[Wintaka]

I think that if foreign language meters are to be grouped with English ones we should certainly mention quantitative verse.

Okay, so let's take stock. Accentual meter counts stresses, syllabic counts syllables and accentual-syllabic counts feet. As far as I can see the only thing they have in common is counting. This means that we may need to consider "leximetric" poems like WCW's "The Red Wheelbarrow" (i.e. 3 words, then 1, in each stanza) as well.*

FWIW, I appreciate posters identifying any meter other than accentual-syllabic, regardless of where the poem is posted. Unless all of the above end up on Metrical/TDE maybe Non-Metrical should be renamed. In the case of the status quo, "NASOA" ("Not accentual-syllabic or accentual"), perhaps?

Just my 2 cents,

Colin

* To stretch the point, concrete poems involve close counting of letters to form those shapes so I suppose they might be contemplated, too.

-o-

[Allen Tice]

Originally Posted by Stephen Collington

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, alas, I disagree. See the numbered references below in my section.

(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

     Hard, hard, hard it is, missing those molossi.

(1)     O O — u u — u — u — —, Phalaecian, the verse. M L West, p 198, Greek Metre.

(2)     x x — u u — u — u — —, phalaecean hendecasyllable. The Meters of Greek and Latin Poetry by Halporn, Ostwald, & Rosenmeyer, (revised) p 131.

(3)          Let the Wiki win

Tennyson's full text follows. I emphasize some lines that to me have strong second syllables.

O you chorus of indolent reviewers,
Irresponsible, indolent reviewers,
Look, I come to the test, a tiny poem
All composed in a metre of Catullus,
All in quantity, careful of my motion,
Like the skater on ice that hardly bears him,
Lest I fall unawares before the people,
Waking laughter in indolent reviewers.
Should I flounder awhile without a tumble
Thro' this metrification of Catullus,
They should speak to me not without a welcome,
All that chorus of indolent reviewers.
Hard, hard, hard it is, only not to tumble,
So fantastical is the dainty meter.
Wherefore slight me not wholly, nor believe me
Too presumptuous, indolent reviewers.
O blatant Magazines, regard me rather -
Since I blush to belaud myself a moment -
As some rare little rose, a piece of inmost
Horticultural art, or half-coquette-like
Maiden, not to be greeted unbenignly.

[Stephen Collington]

You're right, Allen: a truly molossal mistake. And I should have checked before I assumed anything about the final anceps. That said, I think you'll agree that Tennyson's ultimae are pretty consistently unaccented.

And for what it's worth, I suspect many readers would demote the middle "hard" with me as well; it isn't required, of course, but it's a natural instinct of English speakers when faced with three heavies in a row. Anyway, it's enough to see the overall pattern; one can always quibble over a few lines here or there. Tennyson consistently starts with a trochee:

O you . . .
IRre . . .
LOOK, i . . .
ALL com . . .
ALL in . . .
LIKE a . . .

and once that pattern is established, it's no great shift to read

AS some RARE little ROSE, a PIECE of INmost

or indeed

HARD, hard, HARD it is, ONly NOT to TUMble,

and so find a perfectly regular pattern across the poem. But there's no reason to insist on it.

But yes, Allen, you're right. It is hard sometimes.

Thanks,
Steve C.

[Allen Tice]

I think, AS AN AMATEUR, that moderns are too mechanical in interpreting the classic meters, and indeed, too mechanical in applying the "four" levels in English stress. In ordinary English speech, there are three stress levels, plus a super light "level" that hardly exists as stress; and in classic Latin there were two lengths plus elision: which gives three also.

Also, as an indolent amateur, well insulated from insolvent University programs, I suspect, though I may not tell, that too little attention is paid to what different Greeks and Romans did with their line ends, and the lengths associated thereto.

Bless all insolent reviewers,

Allen

[John Hutchcraft]

Originally Posted by Rose Kelleher

p.p.s. I like Moore's "Fish," but I'm not crazy about all the line breaks. Which has got me wondering: If you use syllabics merely as a tool to help you write a poem, then do you necessarily need to preserve the line breaks, afterwards, that resulted from the technique? In, say, Plath's "Mushrooms," the lines are more, uh, line-y; you wouldn't want to mess with the line breaks. The syllabics clearly contribute to the result as well as to the process. But if you reorganized "Fish" without the cute triangular stanzas, it might even sound better that way.

I guess I would say that much of the pleasure of syllabics is the pleasure of recognition, namely, the pleasure that ensues on the fifth or sixth or tenth read, when one recognizes that the poem is not, in fact, free verse, but written in stanzas that are, after a fashion, rhymed and metered. The haiku stanza has become common enough that it fairly gives itself away to a certain set of sensitized readers, but I suspect that there are few readers, if any, who immediately pick up on the arrangements of Moore's stanzas. In part that's because they're individually crafted. It's also in part because of the feminine rhymes you admired - and the fact that many of the rhymes are eye rhymes, or other types which are difficult to hear (e.g., dead/repeated, an/injured fan). She decouples rhyme from accent, and as such, spotting her rhymes, let alone hearing them, becomes nearly impossible - and probably meaningless - without the lines being broken where she's broken them. So - could you relineate "The Fish"? Sure. Would it still rhyme? Maybe. Would the lack of rhymes detract from the poem? Depends on your taste - in my opinion, the recognition of the stanzaic scheme is a major part of the pleasure of reading the poem the first few times.

I'd also note that these poems, like lots of syllabic poems, are not necessarily written for the ear. Is that a bad thing? Depends a lot on one's taste, which is based on one's critical commitments, both the spoken and the unspoken ones. For my own part, while I usually think of myself as being very into sound and rhythm and memorizability, I think there's still enough graduate student left in me to really admire the less visceral pleasures of Moore, including the pleasure of recognizing an ingenious, unique, and inaudible form.

[Rose Kelleher]

I guess I would say that much of the pleasure of syllabics is the pleasure of recognition, namely, the pleasure that ensues on the fifth or sixth or tenth read, when one recognizes that the poem is not, in fact, free verse, but written in stanzas that are, after a fashion, rhymed and metered. The haiku stanza has become common enough that it fairly gives itself away to a certain set of sensitized readers, but I suspect that there are few readers, if any, who immediately pick up on the arrangements of Moore's stanzas. In part that's because they're individually crafted. It's also in part because of the feminine rhymes you admired - and the fact that many of the rhymes are eye rhymes, or other types which are difficult to hear (e.g., dead/repeated, an/injured fan). She decouples rhyme from accent, and as such, spotting her rhymes, let alone hearing them, becomes nearly impossible - and probably meaningless - without the lines being broken where she's broken them. So - could you relineate "The Fish"? Sure. Would it still rhyme? Maybe. Would the lack of rhymes detract from the poem? Depends on your taste - in my opinion, the recognition of the stanzaic scheme is a major part of the pleasure of reading the poem the first few times.

I'd also note that these poems, like lots of syllabic poems, are not necessarily written for the ear. Is that a bad thing? Depends a lot on one's taste, which is based on one's critical commitments, both the spoken and the unspoken ones. For my own part, while I usually think of myself as being very into sound and rhythm and memorizability, I think there's still enough graduate student left in me to really admire the less visceral pleasures of Moore, including the pleasure of recognizing an ingenious, unique, and inaudible form.

So the syllabics in "Fish" are not just a composition aid for the writer, then, but an important part of the result - just in a way that may be hard to spot if you don't have the text in front of you. Yeah, that makes sense. I tend to forget about anything in a poem you can't hear, but that's my problem. I also remember being told, in some forum or other, by some guy who sounded very authoritative and sure of himself, that a poem should work even when the reader doesn't recognize the underlying form; e.g., if you have to justify your sestina by explaining what a sestina is, it's not working. I tend to agree, so for me, a syllabic poem should work even without that "pleasure of recognition," but again, that's my thing. Thanks, John.

[John Hutchcraft]

I wouldn't even say that it's a "problem," Rose. You might just like a lot of sonics! Nothing wrong with that, certainly.

I think Moore's poems work really well even if you read them thinking that they're wildly lineated free verse, or if you read them without any thought to form at all. I think they're really driven by the lightning-bolt zig-zag of her thought and syntax, combined with her immense descriptive powers. The prominence of abstract language is another very strange, very striking effect. (Especially when it's held against the descriptive passages, which show that she can be as concrete as she needs, thank you very much.) In any event, I think Moore's poems, like all good poems, syllabic or otherwise, offer many different kinds of pleasure, some of which only become apparent after living with them for a while. So while I agree that a sestina that requires a reader to recognize it's a sestina to have any effect is probably a crap poem, I don't think that Moore's poems or other good syllabic poems require a reader to recognize their formal attributes in order to have an effect, or to offer pleasure. Rather, the pleasure of recognition is just one kind of pleasure, and if the poem's any good at all, then by definition it's offering a whole bouquet of pleasures.

For instance - I love "Fern Hill" and read it about a hundred times before I read a critic somewhere who mentioned how he loved it and had read it about a hundred times before he realized that it was syllabic. You can read "Metaphors" a whole bunch without realizing that it's nine lines of nine syllables each. Doing so, you miss what amounts to an inside joke for prosodists, but "I've eaten a bag of green apples" is still going to conjure the image it does.

In any event, thanks for - excuse me - hearing me out, and for paraphrasing me so succinctly!

[Janet Kenny]

I may be a reactionary revolutionary but after reading all of this discussion I want to say, just write in a form which is so convincing the reader has to go along with it. It's what painters have been doing for a century or more. Sure it's good to use the restrictions of form just like a painter is restricted by the shape of the canvas but ultimately, unless the poem is more than a demonstration of skill and actually touches the reader in some personal way, who cares? I'm talking about form, not free verse.
Form is as plastic as a poet can make it. A poem dictates its own form in most cases. Expressive form is like orchestration. It can be the soul of the poem.

Personally, I write to be read aloud in the mind and sonics are very important in my mind.

[John Whitworth]

What I don't understand is how Latin hexameters SOUND. When my oldLatin teachers recited Virgil it sounded (as I remember) much like Clough. Indeed surely Clough would have made his English hexameters sound like Latin ones. I can never understand how longs and shorts actually SOUND. Is there something on the web perhaps?

Incidentally, Gregory, that Mushroom poem is th first one by Sylvia Plath I've ever seen that I liked. Perhaps it's partly because she's not talking about her love/hate for jack-booted men which is ineffably tedious, or so I find.

[Janet Kenny]

Oh John, what about this one?

You're

Clownlike, happiest on your hands,
Feet to the stars, and moon-skulled,
Gilled like a fish. A common-sense
Thumbs-down on the dodo's mode.
Wrapped up in yourself like a spool,
Trawling your dark, as owls do.
Mute as a turnip from the Fourth
Of July to All Fools' Day,
O high-riser, my little loaf.

Vague as fog and looked for like mail.
Farther off than Australia.
Bent-backed Atlas, our traveled prawn.
Snug as a bud and at home
Like a sprat in a pickle jug.
A creel of eels, all ripples.
Jumpy as a Mexican bean.
Right, like a well-done sum.
A clean slate, with your own face on.

Sylvia Plath