Thomas Ernest Hulme's "Lecture on Modern Poetry" (1908)
 

I'm conducting a repeat "Be a Bard" workshop this year at an event called "Celtfest", and one of its premises is that metrical poetry has a place in the modern world and is reviving.

I've been kicking the tires of that premise because, while I have lots of examples of some resurgence, I keep running into poetry people and publications, particularly in Canada, who have a strong and immediate aversion to anything rhymed and metered. To give an example, I was in a workshop recently and a participant suggested that a word in one of my poems was not well-chosen. She added, "You see, that's what rhyme does to you."

I can surmise some obvious reasons for this aversion--rhymes get tired, form is constraining, and there's a lot of bad metrical poetry in the world. (I think this Canadian poet didn't help.) However, there's a lot fresh metrical poetry and a lot of bad free verse too. I keep returning to what I see as a disconnect between the supply and demand for poetry among the general public, as exemplified by the BBC's 1995 poll of 12,000 book-program listeners. In the top 100 of the audience's favorite poems, ranked by popularity, you have to go to 22nd place to find the first free verse poem. Yet the proportion of published poetry that is metrical is very low in comparison to free verse.

I'm therefore digging a bit to better understand how, during the rise of free verse, metrical poetry, instead of happily coexisting with its new companion, fell into decline. I found this 1908 lecture, to which Wikipedia refers as "a concise statement of Hulme's influential advocacy of free verse", both well-written and revealing. Now I'd like to examine whether his reasoning is flawed and, if so, where those flaws lie.

Apart from my own reading and general schooling, I've had no academic education in poetry, so I'd be interested in hearing of other influential expositions of why metrical poetry is thought by some to be passé.

John

I don't see any particular flaw in Hulme's line of argument. I wouldn't expect to: the guy wrote The Embankment. Poets that good seldom drop major catches.

But I think you could read Hulme's main argument as being: 'The big issue with verse poetry is that currently everybody is doing it, and nobody really has a particularly good reason why. (Most of Hulme's essay doesn't so much argue in favour of freeverse, as point out that most of the arguments being used against it in 1908 were tired or irrelevant or incoherent).

In the present poetic climate in most of America (and quite a bit of the UK) everybody is doing freeverse, and very few people have any particularly good reason why anymore. Strictform is preachy? Robinson Jeffers managed to be preachy and formless both at the same time. Rime encourages bad word choices? (I'm sure you can find your own counterexample for that). Strictform is old-hat? Most English poetry has been in some kind of freeverse for at least the last two generations.

When an artist like Michael Cantor (or Geoffrey Hill) uses strictform, it is often as a misdirection stratagem. While the ear is listening for the next rime, or the steady beat of metre, it has less attention to watch carefully what the words are doing. (I think Michael's last post on Metrical is an example of such a trick poem, though not everyone will agree with me).

Perhaps regular form is the natural ally of poets who want to examine how language might be used seductively or dishonestly. Advertisers are fond of jingles; politicians are fond of artfully crafted rhetorical language which produces memorable soundbites. Poets are able to challenge the validity of thinking in jingles - mainly by writing poems which might sound like jingles, but are not. Poets are also able to take language games away from the politicians (E E Cummings Next to God America I). For both operations, regular metres are a natural implement (though clearly not mandatory).

Perhaps regular form is only favoured for conjuror poems (would it be possible to rewrite the magical limerick 'There was a young lady from Bude' in freeform?). But then, you only need to demonstrate that there is one thing that works much better in regular form (we both know that there are many more benefits to regular form, but you won't be preaching to the choir at Celtfest). Once folk begin to understand that regular verse does some things better, they can take their time at discovering just how many.

I don't remember the precise quote (I'm sure it is Googleable) but Ezra Pound said something about wanting to 'compose in the sequence of the musical phrase, not in the sequence of the metronome'. Some years later, in the Cantos, he expanded this to:

to break the pentameter, that was the first heave

Ezra was probably right about there being something fundamentally non-iambic about natural American speech rhythms (Longfellow, Whitman, and Poe are all notably thin on the iamb); but you notice that Ezra says twice what he is not going to do. He never quite says what he is going to do.

I think a lot of the current lostness of English (both Brit and American) prosody gets back eventually to the Modernists knowing what they were reacting against, but being much weaker on working out what their goals were. There are many good reasons for leaving New York City (going to Munich perhaps); but if the only idea in your head is 'Must leave New York City' - who knows where you are going to end up?

This is a bit rambly, but then - it is difficult to attack fog. And I think fog is the only real name for what Language Poets, or Black Mountain Poets, or the Poets of the New Albion have to say about their notions of prosodics.

Being a formalist, or a neo-formalist, might leave your ideas open to attack; but at least it obliges you to have ideas.

There were certainly good reasons for reacting against regular metres in 1908, there probably still are (some of the time). But going along with any particular mindset (formal or anti-formal) simply because it is what everybody thinks - isn't what poets do.

T E Hulme was against form in 1908. The same line of argument might easily have made him an exponent of form in 2008. Times change.

Thanks for an interesting post, Christopher. I'm still thinking this through but I believe there are large flaws in Hulme's line of argument.

Here’s the big one. What happened to "live and let live"? Just because a new approach comes along, it doesn't mean you have to eradicate its precursor.

I do quite a lot of recitals to general audiences and all of my poetry is metrical. One of the most frequent comments I get from the general public is, "It's good to hear real poetry for a change."

I'm not in any way against free verse but, given the public's appetite for metrical poetry and the nebulousness of the arguments for saying it should be largely abandoned, I remain puzzled at how such a great displacement occurred.

The evolution of poetry seems to have leaned more towards acceptance than rejection. People who argue that free verse is not "poetry" don't get much credence. A while back, I sat through a very long performance of sound poetry. (Here's a sample of the poet's work.) It was very skillful but it left me cold. However, I didn't go out and start an abandon-sound-poetry crusade. Much of the poetry community is quite comfortable with sound poetry. But metrical poetry? Not so much.

Note that the question that bothers me is not: Which is generally better, free verse or metrical poetry? That question has stirred a lot of debate and I’m not really interested in it. The question I am interested in is: Why did free verse largely displace, as opposed to coexist with, metrical poetry?

Here is where I’m at so far in assessing Hulme’s reasoning:

He says that because metrical poetry is permanent (i.e. written), it is unlike performance arts, such as dancing and acting, which are not. I may be behind the times, but I think of metrical poetry, at least in part, as a performance art. And the novel hasn’t yet died out.

He says that because metrical poetry is permanent, there comes a point when everything it has to say has been said. That’s a bit like saying there can be no good new literature because the alphabet has been over-used.

He says that once a method has been around too long it becomes imitative and gets used to express sentimentality. That accusation is certainly still around. (It rhymes? Send it to Hallmark.) To me that’s an unfounded generalization about the content of metrical poetry. And plenty of bleeding-heart angst survives in the free verse world.

He says new forms are deliberately introduced by people who detest the old ones. I might give him that. But it’s an explanation for the demise of the old ones only if it’s contagious and widespread. It seems to have been so. And maybe there’s the seed of an explanation there. Reading between the lines a bit, it seems that Hulme is speaking for poets, not their public readership. I don’t see evidence of similar detestation on the part of the readers. I don't know the numbers, but I’ll bet that, individually, some old-school metrical poets at least give modern free verse ones a run for their money in terms of book sales. Did poets do what they wanted to do, without much regard for what their readers sought? This looks possible. Certainly, Hulme’s essay isn’t heavy on the reader’s point of view. Which brings up another question. Does the reader (or listener) matter? If poets want audiences, other than incestuous ones (I’ll listen to yours if you listen to mine and even then I might not really listen to yours), I think it does. How many poetry readings today are attended mainly by poets?

He then proposes that poetry should fit its content, not vice versa. That’s again too broad-brush. In good metrical poetry, form enhances content. There’s a place for both, just as in music the jazz-player may improvise and the classical violinist may play with rigorous adherence to the music.

He next suggests that formal poetry aimed at perfection which, once achieved, left no room for further attempts. Again, this seems flawed to me. Hillary climbed Everest for the first time, but it didn’t mean humanity should abandon climbing from then on.

He next argues that poetry is concerned with introspection and impressions, not stories, epic subjects, or absolute beauty. I’m starting to get riled by the fact that this guy was considered influential. By what right does he stipulate boundaries of poetic content?

He says that metrical poetry induces a hypnotic state in which people become more open to emotions of grief and ecstasy. What higher compliment could he pay it? He continues to say free verse works through a succession of impressions delivered raw from the page, and that, in that process, rhyme and meter are distractions. Fine, but that only amounts to saying you should adapt your method to your intent and content. It is no basis for limiting that intent and content. Poems should no longer tell stories?

Towards the middle of the essay, he backtracks a bit, suggesting that there is a place for the old chanting poetry, but that to put the new content of impressions and introspection into form is like putting a child in armour. Here he seems to suggest the two can coexist.

He then goes on to address whether, when you have removed meter and rhyme, you are left with prose rather than poetry. He argues that prose and poetry are distinct methods of communication. Poetry is a direct language which deals with images. Prose is a conventional language which uses dead images that have become figures of speech. Tell that to Cormac McCarthy. Or are his novels poetry? Anyway, although I think this part is flawed too, it’s essentially irrelevant to my question.

He says that new images are created by poets but lose their initial vividness and become conventional through use. He says metre and rhyme can disguise this and sums up his position with: “That is my objection to metre, that it enables people to write verse with no poetic inspiration, and whose mind is not stored with new images.” And free verse is immune to this? Anyway, if they enjoy it, why stop them? One reason is to stop the bad stuff drowning out the good. I think some members of the general public have the impression that exactly this has happened in the free verse world.

This has just added to my puzzlement. I’m surprised that such blinkered reasoning could have contributed to such a large displacement of metrical poetry.

The good thing is that I haven't detected any fundamental barriers to a resurgence.

John

Taking A Stab
 

I make no claims to being a great thinker, but I agree that it isn't appropriate to assume that one writer's idea or opinion rendered at a particular point in time would remain static.

Hulme, as ONeill says could easily think differently if asked the same question to day. And as to your reliance on the audiences at your readings are happy to hear some "real poetry" is desperate at best. The other side of the coin is that the human ear is fond of rhythmic structure and repetition so we are inclined to feel comfortable with the metrical forms even though we don't really understand them.

Do not get me wrong, I personally believe that there is room for both, but I do think that the danger with metrical forms is they encourage repetition of what has already been done because it is difficult to write good metrical without using archaic syntax and diction. (Now that may be a personal problem) I am also trying to understand sound poetry and don't quite get it as of yet. And that leads me to quote what I believe to be the core argument in Hulme's lecture:

"The principle on which I rely in this paper is that there is an intimate connection between the verse form and [260] the state of poetry at any period. All kinds of reasons are given by the academic critics for the efflorescence of verse at any period. But the true one is very seldom given. It is the invention or introduction of a new verse form. To the artist the introduction of a new art form is, as Moore says, like a new dress to a girl; he wants to see himself in it."

I guess what I am struggling to say is that what matters is what the poet is saying, and it is the poet's choice as to how best to say it. The hope is that the reader/listener will arrive at some understanding and not simply state their comfort with a particular format. Because it may be possible that they like metrical forms but don't really uinderstand what is being said. The same is true of free verse.

I know I may have just stuck my foot in my mouth, but I think it is important to as least try.

Vernon, thanks for jumping in here.

All I infer from the "real poetry" comment is that a fair portion of the general public still thinks first of metrical poetry when they think of poetry. I think the BBC survey corroborates that. They may be out of touch with modern poetry and considered unsophisticated. But should there not be a bigger place in the poetry world for them all the same?

"Room for both" is the central issue, and the present imbalance is what I'm trying to understand. Your summary of the pros and cons would lead me to conclude that more balance is desirable.

I came across this item, which gives Hulme's essay context.

John

Hulme
 

The article on the Imagist movement only reinforces, in my mind, the key argument that Hulme made, the need to jump on the current craze or fashion. I am suspicious for whatever reason when I see Pound's involvement in anything. I have been reading in Practical Criticism, published about the same time and I'm just getting accustomed to the idea of the need for criticism. I think that we must be careful and not close ourselves off from all forms of poetry, but recognize that there will be movements, each announcing the death of its predecessors, and find themselves backpeddling later. I, having Celtic blood, adore metrical poetry, but it is mostly older poetry. I think it is wonderful if modern poets can utilize the forms in a new way and make them fresh without going over the edge.

*steps onto soapbox*

I do not believe in teleology in art; I do not believe in some necessary or Hegelian development or progress. I do not believe that it is impossible anymore to speak of "big themes” in poetry, e.g., love, death, wonder, faith, despair – which is to say, I believe that Auden, Eliot, Yeats, Szymborska and Frost existed. I believe some of the aforementioned poets proved irrefutably that superb artistry can breathe a newborn’s breath into hoary forms. I believe that much free verse is randomly punctuated prose. I believe that much metrical verse is doggerel. I believe that a fresh, startling image or metaphor is poetry. I do not believe that any pair of rhymes is necessarily tired. I believe that meter and rhyme help make speech memorable, which is why meter and rhyme will never abandon poetry.

*steps off of soapbox*

Final Causes
 

Teleology - I hadn't heard that word in some time. Defined as the belief that final causes exist. I have to say I share your soapbox and assert that I agree at least on that point. Still, it gives one cause to think.

I suggest you look at other art forms - the rise and fall of the school of Schoenberg in music; the rise and fall of action painting; the rise and fall of the meta-novel; the rise and imminent fall of conceptual art.

At my daughter's art school, the ones who can draw, draw. The one who can paint, paint. The ones who can do neither, theorise. Hulme wrote five poems in his life, none of them much good. He is not worthy to touch the hem of the garment of Walter de la Mare.

'Make it new!' said Ezra, but, hey, he was wrong about politics and he was wrong about art. 'Make it old!' is better. From Shakespeare to Hardy poets found fresh ways to use rhyme and metre. That's three hundred years. And THEN rhyme and metre got used up. Is that what you're telling me?

I'll tell you what I'm telling YOU; that the new democracy of art means that everybody has to be able to do it no sweat, that LEARNING stuff is just too much bother. Pshaw!

(Stomps off waving a copy of The Selected Works of Michael Oakeshott.)

Have I spelt the guy's name right?

The YOU isn't you, but simply a rhetorical flourish.

I hope you spelled his name right. You built a whole poem around it.

John, I agree with you that rhyme and meter should not have been displaced. But to the extent that they have, can you shed light on what happened to make it so?

John

John
 

Please elaborate. I believe that there is a strong movement to dumb everything down so it is easy and convenient. Nothing should be easy. A true artist makes it look easy, but that can only come with mastery. The same with poetry. That includes the study of verse forms, prosody, meter, etc. None should be rejected.

Ah John, I thought I did. It was part of the general assault on craft and skill which could also be seen in the decline of drawing as a necessary, or even desirable, skill in visual art. And at the same time it was part of the erection of Art as a substitute for religion. If Art is a new religion it needs its own mumbo-jumbo from theoreticians and, by God, it has got it.

Free verse ios inherently vicious and needs to be stepped on. Pshaw yet again.

I'm surprised no one has shown up and said this. John (Beaton), you should read Tim Steele's Missing Measures. It's a thorough account of just this thing, how the Modernists came to associate meter with artificial Victorian scansion techniques, how in attempting to renovate poetic diction, they threw out prosody as well, and how they expected some new system to come along in its wake, which never materialized. It seems clear from his prose that TS Eliot didn't really understand meter; he understood that the presence of a normative measure makes variations meaningful, but he didn't know that such rhythmical variation was possible & even standard within the confines of conventional metric, and thought you had to violate the measure in order to introduce variation. Many of the Modernists seemed dismayed later in life by the success of their innovations.

Chris

Aah, John. And here am I wondering how "live and let live" isn't a timeless and universal credo!

I can't join you in deprecating free verse or weak craftsmanship. What pursuit worth its salt leaves no room for beginners, amateurs, and dabblers? And there is much wonderful free verse poetry.

But I do find it strange that when, as you say, something works well enough for 300 years and a new wave hits, instead of adding to the already rich heritage, the new way largely supplants the old one. How did so many capable modern poets come to ignore formal poetry? How did we come to a point where a web-page on the history of poetry contains this:

Chris, thanks for that. We cross-posted, and I will try to look up the book but, from what you describe, I'd be interested in quick answers to these questions:

1. Why were the people espousing those views considered so influential as to seemingly convince most of the poetry community? (Were there no John Whitworths rising in defense?)

2. If, in hindsight, it appears that the influence of the Modernists was misplaced, why do the misconceptions it engendered persist?

John

Sorry John, I think that quote is deeply stupid. And what is it doing in the passive voice? How does this cheapening effect work in, say, Philip Larkin's work? In Alicia Stallings' work. In mine? In yours?

Oh,and how do you find the 'right' word? How do you know it is right? Who tells you? What tells you? The inner voice? For the third time Pshaw!

Pshaw
 

The modern canon includes that which went before and free verse as well. Does believing in something make it invalid? I think not. We look to words for meaning and as source - to Latin roots - educare...to draw out, religere...to bind. I vote for educare...whether it comes through self-study, academic study, or inspiration, or through the courage of poets who are willing to study, grow, and share. Does not each generation have to re-invent the past as a foundation on which to build the future? Am I preaching to the choir? Or am I just being ignored?

How did we come to a point where a web-page on the history of poetry contains this:
[lots of nonsense quoted from a website] [John Beaton]

John, with all due respect, your website was put together by Damaris West: a semi-disabled elderly lady with a disabled husband, who self-published a novelette called Skolkham: A tale of good and evil magic, and who has a main website which is mainly about the Tuscan property market, breeding dogs, and cookery.

What interests me more is that T E Hulme's lecture was delivered in 1908. This is well before Prufrock - it is even before Apollinaire's Zone. I'm not sure who T E was championing as free verse poets, but the torchbearers of formal verse at the time would have been characters like Edwin Arnold and Alfred Noyes.

Noyes' verse novel Drake on its own would have been sufficient to turn me against formal verse in 1908. (I might have chosen even worse poets than Edwin Arnold and Noyes, but Noyes' work is still taught in schools all over the English speaking world - and still loved by many young readers who will grow up never to read a poem worth bothering with).

Another thing that interests me is that while we have so many Sphereans convinced that there is a pervasive prejudice against formal verse, I know just as many non-Sphereans just as worried that there is an apartheid in its favour:

http://voices.yahoo.com/in-defense-f...326.html?cat=2

I think both sides are in error: I doubt anyone has ever had a committed opinion either for or against form as such.

I know people who dislike poetry which unsettles their inherited notions of what poetry ought to be like (this is really just another way of saying that they dislike poetry). 'Expert writers' (how difficult is it to get a Creative Writing Certificate these days?) will object to formal verse if they have been taught that form inhibits creativity; or to free verse if they have been taught that poems ought to rime. (Since you only go on the courses you pay for, you can be taught whichever opinion you prefer).

In 1908 free verse was effectively proscribed from serious discourse. The Manchester Guardian would call The Waste Land 'the waste paper' a generation later. T E Hulme's lecture was needed to address that prejudice.

These days there are only individual troupes of performing monkeys who dislike formal verse; or dislike free verse; or dislike poems where every line begins with a capital letter; or think the only real poetry is haikus, or ghazals, or inpirational, or transgender.

Outside the circus the debate is formed in more serious terms.

And still of a winter's night, they say, when the wind is in the trees,
When the moon is a ghostly galleon tossed upon cloudy seas,
When the road is a ribbon of moonlight over the purple moor,
A highwayman comes riding—
Riding—riding—
A highwayman comes riding, up to the old inn-door.

XI

Over the cobbles he clatters and clangs in the dark inn-yard;
He taps with his whip on the shutters, but all is locked and barred;
He whistles a tune to the window, and who should be waiting there
But the landlord's black-eyed daughter,
Bess, the landlord's daughter,
Plaiting a dark red love-knot into her long black hair.

Well, I don't think that's half bad, the last two stanzas of Noyes' 'The Highwayman'. I think children of about ten would like it. And I like it.

Chris, she also has a keen interest in poetry and has presumably posted this description based on understandings reached through reading and participation in the world of poetry. I don't see how any of the attributes you mention make her non-credible.

For me, her description is a concise articulation of views that prompted me to start this thread and whose origins and development I'm trying to understand in terms of factual history.

Thanks for that link and the comments. Yes, there is a wide spectrum of views out there. Nevertheless, among poetry that is published today, free verse is hugely predominant.

John