I am struck by the number of members posting on these boards who use the term "meter" or "metre" as if it were a synonym for "rhythm." It is frustrating to try to communicate with people who don't know or don't observe this distinction.

Could something be done to make sure that new members (and old members for that matter) understand such important points as this? Might a short addition be made to the "Before posting read this" instructions on the metrical poetry board?

Especially puzzling is the fact that some members who presumably consider themselves "serious poets" and post on The Deep End also confuse "meter" and "rhythm."

Golias, could you post a defining distinction between the two terms that we can all agree on and use as a guide for future discussion? My own distinction is a bit fuzzy, since it seems to me that rhythm is intrinsic to meter, although meter, being related to the measure of the line itself, isn't intrinsic to rhythm. In terms of music, meter seems to me to provide the base line where rhythm could be described as the rifs or rat-a-tats or arpeggios and even the pauses, yet we name formal meters in poetry by the rhythms (anapestic or dactyllic or iambic or trochaic) as well as by the beats (pentameter, tetrameter, etc.). Would you call meter the numeric measurement of the line and rhythm the recurring patterns of meters?

This might be a good subject for our Honorary Poet Lariat to come in on.

Carol

Yes, Carol, I would defer to Bob for the best explanation, perhaps one covering Frostian phrasing theory as well as traditional scansion by classical feet, though that might be a bit advanced for the suggested brief primer.

For a rudimentary explanation I would say that meter denotes the number of feet in a line of accentual-syllabic verse, or of syllables in syllabic verse, while rhythm means the pattern of sounds resulting from the kinds of feet employed and their arrangement. The pattern of meters affects the rhythm since it is an aspect of the arrangement of the rhythmic units or feet. The metric pattern is also a major aspect of form. A typical ballad form, for example, consists of alternating tetrametric and trimetric lines arranged in quatrains(4343) with rhyme scheme ABAB. Within that form, and affected by it, different rhythmic patterns can be created.

We had this problem before on another literary website, remember? There the webmaster arranged for a glossary of prosodic terms to be posted. I don't know how effective that step proved to be, as I have seldom visited that site in the past few of years.



[This message has been edited by Golias (edited January 02, 2003).]

Tim Steele:

"Meter is organized rhythm. The adjective in this definition is as important as the noun. Most speech is to some degree rhythmical. Basic devices of sentence structure—for example, antithesis and parallelism—impose a certain rhythm on language. But the rhythm of meter is regularly organized; traditional English meter, for example, entails arranging speech into a pattern of alternating unstressed and stressed syllables. The metrical unit repeats, and the scheme of repetition, once it is recognized, can be felt and anticipated as a kind of pulse in the verse."

So critics can be excused if, from time to time, they use the words "rhythm" and "meter" interchangeably.

The distinction is important, though, since it's worth keeping in mind that meter doesn't organize all aspects of rhythm, though it has a profound effect on all aspects. The quantity of syllables, for example, is a huge factor of rhythm that is not taken into account (for the most part) in our traditional notions of meter in English. Two poems with very similar scansion characteristics may have a completely different rhythmic feel to them because they employ syllables of different quantitative length.

Then there are the rhthmic effects created as a sort of ripple-effect of the meter itself, and here is where "meter" and "rhythm" are both implicated. For example, in heptameter verse, we frequently hear four strong beats per line, with the remaining three beats relatively subdued. This sort of dipodic counterpoint creates a rhythmic flow above and beyond the heptameter pattern. It's not entirely a matter of meter, since not all heptameter is dipodic.

There are also aspects of meter that inhere in a chosen form. For example, the rhythm of a villanelle is obviously different from a sonnet, even if both of them are in regular IP. I think the recurrence of a refrain is a rhythmic effect that stretches out along the length of the poem.

Just a few scattered thoughts. In short, I'd say that meter is a subset of rhythm, often the dominating rhythmic factor, but metrical scanscion cannot account for the wide varieties of rhtyhm that readers experience.

Babette Deutsch has some interesting things to say on Rhythm in that section of her Poetry Handbook. She notes that the use of Rhyme helps to accentuate Rhythm.

Generally speaking, even though they're separate things, if the Meter is off, and the Rhyme is off, then the Rhythm is going to be off too.

Golias, a concrete example of the source of your frustration would aid discussion. Is this related to your "Underway" posting?

We've had some good discussion on this issue on the Board in the past, and I recall Tim posting a very fine essay on it. I think the thread was called "Music and Meter".

John

I didn't check in till almost 2 a.m. so I can't respond at much length, but I will have some things to say over the next two or three days. The distinction between meter and rhythm
seems so obvious that I'm a little surprised by the confusion,
but I guess I shouldn't be. Since Golias mentioned Frost, who probably knew more about meter than Milton or God, let me copy out a few lines of his on the matter. (They come from a delightful late poem called "How Hard It Is to Keep from Being King When It's in You and in the Situation")

I'm not a free-verse singer. He was wrong there.
I claim to be no better than I am.
I write real verse in numbers, as they say.
I'm talking not free verse but blank verse now.
Regular verse springs from the strain of rhythm
Upon a metre, strict or loose iambic.
From that strain comes the expression "strains of music."
The tune is not that metre, not that rhythm,
But a resultant that arises from them.
Tell them Iamb, Jehovah said, and meant it.
Free verse leaves out the metre and makes up
For the deficiency by church intoning.
Free verse so called is really cherished prose,
Prose made of, given an air by church intoning.
It has its beauty, only I don't write it.


The whole thing in a nutshell is in those five lines that begin, "Regular verse..."

Roger's mention of dipodic heptameter above prompts me to present an example written by our guest lariat -- how long ago I'm not sure. Perhaps when he returns he might offer a comment on its rhythm and meter, and even scan a stanza or two for us.

The Ill Lit Blues

The lights come on so early on these winter afternoons;
The darkness creeps up early, winter afternoons,
And somewhere a piano is picking out a musty tune.

With less than an explanation you have taken your liberty
And arranged without thinking that nobody else but me
Will be sitting here in the dark like a granite effigy.

Well, no use complaining, there are a million people like me,
And everything as usual is exactly what it must be:
Character is fate, they say--I'm sure that you agree.

And they say love is easy as the turning of a page--
Haven't you heard that, honey?--like the turning of a page?
But they mumble something different in the back rooms of old age.

I'm not a first-time loser, I've been down this road before,
And once again I find myself standing outside a door;
But even as I spell it out, I still don't know the score.

Yet the truth is plain as day, love, all you need to do is look;
I can see it clear as daylight, saw it in your parting look-
Love is a sudden emptiness like the closing of a book.

-------------------------------
John, some confusion of meter and rhythm did occur in some replies (not yours) to the Underway posting, but I'd rather not give names or identifying particulars. However, any number of times I could only continue discussions on Erato threads here by writing something like: "I assume you mean the rhythm rather than the meter."

I'll cheerily defer to Golias and to Mr. Mezey and to Frost on just about anything having to do with meter and/or rhythm, but I thought Sphereans would be interested to know that X. J. Kennedy (in one of his notes in his textbook empire) specifically equates meter and rhythm, saying he has to chuckle at people who bother to differentiate them. Perhaps, as many here suggest, he is dead wrong, but it doesn't seem to have stopped him from writing some great poems.

I don't know of anyone who says exactly what Len reports that XJ Kennedy said. The closest is Tim Steele's statement that "meter is organized rhythm," which comes close to stating an equivalence, but not quite. Frost's "strain of rhythm upon a metre" is similar, as well, to Tim Steele's statement:

"It is from this interplay between the unchanging metrical pattern and the many-shaded rhythms of natural speech—this interplay between the steady underlying pulse of the meter and the variable phrases, clauses, and sentences riding over it—that iambic verse draws its vitality and delight."

Unchanging metrical patterns running up against the many-shaded rhythms of natural speech. Pretty much the same as "strain of rhythm upon a metre", I think.

I was going through some back-threads at Gazebo, and I came across a discussion of Pope's "The sound must seem an Echo to the Sense" (and about the next 18 lines) wherein Alicia Stallings commented, among many other interesting things, "Pope is not so much playing with meter here, in my opinion, as with the rhythm, alliteration, quality of vowels, caesuras, and assonance." Thus, it seems that Alicia would also disagree with any equivalence between meter and rhythm. Are you sure XJ said he views them as the same thing?