[Alan Sullivan]

Given Hope's affinity with Eighteenth Century verse, and his wonderful imitations of period style in "The Age of Reason," it is probably reasonable to assume his intent to elide. The practice was commonplace in Pope, whom Hope most admired.

Kate, your critiques are interesting, especially your comment on the use of "allegory" in the context of "Imperial Adam." I think, however, that you should make some allowance for accent in the matter of rhyming. Hope intends full rhyme when he pairs "thighs" with "Paradise." The typing is correct; but there may be a punctuation error in the Carcanet "Selected Poems," the only edition I have of this particular piece. I sympathize with your complaint about Hope's view of female orgasm. The old guy was quite unreconstructed.

For the curious, I would commend also the collection of lengthy poems mentioned above ("The Age of Reason") and Hope's final book "Orpheus," which includes an extraordinary set of five long meditations, "Western Elegies," written in classical dactyllic hexameter, the only instance I know of an author making this ancient meter work in Modern English.

Alan Sullivan

[This message has been edited by Alan Sullivan (edited 11-19-2000).]

[Len Krisak]

In reply to Alan's and Caleb's comments on
elision, I guess I would say that no, I don't think there is any "new rule" about syllables, nor do I think Frost and others "can't" use anapests as substitutions. This began to be very popular in the late Romantic and early Victorian eras (Tennyson liked to sub anapests a lot), and I have no objections to it--as long as it's kept under control.

But the Hope is like Shakespeare--lots of elision in the sonnets, a group of poems we have no way of knowing if Shakespeare saw through "publication," though I'm almost 145% certain he didn't (repeated lines in two separate sonnets, a 12-liner, the extremely personal nature of the address to the young man, etc.).

As to whether or not we are justified in seeing elision in poets who do not "do" it themselves (i.e., "e'er" and "e'en,"), there is really no way to tell. All of Shakespeare's sonnets work out perfectly iambic with no more than ONE occasional elision per line. I just finished teaching "Romeo and Juliet," by the way,
and another way one can tell if Shakespeare was trying for perfect iambs is to notice that Romeo is pronounced two different ways depending on the word's placement in the line--according to meter, in other words: ROAM-yo (2 syllables) and RO-mee-O. Shakespeare does the exact same thing with Cassio in "Othello."

Cheers to all!