Janet,
Tennyson's hendecasyllabics are not a "syllabic" metre at all. The classical form is as follows:
DUM da DUM da da DUM da DUM da DUM da
(Technically, the first two syllables and the last are all "anceps," and so can be either heavy or light. In practice, however, Tennyson always begins with an accented syllable, which pretty much guarantees "demotion" of the next, and the required accent on the penultimate has the same effect at the end.)
Tennyson follows this line scrupulously throughout, with the one possible exception of
O blatant Magazines, regard me rather
though I suspect he intended something like
O BLA-TANT magaZINES, reGARD me RAther
which demands a campily exaggerated, spondaic pronunciation of "blatant" (Lord T is, after all, rather hamming it up a bit!), but is otherwise unproblematic given the "English" pronunciation of magaZINE. (Around here, we say MAgazine.)
Anyway, the key point is that hendecasyllabics are not a "syllabic" metre. The form represents the stress-accentual version of a quantitative line--one which observes strict syllable count, but which is defined fundamentally by its pattern of marked vs. unmarked syllables (whatever form that marking may take--stress accent, syllabic length, etc.). In other words, you can't get hendecasyllabics just by counting to eleven.
Alicia,
I can't disagree that Justice's piece does indeed seem to have been intentionally written "IN syllabics," but I'm not as sure as you are that the choice always serves the poet well. After all, if "edgy" enjambment is the issue, why not . . .
I hone myself to this
Edge. Asleep, I
Am a horizon.
Much sharper edge there, no? And while I agree that putting "I" at the end of the second-last line there makes for an interesting effect, with our thin man about to fall flat onto the horizon below, I wonder--why not really make use of the graphic potential here, and do something like . . .
The Thin Man
I
indulge myself in rich
refusals. Nothing
suffices.
I
hone myself to this
edge.
Asleep, I
a
a m
a m a horizon.
In other words, if such graphic/enjambment effects are the issue, why not pursue them in real earnest? What is there in the "syllabic" metrical form here that is important enough that it trumps other arrangements? Could it be that the poem is really just an accentual dimeter? Could it be that the "syllabic" arrangement is just an affectation?
Steve C.
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