[Richard Wakefield]

This might be better placed on the Musing forum, but I'll try it here. I'd like to hear how some of you scan Frost's "The Span of Life":

The old dog barks backwards without getting up.
I can remember when he was a pup.

My own way of placing the stresses is at odds with the way the editor of a popular college text places them, and I'm curious to see who our accomplished metricists agree with.
RPW

[Simon Hunt]

The old DOG barks BACKwards withOUT GETting UP.
I can reMEMber WHEN he WAS a PUP. (i.e. "I" is stressed)

That's how I hear it. A bit raggedy. Who's this Frost joker anyhow? I may not be an "accomplished metricist," but sheesh!



[This message has been edited by Simon Hunt (edited May 08, 2006).]

[R. Nemo Hill]

The OLD dog barks BACKwards withOUT getting UP
I can reMEMber when HE was a PUP

That's how I read it, anapestically.

Nemo

[This message has been edited by R. Nemo Hill (edited May 08, 2006).]

[Peter Chipman]

I'm with Nemo on this one.

[Mike Slippkauskas]

First line: The OLD dog barks BACKwards WITHout GETting UP.
Second line regular pentameter withinitial trochee:
I can reMEMber WHEN he WAS a PUP.

Now, as always in Frost, keep this grid distantly in mind while saying the couplet aloud as naturally as possible.

Slipp


[This message has been edited by Mike Slippkauskas (edited May 09, 2006).]

[Chris Childers]

If this came in a pentameter context I'm sure I would read it Mike Slipp's way; but Mike is bringing in, perhaps correctly, outside expectations of Frost in order to temper what seems to me, along with Nemo and others, the strongly anapestic rhythms of the couplet. For me, the only ambiguities arise at the beginning of the first line, when we don't know whether to expect a pentameter grid or something else, and we don't get a clear or un-knotty rhythm until we get to "BACKwards." The effect for me is that "old dog" ends up being somehow one unit of stress, with, as it were, the stress (from primary iambic expectation) being shifted from "old" to "dog" as we realize the "back" in "backwards" is stronger than "barks," then shifting back retroactively as the anapestic rhythm takes hold. Then, if you tend to pronounce "withOUT" as an iamb rather than a trochee, it makes the end of line 1 entirely anapestic, which slides you nicely into the anapests of the second line. I would need a pentameter grid already in my head from the context in order to read "WITHout," which would then condition my reading of line 2, to stress "when" rather than "he." (Neither is an obvious candidate over the other, except from the surrounding rhythms.)

Is it true that Randall Jarrell when a professor at UNC spent in his classes a month or more discussing these very two lines? I think I heard this from an old high school teacher of mine who was in his class. What did he have to say?

Chris

[This message has been edited by Chris Childers (edited May 09, 2006).]

[Henry Quince]

I read it the same as Nemo. Anapestic with variation at start of lines, as is common.

[Mike Slippkauskas]

All,

Could not both readings be correct, or rather the difference between them be sophistical? In the iambic reading (with one anapest in the opening line) the relative weights of the feet produce lines with four strong stresses each. This may be extra-textual, but didn't Frost somewhere say he knew two meters, iambic and loose iambic?

Michael Slipp

[Richard Wakefield]

My own reading of it is anapestic, with some ordinary variations at the beginnings of the lines. It isn't an easy scan, though. To my ear, it has a certain herky-jerky cadence that fits the subject rather nicely.

RPW

[R. Nemo Hill]

I can read it Mike's way, but only if I put a violent caesura in each line, which I would not naturally do as the lines lay now unless there were some insistent punctuation there to so guide me.

The OLD dog barks BACKward -- WITHout GETting UP--
I can reMEMber...WHEN he WAS a PUP.

If it was written that way, with the closing clause of each line broken off by punctuation, I might tend towards reading it according to Mike's template.

Nemo