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!