Bruce,

That's fascinating; I, too, have had that poem by heart for decades, and never once thought to scan it out (why would I?) and, yes, it is damned trimeter isn't it? Anapestic trimeter! I always knew there was something different about it...

Thanks for bringing this one up!

Another Frost that uses some similar metrics is the "line-storm clouds" one. But I think that one's more dominatel tet... Got to scan it...

Robt.

Thanks Bruce. Another great Frost hypermetric trimeter is They Were Welcome To Their Belief.

edited to di. I am so sorry.
Janet

[This message has been edited by Janet Kenny (edited May 26, 2004).]

Emily:

The Only News I know
Is Bulletins all Day
From Immortality.

The Only Shows I see—
Tomorrow and Today—
Perchance Eternity—

The Only One I meet
Is God—The Only Street—
Existence—This traversed

If Other News there be—
Or Admirabler Show—
I'll tell it You—

Janet,

it reads a lot more like tet than di to me; the line breaks would be hideous in many places if it were di. Kiddy book designers are notorious for breaking lines to fill space. It all begs the question; why is a di/tet poem on a tri thread? jejeje...

(robt)

I'm so sorry! I'll edit it out and replant it on the di thread. I am burning the candle at both ends and in the middle too.
My deepest apologies.

Janet

Bruce

Speaking of reaching "closure" by ending trimeter stanzas with a line of dimeter, Emily Dickinson is most impressive with that (and all kinds of mixes of dimeter/trimeter/tet/pent).

[This message has been edited by Terese Coe (edited June 04, 2004).]

By the way, next time someone tells you that you can't use an identity in place of a rhyme, tell them, "Oh yeah, how about wither/whither in 'Reluctance'." But be prepared to hear them answer back, "Oh yeah, but you're not Frost."



[This message has been edited by Roger Slater (edited May 27, 2004).]

My one trimeter, another kids poem:

IF I RULED THE WORLD

My feet? They would go shoeless.
My sister? She would poo less.
My brother? He would drool less.
(They both would boo-hoo-hoo less).
My classmates? They’d be cruel less
(and treat me like a fool less).
My teachers? They would rule less.
My hair? I would shampoo less.
My folks? Not quite so clueless
(and certainly uncool less).
My chores? More than a few less
(and not just one or two less).
My homework? I would do less
(since I would go to school less).


[This message has been edited by Roger Slater (edited May 27, 2004).]

This is still one of my favorite threads here.

The Auden is superb, of course.

Robert Mezey's trimeter, "My Mother," is hilarious! If anyone can scan it in, they should; it's a long one to type.

Here's one I wrote in 2002, having gotten a glimmer of inspiration from Frost.

The Whale

I looked out from a beach
a whale looked back ashore
astonished that we each
had looked the day before.

It’s odd to think the whale
has not moved on, though free.
And when he might inhale
is more than I can see.

Perhaps beneath the deep
it isn’t thought ironic
to swim while one’s asleep.
Perhaps he’s catatonic.


Terese

Alan mentioned Robert Francis, and there is an excellent thread on him at Mastery: http://www.ablemuse.com/erato/ubbhtm...L/000233.html. He is a magnificent trimetrist, and here are two of his poems:

A Boy's November

I can see farther now,
Now that the leaves are few.
November strips the bough,
And lets a boy peek through.
The ground seems tall somehow.
The far-off world looks new.
Tell me, can the ground grow?
Or is it I that grew?

The Mouse Whose Name Is Time

The mouse whose name is Time
Is out of sound and sight.
He nibbles at the day
And nibbles at the night.

He nibbles at the summer
Till all of it is gone.
He nibbles at the seashore,
He nibbles at the moon.

Yet no man not a seer,
No woman not a sibyl
Can ever ever hear
Or see him nibble, nibble.

And whence or how he comes
And how or where he goes
Nobody now remembers,
Nobody living knows.

The EfH gained his facility with meter and rhyme through parody, as in The Souse Whose Name Is Tim, where I scribble, scribble, scribble.

Ah, Frost’s Reluctance! Though I’ve never learned it by heart, it has long been a favourite, especially that last stanza, which I memorized without effort on the first reading.

Whether “wither/whither” is identity, strictly speaking, might be debated by those who pronounce “whither” as hwither. But next time I want to use a word like “flower” as a monosyllable and I’m told it’s two, I shall certainly refer the critter to Frost’s “The flowers of the witch hazel wither”!

About half way through the writing of Very Far North, I realized that a shocking number of the poems were eight line trimeters. This being open mic, here are a few:

Little Heart Butte

Grouse peck at its breast
and pheasants at its foot.
Buffalo berries west
and Russian olives east
girdle this shortgrass butte,
this table set for a feast.
I, the unbidden guest,
have little heart to shoot.

The Dead Poet

At last the path runs straight
from his hovel to the skies
and the bolted postern gate
of the Western Paradise
where seven times seven
Immortals judge a throng,
admitting some to heaven
for the pittance of a song.

No Place For Trees

A few scrub oaks survive
droughts, blizzards, and disease.
Spurge and loosestrife thrive.
This is no place for trees.

Let the returning bison,
gathering like a storm,
darken the bare horizon
of a land unfit to farm.

The Watch

When I leave this little ship
(which I can ill-afford)
spring-lined in a slip,
I leave my love aboard.

If the weather is in doubt
he scans the sky for signs.
When the spring tide runs out,
love will adjust my lines.

It almost seemed like the eight line trimeter had become for me what the sonnet is to Catherine or Alicia or Rhina or David, a stanza in which an entire poem could be organized, a space which it seemed natural for my thoughts to fill. In the new book they will be far fewer, although We Creatures which we just finished up at Deep End, consists of four of them. In fact, there are more sonnets than short trimeters!

Hate

How much do we enjoy it?
As much as we employ it.

Just discovered this thread.

Tim (or any other tri expert lurking) I have been fiddling with the short-liners for a little while, and I would love to know what I need to do with things like this. (Apart from the obvious, that is ;)


North Wind


There is an awful ache
when north winds shake the blind

to end the winter's truce
with air-raid-wails of pine.

And hills are slapped like cheeks
that cannot turn away

but must endure the shame
of being turned that way.

And seas are lashed in salt
with wounds of wind's design

and life is such an ache
when north winds shake the blind.

============




------------------
Mark Allinson

I like the shake ache internals, Mark. I would eliminate every "and" that begins a line. Nothing wrong with an acephalic five syllable trimeter line. Varies the rhythm, and breathes life into the composition. What we seek isn't necessarily strict accentual syllabic counts, but live rhythms. Finally, I don't like the ign/ ind slants, and I think you could make all your lines rhyme. Look at the trims on the thread, and you won't find much abcb. Here's Alicia's favorite Murphy poem, like yours written in couplets:

The Last Sodbusters
Wibaux, Montana, 1907

“Rain follows the plough!”
the pamphleteers proclaim.

Does grass follow the cow
or wind, the weathervane?

Care furrows the brow
and bows the straightest frame.

Thistles follow the plow,
and hail threshes the grain.

I'm not suggesting you employ quadruple rhyme, just observing that you should elevate your sights in your employment of rhyme, which is the weakest aspect of this draft.

One of the things I was hoping would be brought out more in this thread was particulars about what effects work best in this type of metrical pattern-- with close analysis of poems using them. This has been the most useful piece of information I've gotten from this thread, and I hope to see more of it.

Oh, this is what I mean:

I would eliminate every "and" that begins a line. Nothing wrong with an acephalic five syllable trimeter line. Varies the rhythm, and breathes life into the composition. What we seek isn't necessarily strict accentual syllabic counts, but live rhythms.{...}Look at the trims on the thread, and you won't find much abcb.


That's good stuff.

Thanks, Tom. As you know, I'm not much of a critter; and in fact with all the postings of Frost and Housman and Francis, etc., I'm just trying to "show, not tell." I think both these threads have been at a disadvantage because the critique boards are the place to improve poems. I do very much like your couplet, very JVC! These discussions are pretty much petering out, and I'm pleased to tell one and all that my next guest is the sterling young British poet, Helena Nelson. We will be discussing the po scene Over There, Britain and her adopted Scotland. I shall begin her lariatcy by posting some of her verse (see the riotous Stan and Penny thread at Mastery for openers) and conducting an interview to stimulate our conversation with England's answer to Alicia Stallings.

Dear Mark

Just to add one footnote to Tim’s good observations about your attractive poem and - belatedly - one general remark about trimeter as opposed to dimeter.

“North Wind” is really one sentence and in my view should be punctuated as such. As you have it at present, the flow is broken up – ungrammatically in fact, since the clauses beginning “and hills” and “and seas” are the second and third in the series of temporal clauses of which the first begins “when north winds…”, the conjunction “when” being implied in each case. So, why not set it like this? -

There is an awful ache
when north winds shake the blind

to end the winter's truce
with air-raid-wails of pine,

and hills are slapped like cheeks
that cannot turn away

but must endure the shame
of being turned that way,

and seas are lashed in salt
with wounds of wind's design,

and life is such an ache
when north winds shake the blind.


The repetition of “and” is an essential part of the continuous construction you employ, though, as I have just said, your punctuation to some degree masks this. Certainly, you could drop some of the “and-s” – like this, perhaps…

There is an awful ache
when north winds shake the blind

to end the winter's truce
with air-raid-wails of pine.

Hills are slapped like cheeks
that cannot turn away

but must endure the shame
of being turned that way.

Seas are lashed in salt
with wounds of wind's design,

and life is such an ache
when north winds shake the blind.


…but though the prose sense is the same, the expressive feel is to my mind rather different. Dropping the conjunction creates a slightly more lapidary effect; their inclusion hurries this little ouroboros of a sentence forward ever so slightly faster. The difference is subtle, but a difference I think it is. So, it all depends on what you want to do here.

And now the general point, which I don’t think has been mentioned on this thread (or on the parallel thread about dimeter)…. I apologise if it has.

Metrically, dimeter and trimeter differ more fundamentally than the mere difference in syllable-count and number of beats might suggest. At the end of every line of trimeter there occurs a faint but quite definite “virtual beat”, something completely absent from dimeter. How far it is felt will depend on how forcefully the syntax pulls the sentence forward across the break and into the next line, but – to my ear, and I am sure from experience that I am not alone in this – it is always present and creates a brief point of resistance at the line-end. The reason for this effect lies in the inherent tendency of the language to group itself in patterns of two. (I could elaborate on this but shall excuse myself from doing so here.) Thus, the “virtual beat” completes a two + two pattern in the line.

The existence of the “virtual beat” in trimeter is what gives it what elsewhere I called its obsessive feel, a slightly incantatory quality which skilful versifiers can exploit or seek to diminish but which is always, I maintain, a tendency inherent in this line.

Anyway, Mark, just a couple of points to ponder….

Kind regards

Clive Watkins




[This message has been edited by Clive Watkins (edited June 15, 2004).]

My Mother

by Robert Mezey

My mother writes from Trenton,
a comedian to the bone
but underneath serious
and all heart. "Honey," she says,
"be a mensch and Mary too,
its no good, to worry, you
are doing the best you can
your Dad, and everyone
thinks you turned out very well
as long as you pay your bills
nobody can say a word
you can tell them, to drop dead
so save a dollar it cant
hurt—remember Frank you went
to high school with? he still lives
with his wife's mother, his wife
works, while he writes books and
did he ever sell a one,
four kids run around, naked
36 and he's never had,
you'll forgive my expression
even a pot to piss in
or a window to throw it,
such a smart boy he couldnt
read the footprints on the wall
honey you think you know all
the answers you don't, please, try,
to put some money away
believe me it wouldn't hurt,
artist, shmartist life's too short,
for that kind of, forgive me
horseshit, I know what you want,
better than you, all that counts
is to make a good living
and the best of everything
as Sholem Aleichem said,
he was a great writer did
you ever read his books dear,
you should make what he makes a year,
anyhow he says, some place
Poverty is no disgrace
but, it's no honor either
that's what I say,
love, Mother"

(The final two lines are progressively indented in the original. All other punctuation was followed closely.)

Part of the delicious humor here is unraveling the mother's meaning from what may or may not be the poet's spin on it. It's an enormous delight!

Clive, I don't hear the virtual beat at all, any more than I see dancers freeze after each measure of a waltz. In fact, when I write or read trimeter, I find myself writing and hearing in units of twelve, much like hexameters with an internal rhyme at the caesura. Aha! you will say, Caesura! And caesurae I'm deeply familiar with by having done the Wulf. Do you hear a virtual beat at the end of every dimeter half line in Beowulf, thus making it virtual hexameter, rather than accentual tetrameter? I am baffled.

Terese, Bob's is a wonderful poem, but it ain't trimeter. Bob distinguishes between metrical and non-metrical poems in his Collected by the inclusion or omission of initial caps. There are a lot of lines in this poem which have four beats.

Tim,

This is valuable advice, thank you.

Maybe it's my exposure to the 17th C., but I have this almost compulsive need to get all the syllables as well as the beats. I do see from your example that the apocopation works to increase energy, but I still resist it. I shall experiment.

The slant rhymes are uncommon for me. I usually chime like a gong, and get weary of folk suggesting I tone it down. I thought I would try for the muted chimes in this for a change. My preference is for full rhyme, and I might take your advice to use it here.

Clive,

You are so right to see the single sentence, it is so obvious now I see it. I will certainly re-punctuate as you suggest, which leaves me with the conjunctions. Again I blame the 17th C, and especially Donne, who holds the record for connectives in English poetry - av of 24/10 lines, where most have 12-18/10.

I thank you for your help.

Fascinating discussion of the "virtual beat."

------------------
Mark Allinson

Tim

Yes, I noticed the tet lines, and the di as well; hmm, you mean Robert calls this free verse?

I hope you're not putting me on. ;)

I certainly hear a virtual beat in trimeters, one that is much more marked when 3s are mixed in any combination with 4s (ballad meter or other combo), when you suddenly realize the a 4 is a fully completed 3--i.e., throwing a 4 in with 3s doesn't disturb the rhythm at all. As in Tennyson's Break, Break, Break....

Alicia, I certainly hear the missing foot in ballad stanza and its variants, but not in pure trimeter. If I as a reader were to pause at line ends, it would destroy the poem I'm reading. Nonetheless, Clive has indicated he would educate me here today!

Terese, yes, it's free verse, and a fine example of how the writer of real formal accomplishment can manipulate its rhythms.

Like Tim, I haven’t been conscious of a “virtual beat” in trimeter. Clive, on that argument — that the ear wants to “round up” the number of beats to an even number — do you hear a ghostly sixth beat at the end of every pentameter line? A ghostly eighth beat in heptameter?

I can certainly understand the point in mixed tet/tri. And I can convince myself I might (perhaps) be hearing the virtual extra beat in trimeter verse that is regularly iambic. But not where the meter is more varied iambic and anapaestic: there the rhythm seems to preclude it.

Tim, pondering your point and Clive’s about weaving longer sentences into trimeter, I embarked on an exercise and found this one coming to me easily in ten minutes last night. Does that show? ;) Will you let me get away with the one off-rhyme?


Endings

There we shall know no hurry
and there an end of strife;
there never a care or worry
will cut like a butcher’s knife,
and never a letter scare us
with death to be confronted,
nor ever a phone call tear us
apart with news unwanted:

there no more will trouble
puncture sweet pleasure’s bubble,
if pleasure indeed can last
when it is we who have passed
and gone for good and all
and others must take the call.


Henry

[This message has been edited by Henry Quince (edited June 16, 2004).]

Henry, I think this is very fine; but again, we do our serious workshopping at Deep End, where you should post this poem if you feel a need to refine it. Puncturing the bubble detracts to my ear from the gravity of the poem, which is very Hardy.

As I survey all the dimeters and trimeters posted at these open mics, I am underwhelmed and reminded just how difficult these tiny measures are to manipulate. There are exceptions: Roger's children's poems are truly superb, and Wendy is in her element. When he has time, Clive will post a scholarly piece on the virtual beat in trimeter. Meantime, I'm interviewing Helen; and we hope to have her aboard this weekend.

Tim, apologies if I’ve done the wrong thing in posting this here. I was under the impression you had invited postings of our own trimeter attempts in this open mic thread, which is full of them. Of course, I understand that you’d like to move on to the next Lariat project now.

Henry

After checking with Tim to see if open-mic posting of trimeter here is still appropriate (it is), here's my offering:


<u>Souvenirs</u>

Bullfight capes from Madrid,
Egyptian busts of stone,
a plastic Indian squid,
two flasks of Scots cologne,
French letters, Belgian beer,
chipped Russian iconettes,
a fresh-hewn stone-age spear,
dried Polish cigarettes,
fine carvings, Chinese ferns,
small clogs from Amsterdam,
Czech candles, Grecian urns,
a model German tram
...are how I spent my cash
in places picturesque.
Where should I put this trash
that home makes so grotesque?



[This message has been edited by Geertjan a.k.a. Fugwozzle (edited June 21, 2004).]

I told Fugsy that I loved the list and disliked the final quatrain, which he has now edited and improved. I'm still having problems with its syntax, the strain of the inversion and the rather tortured last line. Any suggestions out there?

Alternative final quatrian:

-- where should I put this trash?
They don't fit anywhere.
It seems I spent my cash
and bought myself despair.

Fug,

I'm not sure that this is a suitable ending either. Despair seems abit over the top.

How about something like:

Unpacking while taking stock
Of all these foreign beauties,
I regret being in hock
Over their import duties.

Good luck,
Glenn

Very nice solution, Glenn. Except, the first line runs better for me like this: "Unpacking, I take stock". I think your suggestion is a suitably light ending (yes, despair is a bit strong here). -- Geertjan

Thought about it some more. Here it is again, with a new title and a -- hopefully others think so too -- more pleasing ending:

Homeward Bound

Bullfight capes from Madrid,
Egyptian busts of stone,
a plastic Indian squid,
two flasks of Scots cologne,
French letters, Belgian beer,
chipped Russian iconettes,
a fresh-hewn stone-age spear,
dried Polish cigarettes,
fine carvings, Chinese ferns,
small clogs from Amsterdam,
Czech candles, Grecian urns,
a model German tram...
Computing what I spent
on all these foreign beauties,
I fail to circumvent
their heavy import duties.

Discovering Thom Gunn A Month Too Late

25 June 2004. Berkeley.


I only read the dead.
I love how close they stay
to current joy and dread.

I only read the dead
till Night Sweats came to bed;
I cried across the Bay.

I only read the dead.
I love how close they stay.



[This message has been edited by Clay Stockton (edited June 27, 2004).]

A recent note from Terese led me to have a look at this thread, and I'm afraid I must correct Tim's correction of Terese. "My Mother" is metrical, strictly speaking--it is in syllabics, 7-syllable lines (though I took the liberty of adding or dropping a syllable occasionally when it seemed necessary). Syllabics is usually an honorary meter in English.
The only time I really hear it is in the short lines, seven only rarely, usually five. (Elizabeth Daryush has some very beautiful lyrics in rhymed 5-syllabe lines.) Mostly it's a controlled way of writing free verse.
And another small correction: i use both initial capitals and lower case for both free verse and metrical.
Since Tim mentioned the difficulty of a villanelle in trimeter, I thought I'd copy out this short one, which I realized after I finished it must have been influenced by Robinson's great villanelle, "The House on the Hill"


NO MORE


Once they have closed the door,
That is the final day
And time will be no more.

Forget "the other shore"—
No earth, no sea, no way
Once they have closed the door,

No after, no before,
Nothing for clocks to say,
For time will be no more—

Vain the discarded core,
Useless the feet of clay
Once they have closed the door.

For soldier, queen and whore,
All persons of the play,
Time will be no more.

No time now to restore
This burden, this cliché.
Soon they will close the door
And time will be no more.


(Sorry it copied out so unreadable, but I couldn't move the line to the left margin and I couldn't delete it. I hate
computers.)

(Amazing--it came out right in being transferred to the thread. I love computers.)




[This message has been edited by robert mezey (edited July 09, 2004).]

What an amazing poem, RM. I'm glad to see it here.

Thanks for the correction of the correction, Robert.

As for "No More," it's simply brilliant. At once quiet and exciting, classical and colloquial. Among your many finest.

Terese



[This message has been edited by Terese Coe (edited February 09, 2005).]

Dear Bob

Inasmuch I also took it that “My Mother” was not trimeter but non-metrical verse, I, like Terese, am grateful for the correction.

This little episode shows the power of context in metrics.

This thread was, or so I assumed, about accentual or accentual-syllabic trimeter. In such a context, a poem (such as "My Mother") that on the page looked like accentual or accentual-syllabic trimeter might indeed seem to be such, though any reading-aloud – or reading-in-the-head – surely shows it not to be.

In its context in your book, however, alongside other non-metrical poems where you seem to use the convention of printing metrical verse (i.e. accentual or accentual-syllabic verse) with initial capitals and non-metrical verse without, its nature as syllabics is doubly disguised, and at a cursory view it may well appear to be non-metrical. (I have not checked your text in detail to be certain how consistently you use this convention.)

I say doubly disguised because I happen to think that, though syllabic verse is undoubtedly metrical, its metricality is inaudible. (As I have mentioned before, I recall hearing Auden read his syllabics with a tiny but distinct pause at the end of each line, regardless of syntax, as if to mark for the ear what might otherwise well be missed.)

I very much agree with you when you say that syllabic verse is “Mostly…a controlled way of writing free verse”. That word “controlled” is important, for it suggests the way syllabics can provide for the poet a framework which will encourage him or her to challenge easy word-choices and casual syntax. In other words, it provides, though in an apparently looser way, what accentual or accentual-syllabic metres provide, a marked-out playing field for the game of verse. In my experience it is not at all easy to write effective syllabics.

An interesting set of misunderstandings!

Kind regards

Clive

I just realized that this poem was trimeter, I'd never thought about it. Is it good trimeter? Tim? It doesn't sound as "trimetric" as most of these do; why is that?

Poem in the Broken Seasons

The piney watchers watch.
A ripple takes the pond,
wakes waters that lie still
deeper than eye can reach,
as deep as light can sift.
A tree breaks from its leaves.
Nothing that lives, but grieves...

In silence, June retreats:
heat of summer in air,
heat of air on all
the watchers in the trees.
The pond is still once more.
In passage of the year
I shall learn how to please...

The essence of the pond
is air: is to float free,
circling entranced
amidst the broken leaves.
I feel a ripple rise
in my slow body now,
and yet I have not moved

silent through the trees
or stillness of the air,
except to touch the pond.
What place is there to turn?
What hope of breaking free
from circle of the year,
except it turns with me?

The dreaming pond, the air,
trees, watchers even, all
are body of changing love,
encircled in the year.
My voice, my heart, are mute.
The deaf ear hears, but love,
love cries for ways to speak...

Muted in kind, the trees
whisper, remark their days
in passages of quiet and of voice.
Body discovers pond.
Ripple is all.
The season is love. Bright air
sings through the watching trees...

(robt)