I like the idea, Chris, of ceasing to speak of these as two-beat feet.

[This message has been edited by Joseph Bottum (edited July 10, 2004).]

Well, Jody, as you know, that's one of the things Poe argues for, & it certainly makes sense in English. But there are reasons for the two beat feet, though possibly not practical ones. At least to understand that these choriambic meters were inherited from an earlier, more fundamental tradition seems not excessively pedantic--the choriamb is the generative principle which trochee-dactyl scansion obscures.

Chris

Thanks, Jody, for the further explanation. I’m aware of course that English accentual patterns based on classical meters and stanza forms don’t map their originals directly, but involve compromise. I was focusing more on the pattern I believe is the generally accepted one for sapphics in English, a pattern I assume (admittedly without having researched this) was arrived at after much experiment and discussion.

For me the English sapphic as used by Swinburne (three lines of ^-^-^--^-^- and one of ^--^-) seems a proven template, while the English sapphics that move the dactyl (or the choriamb) around or introduce other variations strike me as less successful.

Brave effort to write English verse with runs of three stressed syllables, as in your example! But why go to Horace’s Latinized sapphics for a model when we have one that is probably rather closer to the Greek original in spirit?

As for the foot terminology, those ambiguities illustrate that there are different ways of skinning a cat or slicing up a line. Though I see Chris’s point about choriambs and history, I favour sticking to the more familiar terms in discussing English meter.

Henry

Hi folks. Have only had time to skim this one. I think Sapphics have a future as an English verse form--eleven syllables of trochees with a dactyl in third foot and the wonderfully rhythmic adonic colon. I favor the idea of the dactyl being moveable, though. I have noticed when working in them myself that this was something the line wanted to do rather naturally--indeed I was going to suggest it here, but see someone's beat me to it. And why not? Meters do not translate slavishly from one language to another--even from Greek to Latin.

I do find the Steele pattern rather hard to hear even if I can scan it--the elisions and substitutions seem unnecessarily classical.

This is a loose sapphic poem that cracks me up. I'm not sure the hendecasyllabic lines scan aside from syllabically--though he tries to start on a strong stress--but he gets the adonic colon, and I think he carries it off. At any rate, it feels like a poem rather than a sapphic exercise:


Locker room etiquette


Please refrain from frankly ogling your neighbor’s
penis or buttocks. This goes without saying—
bear in mind, however, that the simplest
courtesy often

is the first forgotten. Likewise, the appraising
sidelong gaze, however surreptitious,
seldom fails to offend when it is noticed.
Wandering eyes are

best averted. The small talk that in other
awkward situations would ease the moment
here you should avoid addressing to strangers,
even familiar

faces, who often find it quite disarming.
This is neither the time nor place for idle
chitchat, or to broach uncertain topics—
keep to the distance

run, the merits of this or that equipment,
warm-ups, weights, reps, heart rates, soreness of muscles.
Comments, however, on your own or your fellows’
sweaty aroma

rarely are welcomed. Modesty and its over-
balance, in this respect, are equal, drawing
too much attention. Take, as an example,
running the gauntlet

locker to shower, a source of so much worry.
Should one promenade the flower of manhood
fearlessly down the hall, or wear one’s towel
prudishly knotted

over the flanks, only to find it twirling
down to the ankles, forcing one to postures
neither becoming nor graceful to retrieve it?
Strive for a balance:

walk at a steady clip, the towel loosely
draped over the shoulder. If necessary,
practice in front of a mirror. Where nakedness makes you
shy as a hermit

crab between shells, or a snail who hides his
tremulous horns at the first smell of danger,
summon about yourself an impenetrable
aura, an armor,

over which the playful spray of the shower
spatters harmlessly. Spare the soap, and lather
only as much as may fulfill the barest
dictates of hygiene,

lingering nowhere long, except the armpits,
also in drying, with an unspecific
sweep over crotch, the peach-crease of the buttocks.
Carry your person

stiffly, as if each limb required a heroic
effort of will to flex—your head should never
drop below the armpit, or only briefly
tying your laces.

Handle yourself at all times with distasteful
resignation, as one regards an oyster
slick on the half-shell. Maybe it is better
not to imagine

oysters, or snails. Those were bad examples.
Try to forget them. Reticence in thought as
well as speech will keep your attention focused
here in the moment,

far away from that boy on the bench directly
opposite—yes, the one that you’ve been sitting
naked silently beside in the sauna—
look at your toenails,

stretch your hamstrings, think of how you are lifting
more each day, soon you’ll be pressing sixty,
seventy, eighty pounds, up to the weight of
nobody watching.


--Craig Arnold, Shells

Alicia
That's wonderful. So unpompous.
Janet

In a letter, Jim Powell just sent me a note on his own translations of Sappho and some Sapphic stanzas he's translated more recently, one of which hasn't yet been published. I'll post Jim's note, then the two new translations.

First the note:
*

"Among my translations of poems in sapphics the only ones that really satisfy me are Sappho's Hymn To Aphrodite and Catullus's two poems in this measure. There are another 4 or 5 poems in A Garland in sappics, but I think only the Hymn really gets close. The version of phainetai moi, ("In my eyes he matches the gods ...") bothers me inordinately with its unSapphic stable caesura. I append the two versions from Catullus. The first appeared, in almost this version, in a chapbook a couple years ago called Catullan Revenants. The second hasn't been published yet. If you like, please post them to the discussion you're referring to, with my compliments.


TO LESBIA


Furius, Aurelius, you've enlisted
with Catullus whether he penetrates the
coast of deepest India where dawn's breakers
thunder the beaches,

or among Hyrcanians or soft Arabs,
Sagae or the Parthians, marksman archers,
or along the gulf where the sevenfold Nile
colors the water,

even trekking over high Alpine passes
viewing Caesar's monuments to his Gallic
majesty, the Rhine and the horrible, the
uttermost Britons —

anyplace, wherever the powers on high wish,
well-equipped to dare everything together:
carry this dispatch to my girl, a few words,
none of them nice ones:

here's goodbye to her and to every boyfriend
her embrace encompasses, all three hundred,
loving none in truth and still daily fucking
each of their brains out,

let her waste no shame, as before, on my love:
through her fault it fell like the flower at the
furthest boundary of the meadow after the
passing plow touched it.
*


CATULLUS IN LOVE


He, to me, is peer to a god, or seems it,
he, if I may say so, surpasses godhead
who can sit across from you day by day and
watch you and listen

to you sweetly laughing — that makes me lose my
mind completely, Lesbia, since as soon as
once I take a look at you, there is nothing
left of me: my tongue

falters and turns sluggish, a thin flame trickles
down inside my joints, in my ears a sound starts
ringing on its own: as the lights go out my
eyes close in twin night.

Free time is unhealthy to you, Catullus,
you run riot freely and like it too well:
in the past this freedom left kings and wealthy
cities in ruin.

Paul, these are really brilliant, and I hope you'll convey my admiration to the translator.

Well, since David Mason has set precedent by promising to gift us with Nims's attempts, I feel not unjustified by turning a little out of the way with Sappho. One of my favorite meters is the dactylic with a catalectic line ending. However, though the Sapphic hendecasyllable is oft-quoted, I know of no extant examples of Sappho's in English, so here's one of my own:


"Truly, I wish I were dead!" She was leaving,
weeping, "Oh Sappho, what grief we've been given!
Truly, I'm going against my own wishes..."

This is the way I remember I answered:
"Go with contentment and peace, and think well of me.
Surely you realize how much you've been cherished,

Let me remind you, if not, of our pleasures --
roses you wove into headbands, and crocus;
violets you weaved into garlands beside me,

circling your neck with their delicate blossoms;
myrrh fit for queens you anointed yourself with,
young girls beside you with all they desired.

There was no sacred place we didn't visit.
There was no chorus or dance we neglected..."

[This message has been edited by Jennifer Reeser (edited July 25, 2004).]