[jasonhuff]

I finished chapter nine in western wind, one of the chapters on rhythm. One of the exercises at the end talks about changing the line lengths in Marvell's "To His Coy Mistress." I'm wondering how you decide on line lengths (there are just so many considerations you have to take in when writing a poem). What's right for a poem? I tried the exercise, and for me, I didn't really notice a difference in 'crispness' between a four foot or five foot line. I did when dropping to a two or three foot line. Why do you suppose it is that shorter lines are faster? Do you think that because we reach the end so quickly that we give the poem a certain momentum that speeds up? Would that be why light verse tends to be shorter line? (And are there any light poems that are long line lenghts? serious poems with short line lengths?) With me, once I get past lines of six feet, it doesn't seem to slow down much as the lines get longer. I'm just not sure if it is my untrained ear that doesn't notice the more subtle differences or if this is the norm. Also, I found that when the poem was dropped down to monometer it seemed to become slower than before. Maybe it is because I tend to read monometer as choppy. I'm looking for your thoughts on this, because it was a very interesting exercise, and it has me thinking about line lenghts. I've tended to arbitrarily pick my line lengths, and I now see that I need to put much more thought into them. How do you decide?

jason

[RCL]

Jason, here's an Emily Dickinson poem I use to teach students that line length substantially contributes to a poem's pace and meaning:

After great pain, a formal feeling comes--
The Nerves sit ceremonious, like Tombs--
The stiff Heart questions was it He, that bore,
And Yesterday, or Centuries before?

The Feet, mechanical, go round--
Of Ground, or Air, or Ought--
A Wooden Way
Regardless grown,
A Quartz contentment, like a stone--

This is the Hour of Lead--
Remembered, if outlived,
As Freezing persons, recollect the Snow--
First--Chill--then Stupor--then the letting go--

I read it as regular iambic throughout as it unfolds the speaker's emotional/physical pain: the static first stanza a very formal iambic pentameter (some dissonance in line 1); the second, describing action, is tetrameter/trimiter/dimeter/tetrameter; the third, trimiter/trimeter, and coming to formal closure, recovers with pentameter/pentameter. She also maintains a regular rhyme scheme in 1 and 3, but mixes it up in 2. Those are the bones; I won't do the fleshed-out fifty minutes; but this may help some.

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Ralph

[This message has been edited by RCL (edited January 10, 2002).]

[David Mason]

Ralph's example from Dickinson is perfect. You can also find issues of line length in that wee piece of mine on Tennyson that Tim posted, and line length is so important in a number of George Herbert poems, and of course in Arnold's "Dover Beach." But the question you repeated is the one I'm not sure I have a generalized answer for--how does one choose one's line lengths? One can talk for a long time about how the hexameters ending a Spenserian stanza slow and aggrandize the pace of the thing, how Skelton's short lines seem especially suited to lightness but aren't always entirely light, how hudibrastics were the choice for Auden's "New Year Letter" rather than heroic couplets. Auden argued that Pope's heroic couplets were too inclined to closure, less inclined to enjambment than shorter lines would be, so he thought hudibrastics better suited to sustaining an argument rather than writing aphorisms. I see his point, but think Pope was pretty good at sustaining arguments too.

In truth, I don't think you can always know what line length to try, especially if you aren't working in a fixed stanza pattern. You can only try some drafts in a given length, then ask yourself if you've found the right dimension for the thing. Shorter lines often work for comedy, longer lines for statliness, but we can all think of exceptions to this. While sometimes such radical changes ruin a revision rather than helping it, the exercise of simply trying out a different line length for a poem can often pay dividends.

I'm fond of Dickinson's way of starting with a set pattern, but allowing thought and emotion to carry her into variations in rhyme or line, as Ralph points out. I'm trying a bit of that myself these days, in my own odd way. But you've expressed uncertainty about writing in meter in earlier notes, and it might be wise to try writing stanzas with a fixed line length for a while, or fixed pattern of lengths, as a way of training yourself to be more aware of measures. Don't despair. Hopkins looked at poems by the young Yeats and said he had no ear for meter. It's not always something that comes naturally, and takes a lot of practice. One of the remarkable things about Yeats as a poet is how he drilled himself, willed himself to be a poet through hard, hard work over decades. He's a good model in that respect.

[nyctom]

Ralph: Why do I wonder if any of us tried to mix feet like that we would get, let's just say, critiqued for it. LOL.

I would be very interested in hearing the whole 50 minutes if the lecture is in written form. If that is the case, I would be glad to send you my email address.

David: that is a very encouraging thing to hear. Thank you for posting it.

Tom

[David Mason]

There's one other extremely important point I forgot to make. A lot of people assume that to write pentameter or hexameter is easy, but when you look at such lines by many poets you will notice how slack they are, like telephone wires slung between two poles. To write longer lines that maintain their charge and drive is a special skill, and we usually don't begin with it. Tim Murphy's very compelling solution was to train himself to write in what he eventually called iambic timeter--very short lines, often two or three feet per line--because in shorter lines he could maintain, even increase, the level of verbal energy he was after. Tim would be the first to admit that not everything can be done in short lines, even in short poems, which are his metier, in general, but part of what makes him such a distinctive writer is that he realized what the choice of line meant to the verbal energy of his poems, and he chose a method of attack that few other poets have chosen.

Now go out at read a book by Charles Wright or CK Williams, and notice how often they are slack, slack, slack, though of course in free verse. Both capable poets, they publish too much and allow themselves to lapse into pointless wordiness. Your assignment is to avoid that.

[RCL]

David, very well said.

Tom, I'm flattered, but haven't "written" a lecture for twenty years. Just work with the text, heavily annotated, in a give-and-take discussion that takes us into the image patterns of static and dynamic (stones of varying value and connotation, for instance), robotic responses to pain, the possibility of "He" being Christ (as he walked His "wooden way")or a lost lover, uses of metaphor and simile, and, of course, whether the pain expressed is physical or emotional, and if the analogy of the two is apt. Even those damned dashes! And Caps!! And how they affect a reader's reaction. New ideas pop up each time I teach it--or it teaches me, as do the students. Get this. I'd taught Frost's "Stopping by Woods" so long I didn't think anything new could come up, but a student recently pointed out that "promises" is the only three-syllable word in the poem--carries the heaviest weight for the speaker. Duh.

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Ralph

[jasonhuff]

David,

Nice answer. And it is great to hear about Yeats. I've always used Frost, Stevens, and Hope as my models, though who didn't really get going until later in life, but now I have Yeats to look to. All great poets. And all give us hope. I am having a bit of a time learning meter, but I'm working on it. How bad was Yeats when he started out?

I have one of Charles Wright's books, but I haven't read it yet. But I've read many examples of pointless wordiness (including in my own pieces) and dragging the poem on far too long. The good thing is that I don't worry about publishing that much. I mean I want my poems to be worthy of publication and not just published to see it in print. One step at a time you know.

Jason

[Roger Slater]

Hopkins' statement notwithstanding, it's hard for me to understand how anyone could say that Yeats wasn't good at meter from the start. Maybe I'm not familiar with versions of his early poems that he didn't edit in his old age? Or maybe I'm not looking early enough. Isn't Innisfree an early poem? Am I not to admire its meter? And "When you are old"? I think you'd be hard pressed to find anything actually bad in his meter, even early on. As he aged, he got even better, not just in meter but especially in subject matter and subtlety, but I've always been amazed to note that he still sounds like the same man from page one to the end. That infectious cadence and rhythm. In fact, many fine poets were infected by it. Lots of Roethke, especially early on, sounds a bit like Yeats. These days metrists are more likely to sound like Frost, I suppose, and the difference is remarkable. (Both great poets, of course).

[jasonhuff]

Now Roger, I was getting my hopes up...

[David Mason]

Most of the early poems as you know them now were revised later in life, and virtually all of them were improved. The only one he wrecked in revision was "Brown Penny." The version in the Finneran edition of his work is inferior to versions printed earlier. Innisfree was written in London in 1890, so WBY was 25 years old, Hopkins's disparaging remark long behind him.