Well, of course, that would be the logical solution! I almost never use Alexandrines, myself, so that's probably why I was too dull to catch it.

It's an interesting issue--when is the use of that line elegant?

Typical Frost, he repeats the form in the exact same place so that stupid critics like me won't think he's messing up.

Very enlightening.

Thanks!

Tony

[Clive Watkins]

It’s interesting to listen to Frost’s 1956 HarperAudio recording of this poem. (The link is below.) It seems to me he reads the first line with five beats but line 11 with six. Of course, how you enunciate and how you hear a line can be widely different: metre happens in the head, not the ear, as Frost well knew.

Clive

http://town.hall.org/radio/HarperAud...harp_01_ITH.au

[Roger Slater]

Interesting observation, but I continue to hear the first line as pentameter. Though 99.9% of the time you can't have three unstressed syllables in a row, because the ear will promote the one in the middle, this strikes me as one of the 0.1% exceptions. It feels unnatural for me to promote "on" rather than just to allow a rapid-fire burst of three unstressed syllables. I'm not sure why this is, but perhaps this is an occasion where natural speech rhythms overwhelm the metrical metronome.

[W.F. Lantry]

Originally Posted by Tony Barnstone

I'm struggling to convince my students that Frost did not screw up, but I'm not entirely convinced myself.

Thoughts?

Thoughts? Yes, he screwed up. Why expect perfection? At least with baseball players, we don't make excuses for them: "Yeah, he whiffed at that strike, but his swing was perfect!"

Try to make sense of this mush:

Harold’s associated in his mind with Latin.

Really? Or this:

Which showed how much good school had ever done him.

Pure applesauce, as they say. And yet someone will come in, say the lines are perfect and purposeful, and we'll all nod and say 'Oh, I get it now.'

Maybe. But sometimes people just whiff. On the other hand, within the last few months, I found myself quoting these lines in serious conversation:

“Home is the place where, when you have to go there,
They have to take you in.”

“I should have called it
Something you somehow haven’t to deserve.”

Not pentameter. Useful nonetheless. Doesn't matter that he spent most of the game striking out. He hit that one, alright.

Best,

Bill

[Roger Slater]

I have a problem with calling it "screwed up." It is what it is. To me (and lots and lots of people) it sounds great.

I've never been able to hear "to be, or not to be, that is the question" as pentameter, but I still think it's a pretty good line.

"Hired Man" is a totally great poem.

[Susan McLean]

My guess is that most of us are hearing the lines as we say them and not taking into consideration the rather clipped New England diction that Frost was hearing them in. For example, if the speaker is mashing those unaccented syllables together, three syllables could sound more like two:

MA-ry / sat MUS /ing on th' / LAMP FLAME /at th' TA-ble

Though it is harder to elide, if you don't emphasize "thing" in the following line, you could mash it so that it sounds like a line with five beats.

WHEN was I EVer ANything but KIND to HIM?

We know that Frost liked loose iambics, and I am guessing he wrote what sounded right to his ear, in the rhythms he was familiar with from everyday speech. It seems unlikely that he just missed that he had a hexameter line, though it could certainly be that he just decided to throw one in here and there.

Susan

[Gregory Dowling]

During a 1960 reading of the poem Frost admitted to the metrical error. It's mentioned in the book Robert Frost: A Living Voice. I don't have it to hand but I seem to remember he simply admitted that he miscounted.

[W.F. Lantry]

Originally Posted by Gregory Dowling

I don't have it to hand but I seem to remember he simply admitted that he miscounted.

This makes me like him just a little bit more...