Brett's remarks on meter, the parts I can make
sense of, are simply wrong. Human language
is not metered. The sounds of metrical lines
(in the hands of a good practitioner) are not
predictable, except of course for the number
of accents (usually). And if you think poems
in regular meter are "affected," you don't
know nearly enough about the matter to talk
about it. Yes, meter is a kind of special
language ("the basis of intimacy between
reader and writer"), and all poems are written
in a special language, even when free verse, or
when the diction is plain and colloquial. It
is not conversation (though it may mimic convers-
ation or contain conversation). And yes, of
course good poems can be written in nonmetrical
verse, but they must be written in verse, not
prose. I recently came across this little poem
by Howard Nemerov that I think many of you will
find amusing and to the point:
BECAUSE YOU ASKED ABOUT THE LINE BETWEEN
PROSE AND POETRY
Sparrows were feeding in a freezing drizzle
That while you watched turned into pieces of snow
Riding a gradient invisible
From silver aslant to random, white, and slow.
There came a moment that you couldn't tell.
And then they clearly flew instead of fell.
Some of these threads give me a headache with their
endless talk about poetry in general, often without
reference to particular poems. Not that some of the
talk isn't intelligent and sensible. But too much
is completely uninformed and keeps on saying the
same mistaken things over and over.
Just wanted to get that off my chest.
Since we're supposed to be Musing on Mastery, let's
muse on this sonnet by Robert Frost (as good a sonnet
as there is in English, I'd say):
THE SILKEN TENT
She is as in a field a silken tent
At midday when a sunny summer breeze
Has dried the dew and all its ropes relent,
So that in guys it gently sways at ease,
And its supporting central cedar pole,
That is its pinnacle to heavenward
And signifies the sureness of the soul,
Seems to owe naught to any single cord,
But strictly held by none, is loosely bound
By countless silken ties of love and thought
To everything on earth the compass round,
And only by one's going slightly taut
In the capriciousness of summer air
Is of the slightest bondage made aware.
There's a poem you could talk about and praise long
into the night. I'm willing.
A few comments, more or less helpful: "guys" has
nothing to do with the slang word for men (or people)
--they're the ropes or cords without which the tent
would collapse. This poem is also a good example of
what Frost meant when he said, "I'm a synecdochist."
(He didn't just mean that he used that trope in his
poems.) The sentence structure and syntax are really
something and bear paying the closest attention to.
Why silken is easy enough, but why as instead of
like in the first line? The movement of the
lines is beyond praise, and yet, except for three or
perhaps four initial trochees, the lines are straight
iambic. (Some of you may disagree about line 2, in
which case I'll have to go into a very strange and
rarely mentioned phenomenon in strict iambic verse.)
And the stunning effects, both of sound and of syntax,
in the final couplet---the kind of thing that I don't
think could ever be done in free verse. (It has worlds
to do with the very subject of the poem.) Anyone
game to talk about this poem?
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