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04-25-2001, 02:39 PM
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Join Date: Apr 2001
Location: The deli's refrigerated display case.
Posts: 117
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I was told this is the proper forum to post this
discussion. While much of this is written as statements,
I would love to hear other's opinions, especially
those differing with my ideas.
I seem to have a more rigid concept of meter
than many of the posters on this forum, including
the moderators. Maybe it's is my scientific
background, I'm always looking for patterns.
Maybe I'm strange, but an anapest in an otherwise
iambic line grates on me a little. Trochees and
spondees are fine; they break up the rhythm nicely,
except at the end of the line.
Also, dropping the first unstressed syllable in an
iambic line seems OK to me; the single stressed syllable
still feels like a foot. However, when the unstressed
syllable is dropped in the middle of the line, the
single stressed syllable feels like toes without a heel,
sort of unbalanced.
Feminine endings are nice in a rhyming poem, but they
annoy me slightly in an unrhymed iambic poem, when I'm
expecting the line to end on that hard syllable.
I confess my ignorance, my knowledge of meter is
mostly self-taught, mechanical rather than scholarly.
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04-26-2001, 12:18 AM
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Member
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Join Date: Sep 2000
Location: Massachusetts
Posts: 3,401
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"I confess my ignorance, my knowledge of meter is
mostly self-taught, mechanical rather than scholarly."
Meter's merely meter. That's not to say that it's not crucial, but it's the roadbed, not the surface, the metronome, not the music.
The variations on whatever meter you choose to suit your content make up the RHYTHM of the poem. Rhythm is the play upon the meter, and when that play achieves nuances and surprises, MUSIC that arises from, ie., seems inevitable because of the meter, you have made meter work for you.
Conventionally, iambs and trochees work nicely together, and they work in accordance with line length, ie., a pentameter will give you more amplitude for substitution or "permissive trochaic variation."
However, you'd be wise to take advantage of the duration and quality of syllables when writing: you should want your poems to sing, to include, in effect, grace notes, rather than to sound mechanical or scholarly.
So, so much is in your ear. Be sure: you ear's peculiar. And your song's in your peculiar. Trust your ear: you have one or you don't.
Bob
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04-26-2001, 05:07 AM
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Lariat Emeritus
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Join Date: Oct 2000
Location: Fargo ND, USA
Posts: 13,816
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I watched Gioia give a meter course to beginners and he told them don't make any substitutions except first foot trochees in I.P. Probably good advice for beginners, but how we'd be impoverished if great poets followed it. The greats can make meter do anything, and the best way to develop your ear is to memorize them. Let's take fem line ends in unrhymed lines:
"When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi
Troubles my sight. Somewhere in sands of the desert"
Someone told me The Second Coming is Yeats' greatest free verse! Of course it's hypermetric blank verse.
Anapestic substitutions are fine in what Frost called "loose iambics." But they require metrical context.
"Grief may have thought it was grief.
Care may have thought it was care.
But neither one was the thief
Of his raven color of hair."
You've rightly pointed out that an acephalic (or catalectic) beginning is fine, but sn unstressed syllable can also be gracefully dropped in the middle if it follows a full caesura, preferably punctuated.
Pyrrhic/spondees can work anywhere in the line:
"We grieve for the TWELVE TREES we lost last night,
pillars of our community, OLD FRIENDS"
Let me say for the umpteenth time that All the Fun's in How You Say a Thing (Ohio University Press) is our definitive new prosody manual. In it Tim Steele analyzes every conceivable permutation of the iambic line, shows how the Greats can get away with murder and how you can too!
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04-27-2001, 10:02 AM
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Member
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Join Date: Apr 2001
Location: The deli's refrigerated display case.
Posts: 117
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Thanks for the response with various examples; it was helpful.
Maybe I'll stick to the beginner's rules for myself; it's hard to see how MY verse could be impoverished by not breaking rules. However, the Steele book would probably be a good investment in my enjoyment of prosody.
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04-27-2001, 10:59 AM
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Lariat Emeritus
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Join Date: Oct 2000
Location: Fargo ND, USA
Posts: 13,816
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Dear B, In its context your line from your earlier post:
"My verse tends to the two-thirds pun" has a brilliant medial substitution. You've a trochee in position two, which beginners shouldn't try to do! From what little I've seen of your verse, its great merit is a sure sense of lineation, which utterly escapes most practitioners. No, don't confine yourelf to beginner's rules or light verse for that matter. Post something ambitious on Metrical III, and let us tear it apart.
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04-27-2001, 02:36 PM
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Member
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Join Date: Apr 2001
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I'm having such fun as Baloney the clown; I'm not sure I want to post one of my serious attempts at poetry. I don't mind being ripped up by the egg-spurts, but I'm likely to give myself away.
I can handle basic meter and simple forms, it's poetry that's hard.
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05-01-2001, 02:26 PM
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Master of Memory
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Join Date: Jan 2001
Location: Claremont CA USA
Posts: 570
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Tim, one quibble. In the first line you
quote, it's certainly an ionic (or what you
call a pyrrhic/spondee), but I would diagree
that there's one in the next line. Admittedly
"old" is more strongly stressed than "-ty"
but nevertheless the ear expects the accent on
"-ty" and in fact that's where it falls. It's
what I would call, if I ever get around to
writing my treatise on prosody, an inverted
iamb---when the first syllable is strong and
the second weak but still accented. For instance:
in
Is cries countless, cries like dead letters sent
the second foot is clearly a trochee. But in
Like storm clouds in a troubled sky
although "clouds' is much the more important
word and probably more strongly voiced, the
accent still falls on "in" and the line is a
straight iambic, one ruffled slightly by that
inverted iamb (or whatever you want to call it).
Wouldn't you agree?
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05-03-2001, 04:16 AM
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Lariat Emeritus
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Join Date: Oct 2000
Location: Fargo ND, USA
Posts: 13,816
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No, I don't agree, but everybody agrees that my scansion is highly idiosyncratic.
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05-10-2001, 03:10 PM
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Master of Memory
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Join Date: Jan 2001
Location: Claremont CA USA
Posts: 570
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Tim---sometimes idiosyncratic. But there are
distinctions. (Of course they would only matter
to madmen like ourselves.) I would agree for
example that one could conceivably read
that Justice line with a trochee in the second
foot (although I think that the iambic cadence
is much to be preferred). But in the earlier
instance, "...community, OLD FRIENDS" I would
argue that to read it as ionic is to be forced
to distort the language slightly, not only because
the suppression of the accent on ty is rather
unnatural, but because the caesura interrupts the
movement slightly. What do you think?
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