I suppose I am not a purist--it doesn't matter to me whether it is a "true metre" in English, but whether it is a useful constraint that produces good poems. Method of composition is fine by me. I suppose that would be the difference between how a scholar and a practioner would look at things, and I would look at it as a practioner. As this thread is called "Successful Syllabics" may I suggest that whether syllabics are a "true metre" or not might be addressed better in a General discussion thread under its own heading?
May I produce one more example, one of my favorites, again, this time by our own Julie Kane? I hope she doesn't mind--at any rate, it has already been posted on the Sphere in the women and form discussion:
Egrets
You have to love them
for the way they make takeoff
look improbable:
jogging a few steps,
then heaving themselves like sacks
of nickels into
the air. Make them wear
mikes and they’d be grunting
like McEnroe lobbing
a Wimbledon serve.
Then there’s the matter of their
feet, which don’t retract
like landing gear nor
tuck up neatly as drumsticks
on a dinner bird,
but instead hang down
like a deb’s size tens from
the hem of her gown.
Once launched, they don’t so
much actively fly as blow
like paper napkins,
so that, seeing white
flare in a roadside ditch, you
think, trash or egret?—
and chances are it’s
not the great or snowy type,
nearly wiped out by
hat plume hunters in
the nineteenth century, but
a common cattle
egret, down from its
usual perch on a cow’s
rump, where it stabs bugs.
Whoever named them
got it right, coming just one
r short of regret.
--Julie Kane
One of the neat things about syllabics is their ability to get in jazzy speech rhythms without sounding prosy in the negative, flabby sense. There is something charmingly and deliberately awkward here that mirrors the egrets. My students, upon encountering this, all took up the phrase "trash or egret" into their memories immediately. I love that this poem can include "McEnroe" and "Wimbledon" and "rump" and "sacks of nickels".
This seems to me a wonderful use of the enjambments, and of enjambment across haiku stanzas:
jogging a few steps,
then heaving themselves like sacks
of nickels into
the air. Make them wear
You can feel the effort of the take-off.
I would encourage folks playing with syllabics not to be shy about internal rhymes, rhymes, alliteration etc. Syllabics need not be minimalistic.
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