Alcaics, redux
 

I'm making good on my promise (threat?) to start a thread in which we revisit the discussions about alcaics that took place in the past and add our new thoughts, perhaps with additional examples.

If I use the search function, with "alcaic" and "alcaics" as the keywords and search the Mastery board, I find these threads:

http://www.ablemuse.com/erato/showthread.php?t=555

http://www.ablemuse.com/erato/showthread.php?t=556

And of course there's the recent discussion on the Horace thread from the Translation Bakeoff just ended:

http://www.ablemuse.com/erato/showthread.php?t=8367

I need to read the older threads over to see if they reveal more questions to me. But the question I have at the outset is simply this: What's the best way to compose new alcaics in English, so that readers know what you're doing and don't mistake your meter for something else? What are the most effective roadsigns?

I may not get back to this thread today, but I'll be very pleased if others decide to pick it up and run.

For what it's worth, I hear the Robinson, the Tennyson, the Clough, & the Stevenson on the linked Alcaics thread as actual alcaics. Mezey's "To the Americans," and Auden's elegy on Freud, excellent poems though they are, do not strike my ear as being in this measure. Which goes to show that for me at least it takes more than an 11-11-9-10 syllable count to have an alcaic. Maryann, besides Stephen's Horace on DG, I would study those four, if you're now itching to write English alcaics, as you seem to be. I assume you can hear there's more going on than just accentual tetrameter?

Chris

Chris, having read through the example poems quickly, paying attention to the ones you point out, I'm still feeling muddled.

Bottom makes the point that the first two lines of the alcaic stanza are hendecasyllabics. My undying model of the hendecasyllabic line in English is Frost's "For Once, Then, Something," but in many of the model alcaics, I don't hear that pattern in the first two lines. This has to mean I don't yet have a feel for what substitutions are permitted.

For me, we need Alcaics 101. How many different ways can we construct one of these lines and still have it qualify as a hendecasyllabic line?

All hendecasyllabic means is 11 syllables; so the first two lines of the alcaic, the first three lines of the sapphic, and the Catullan line Frost uses in "For Once Then Something" are all technically hendecasyllabic lines, though we only use the name for the latter. As Jody points out in the other thread, the difference between the Catullan version (the hendecasyllabic proper) and the other two is the placement of the dactyl. So whereas Frost writes:

Others TAUNT me with HAVing KNELT at WELL-curbs

and the second foot is a dactyl, the sapphic goes like this:

ALL the NIGHT sleep CAME not upON my EYElids,
SHED not DEW, nor SHOOK nor unCLOSED a FEATher, etc.

Where the third foot is a dactyl. So the only difference between these two is where you put the dactyl. The alcaic simply takes that unstressed final syllable from the end of the sapphic line, and sticks it at the beginning:

conFUSED, he FOUND her LAvishing FEMinINE

I think it's crucial that the alcaic line ends on a stress, or at least, a secondary stress. I guess you don't HAVE to stress the last syllable of "feminine" if you don't want to, but I hear promotion. Compare this line from the same poem:

and WHY were DEAD years HUNgrily TELling HER

So the line ends on a stress, or at least, a secondary stress. It is really an iambic pentameter line with an extra unstressed syllable in the fourth foot.

.....

The difference then, the only difference, between the alcaic and sapphic hendecasyllabic, is that the alcaic starts on an unstress and ends on a stress, & the sapphic does the opposite, starts on a stress and ends on an unstress. But the dactyl is in the same place.

One more thing. Unlike the sapphic, but like iambic pentameter, the English alcaic allows substitution in the first foot. You can start with an iamb or a trochee; c.f. Stephen's first line in Ode to Bacchus:

BACchus, beLIEVE me, DIStant posTERiTY

The other thing, which is true of both sapphics and alcaics, is that in between beats 2 & 3 (DEAD and HUNGrily in the Robinson alcaic, NIGHT and CAME in the Swinburne sapphic above) it is nice and classical (though certainly not required) to put another heavy syllable that takes a while to say (years, sleep).

ALL the NIGHT (SLEEP) CAME not upON my EYElids,

and WHY were DEAD (YEARS) HUNgrily TELling HER

You don't have to feel (SLEEP) and (YEARS) as beats, but it is good to feel the *duration* of those three syllables (night sleep came, dead years hung) anchoring the line. That's it for alcaic lines 1 & 2. Lines 3 & 4 are another matter.

I understand Stephen will be shortly on his way with a poem and a learned disquisition which will hopefully clarify this whole thing for you, if I have still failed to do so.

Chris

For some other modern/contemporary alcaics, I think Hollander has some, and Jay Rogoff.

I suspect that some of Michael Hamburger's translations of Holderlin might hold pretty tight to the meter as well. Though I was less then well-versed at the time I read them, I sensed something going on there.

Nemo

Would this be right then, and if it isn't would somebody mend it? I'm thinking, how about RHYMED Alcaics, but I haven't yet worked out whatwould rhyme with what and what liberties I would have to take.

Bloody good place, the High Street in Whitstable –
See what you get for one and elevenpence.
Bought me a hat to wear for cricket,
Bought me a pair of fantastic wellies.

It's true about Whitstable High Street but of course they don't use the old money any more.

I would fix your first line thus:

The rest works, I think, though the first two lines could perhaps be clearer metrically. Sounds like you had a nice day of shopping...

Chris

Thanks Chris. I seem to get the message from various learned geezers on the net that Greek and Latin alcaics are a little bit different and that (maybe) my first line is OK if you're Roman, not OK if you're Greek. Is that so?

Just to pick up on A. E. Stallings's kind mention of my poem in Alcaics, it's called "The Guy Who Passed Me Doing 90 MPH and Playing the Trumpet," & it's in The Long Fault (LSU, 2008). You can find an earlier version of it at AGNI online: http://www.bu.edu/agni/poetry/print/2007/65-rogoff.html. One revision I can recall is that the final word of line one changed from "the" to "his."

Jay

Thanks for this link, Jay, and many welcomes!

More on the meter
 

By the way, I'm a bit confused by the ongoing discussion of the opening feet. My understanding of the Alcaic stanza is that each of the first three lines begins with a spondee (or, if you prefer, a headless iamb followed by a trochee)--in any event, with two stresses, making the meter particularly unwieldy in English. Thus you have Tennyson resorting to "O" to begin each of the first two lines of "Milton," and inversions like "Me rather" (appropriate though it is for Miltonic syntax). Tennyson does comment on the "freer & lighter" Greek Alcaic vs. the Horatian Alcaic, which taps into the earlier discussion.

Jay

Jay! I had No Idea that AGNI would publish something that good. I gave up on it long ago....

I have to agree with Jay that the trickiness lies in the spondees--both in creating them and in hearing them. How does one make them so definitely equal, at least in the opening lines, that it's absolutely clear one intends alcaics? And since we're so conditioned to hear up-and-down alteration in English poetry, how do we know not to?

I would start on attempts to answer this if today weren't such a tense day. Since I'm a little constrained, perhaps someone else would like to....?

I don't think the spondees are absolutely necessary in English. Many people of course don't believe they exist at all; when Milton writes "Rocks, Caves, Lakes, Fens, Bogs, Dens, and shades of Death," the line could hardly be more spondaic, but because we're used to iambic pentameter (and in an IP context), we're going to stress it like IP; and in truth, I don't hear spondees there, I hear demotion, & its effect. Even if you start an alcaic line with two absolutely equal stresses (Wait! Look! The wart's grown bigger since yesterday), there's always a chance that a reader not expecting spondees will not hear them, and read "wait! LOOK! the WART'S grown BIGger since YESterDAY." Which is good enough for me.

In general, it is good practice, & admirably Roman, to go for a string of heavy monosyllables at the beginning of an alcaic line, as above ("WAIT! LOOK! the WART'S GROWN BIGger since YESterDAY,") just as in the sapphic it's good practice to do the same, i.e., ALL the NIGHT SLEEP CAME not upON mine EYELIDS." Still, just as we hear the sapphic whether we stress "sleep" there or not, we hear the alcaic whether or not we stress "wait" and "grown." I have been working on a couple of my own alcaics lately and I use heavy monosyllables where they present themselves but don't scruple at simple iambs where they don't. This is perhaps a less rigorous attitude than Jay's but I think more suited to a serious adaptation of the form to English. If it's ever going to catch on like the sapphic has (doubtful, but you never know), we should allow ourselves to be free with the spondees. I say.

Chris

Iambs & spondees
 

Just a quick reply to Chris. Maybe our ears differ, but I don't hear any fewer than eight stresses in the Milton line, esp since the monosyllables in the usually unstressed positions feature hard consonants like k and g to ensure their emphasis. It's as wacky as Hopkins in "God's Grandeur":

"CRUSHED. WHY do MEN THEN NOW NOT RECK his ROD?"

Granted, Alcaics will never catch on much in English if they're not made easier to write (I don't imagine returning to the form often, which I tried mostly on a dare)--but they sure won't sound* much like Alcaics. There's a lot of loosening in contemporary Sapphics, and some of it is admirable (see, for example, Mary Jo Salter's "Roses and Mona Lisa" in her new & selected, in which she floats the dactyl around in the line), but I think there are lot of poems that purport to be Sapphics but really only emulate the form in their syllable count.

Jay

*By "sound," I mean in accentual English, as opposed to quantitative Greek.

Thanks for your reply, Jay. My guess is that we hear more or less the same thing, but have different ideas about prosody / scansion / how to talk about it. In the Milton line, I feel the metrical beats exactly where they're supposed to be, thanks largely to the weight of expectation and immersion in pentameter; but I also feel the weight of the off-beats, rocks, lakes, bogs, getting caught in the cogs, as it were, slowing down the line, creating emphasis and inexorability. Hopkins is rather a different animal; his sprung rhythm doesn't easily allow you to settle into the expectation of an IP clip-clop. My basic feeling is this: a great deal of meter is expectation; English readers do not expect spondees; & it is surely ALWAYS arguable, for a reader so inclined, that s/he hears iambs or trochees where you or I would claim a spondee. Then moreover, to force rhythmical spondees with the frequency demanded by the alcaic takes some pretty extraordinary dexterity, as your fine linked example demonstrates (not free from hijinks to make it happen, e.g., 'under-/foot'). One need not move the dactyl around or resort to syllabics, but spondees are not really natural to our poetry & are best considered "optional."

Chris

PS.: The alcaic rhythm is not "unnatural" (not that anybody said it was!). I just sent a text message to a former student which said, "Congratulations, Captain Irrelevant," & then thought, hey, that's an alcaic...