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  #21  
Unread 05-14-2016, 06:31 AM
Matt Q Matt Q is offline
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Roger Slater View Post
It is simply not "sneering" to notice out loud when someone purports to write authoritatively about meter but mangles a simple scansion.
Roger,

Why do you say she has mangled the scansion here?

If this were a poem in (loose) trochaic pentameter then her scansion would be correct and yours wrong.

If this were a poem in iambic pentameter, then her scansion would wrong and yours would be right.

However, the poem is clearly in neither. It's free verse. There is no established metre here. So in what sense, then, is one scansion right and the other wrong?

-Matt
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  #22  
Unread 05-15-2016, 12:45 PM
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John Whitworth John Whitworth is offline
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It is a poem in (loose)iambic pentameter as used by Jacobean dramatists as I said IMHO yer know.
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  #23  
Unread 05-15-2016, 08:07 PM
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R. S. Gwynn R. S. Gwynn is offline
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Put some of the short lines together and there are more pentameters. I don't think it's an especially good poem for Merwin, who has done a similar theme better before.

In the Winter of My Thirty-Eighth Year
BY W. S. MERWIN

It sounds unconvincing to say When I was young
Though I have long wondered what it would be like
To be me now No older at all it seems from here (hexameter)
As far from myself as ever (trimeter)

Walking in fog and rain and seeing nothing
I imagine all the clocks have died in the night
Now no one is looking I could choose my age
It would be younger I suppose so I am older
It is there at hand I could take it (trimeter/tetrameter?)
Except for the things I think I would do differently (hexameter)
They keep coming between they are what I am
They have taught me little I did not know when I was young (heptameter)

There is nothing wrong with my age now probably
It is how I have come to it (trimeter)
Like a thing I kept putting off as I did my youth

There is nothing the matter with speech (trimeter)
Just because it lent itself To my uses

Of course there is nothing the matter with the stars
It is my emptiness among them (tetrameter)
While they drift farther away in the invisible morning

Very strange that eratosphere's spell-check automatically corrects "trimeter" to "trimester."
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  #24  
Unread 05-16-2016, 06:23 PM
Siham Karami Siham Karami is offline
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If "free verse isn’t entirely without meter—rather, its meter just doesn’t have a consistent, discernable pattern," then I think we can rest assured the universe itself is metrical too...we just haven't scanned it right, or completely, yet.
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  #25  
Unread 05-16-2016, 07:40 PM
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RCL RCL is offline
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Among the Free and Not So Free, the Lumpen Poetariat may be a very lost cause!
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  #26  
Unread 05-22-2016, 07:53 AM
Chris O'Carroll Chris O'Carroll is offline
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Hazelton totally nails it. We should try writing in meter and rhyme because that will make us better at writing free verse. Also, we should have lots of sex to improve our dancing, drink wine to refine our palates for coffee and tea, and eat fruits and vegetables to enhance our barbecue chef skills. We should never do anything simply because it’s delightful in its own right.

(We’ve all seen articles like this before, making the case that some practice with formal verse is a good workout even for poets who expect to write mostly free verse. Interesting to imagine the flip side of that record. What might a formalist teacher say about requiring students to practice free verse, to ditch rhyme and meter in order to discover something about other resources of the language?)
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  #27  
Unread 05-22-2016, 09:22 AM
Max Goodman Max Goodman is offline
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Chris O'Carroll View Post
We should try writing in meter and rhyme because that will make us better at writing free verse.
Yes. That's a short-sighted and offensive idea.

Quote:
Originally Posted by Chris O'Carroll View Post
Also, we should have lots of sex to improve our dancing, drink wine to refine our palates for coffee and tea, and eat fruits and vegetables to enhance our barbecue chef skills.
I don't agree with the suggestion that, in addition, the article is wrong about the help free versers would get from practicing with rhyme and meter.

I hope, in fact, that the article's advice is too obvious to be helpful to most free versers, that it's like advising us that having sex can help enlarge our families, drinking wine can relax us, and eating fruits and vegetables can improve our health. Such advice ignores the inherent pleasure and value of the activities themselves, and it would tell few readers anything they didn't already know, but it wouldn't be inaccurate.
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  #28  
Unread 05-22-2016, 04:25 PM
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Michael F Michael F is offline
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To riff on Frost’s famous simile, I’ve always thought of poetry like the game of tennis in that there are many shots: rhyme, meter, quality of thought, trope (which is related to, but not the same as, quality of thought), alliteration, allusion, etc. If you’re going to omit certain shots, then the other shots need to be that much better for you to be good.

It’s like tennis players who are mostly a serve and a forehand: can they win Wimbledon? Yes. But those two shots have to be HUGE.
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  #29  
Unread 05-22-2016, 06:16 PM
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Andrew Mandelbaum Andrew Mandelbaum is offline
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Chris O'Carroll View Post
Hazelton totally nails it. We should try writing in meter and rhyme because that will make us better at writing free verse. Also, we should have lots of sex to improve our dancing, drink wine to refine our palates for coffee and tea, and eat fruits and vegetables to enhance our barbecue chef skills. We should never do anything simply because it’s delightful in its own right.
Speaking of short sighted and offensive.... Nice thread. Only a willful misreading of her intent can support the sneers spread through this thread. What she is doing is understanding her audience and her community and speaking from close proximity instead of stomping her feet on the shores of a small pond many, many miles away, where no one who doesn't already agree can even hear you.

Last edited by Andrew Mandelbaum; 05-22-2016 at 06:19 PM.
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  #30  
Unread 05-23-2016, 02:17 AM
Matt Q Matt Q is offline
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Hazelton says: "Writing in form is one of the best ways for poets to practice technique. Even if you have no desire to be a “formal” poet (and no one says you must choose a side!), the skills you learn by grappling with form are skills that will serve you well in free verse."

I think you have to work pretty hard to take offence at someone who's saying that the best way to practice your poetic technique, whatever your style, is to write in form.

Remember also, that if you are a formal poet, you probably don't need to be persuaded to practice writing in form, and this article is not aimed at you.

-Matt
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