[R. S. Gwynn]

Fussell and The Methodist Hymnal, 1939 ed.

[R. S. Gwynn]

https://wordwisehymns.com/2010/02/27...etrical-index/

[Phil Wood]

Originally Posted by Catherine Chandler

Steele. Far and away.

Yes, very much enjoyed his book.

[Clive Watkins]

I strongly recommend Derek Attridge’s book on metre, Poetic Rhythm: An Introduction (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1995). This is the most coherent description I know of the way in which traditional English metres operate, better, for instance, than Steele’s book, which in my view is overlong and in some respects betrays inconsistencies. It is based on a clear account of the relevant phonetic features of English. Attridge also has useful things to say about non-metrical verse.

Another useful background book is John Thompson’s The Founding of English Metre (Routledge and Kegan Paul and Columbia University Press, 1961). This is a compact and scholarly account of the emergence in the sixteenth century of what we now recognize as accentual-syllabic verse. Copies may be available through libraries and on the internet.

But, as always, what is useful to you is what you put to good use.

Clive Watkins

[R. S. Gwynn]

I tend to mistrust books on meter by non-poets. Even Fussell makes some obvious mistakes. I doubt that any text on meter has ever made anyone a better poet. Learning how to read and write metrically is much better than debating systems of scansion. Tim's books, for instance, are very good, very thorough, but all I could do was agree with most of what he had to say.

[Aaron Poochigian]

Sam, I agree with you, of course. I just need a book to teach from, to put on a syllabus.

[R. S. Gwynn]

I've used Frye, which students like. Also Alfred Corn's The Poem's Heartbeat and John Whitworth's book. In a prosody class, I use the first couple of chapters of Fussell, which seems to be out of print. I like Fussell's discussion of the four types of meter, types of scansion, and the metrical feet, though I usually tell students to skip the remarks on quantitative meter, which are largely irrelevant to English poetry. One thing I've found useful is to pass out, early on, a list of some multisyllabic English words, asking the students to count the number of syllables and mark the primarily-stressed syllable in each. This is useful in talking about stress, elision (frightening), English pronunciation vs. American (garage, laboratory), regional pronunciation, "hovering" stress (bedroom), syncope, etc. I do find that many students cannot divide words into syllables or understand phonetic spellings in a dictionary. I limit graphic scansion exercises to iambic pentameter, emphasizing listening over looking.

[Aaron Poochigian]

Thanks for your advice. I will put it to use.

[RCL]

Of all the handbooks and teaching texts I’ve seen, only Steele's (“All the Fun”) makes clear the occurrence of promoted and demoted stresses (not accounting for that, Fussell and others make some strange readings).

[Mark Blaeuer]

It may be too long for your class, Aaron, but I'd like to mention Sound and Form in Modern Poetry. Thirty-some years ago I read--and still own--a reprint of Harvey Gross's first edition and really enjoyed it. I see that Robert McDowell (of Story Line) has now expanded the book. The original subtitle was "A Study of Prosody from Thomas Hardy to Robert Lowell," but the Amazon listing for the second edition shows that it also deals with numerous living poets. The relevance of this resource to students, I'd think, is that it provides abundant examples of how metrics can reinforce (or cut against) meaning. I'm sure other manuals do the same, but I just thought this one belongs in the discussion. By the way, Gross had volumes of his own poetry published as well.