[Maryann Corbett]

Tony, I hope you won't mind if the meter-theory addicts, having been aroused, keep rumbling on in your thread even though you retire from it.

The main thing I notice about the difference between Bill's scansion and Clive's is that Clive calls nothing a spondee. I'm another one who has a very truncated faith in the reality of spondees. I favor the Timothy Steele four-level system of stresses, in which two very heavy syllables next to each other can usually be contrasted as lighter and heavier, a 3 and a 4 (as in sat'st brood [ing], so that they still make a normal iamb.

The only spondees I think I believe in are those in double iambs:
to a |green thought| in a | green shade

and even there, pitch is slightly higher for thought and shade.

We really ought to do some comparing of scansions and Audacity files.

[Tony Barnstone]

Hi Maryann,

I think I tend to agree with you. I dislike overcomplicated metrical systems, but in practice I think the way I scan is close to the 4-level method, which is to say that all stresses are relative and contextual, and like you I tend to read spondees as nonexistent except in the double iamb. On the other hand, I also realize that that's all a reading convention. With a shift in perspective spondees exist, despite all this relativistic nonsense.

I think it's a bit like ongoing discussions of religion. Skeptic? Person of faith?

Goes back to the old question: is the mind a mirror or a lamp?

Best, Tony

[Bill Carpenter]

I like the 4-point scale too, which provides more accurate descriptions than the binary scale. On the other hand, the 4-point scale has not displaced the traditional vocabulary for different kinds of feet, suggesting that the traditional vocabulary is convenient for discussions like this one.

I guess I find myself in disagreement with Tim Steele's declining to use the term spondee for a heavily stressed foot just because there is still some differential of stress between the two syllables. (I believe that is stated in All the Fun's In How You Say a Thing, a wonderful book recommended to me by Duncan on the Sphere.) "Satst" in "Dove-like satst brooding on the vast Abyss" is heavily stressed, both semantically and because of its length or quantity. (In my opinion quantity translates into stress for scanning purposes, our version of E = mc squared, though I admit I have barely stuck my toe in the ocean of metrical science.) Arguably, "satst brood-" is a 4-4 foot, but even if we give it 3-4, in choosing between calling it an iamb or a spondee I would still call it a spondee to be more consistent with the meaning and art of the line. Calling it a spondee better captures the relationship of the foot to the metrical type in the background (1-4/1-4/1-4/1-4/1-4). "Satst brood-" is a departure from type both semantically and by quantity, and calling it a spondee rather than an iamb acknowledges that departure, while calling it an iamb minimizes it. Although one could regard both spondee and iamb as unsuitable terms in the circumstances, calling it a spondee helps the reader appreciate the art of the line. The whole line of course could be scanned as 4-2-3-4-1-1-1-4-1-4 (for example) without any regard for the traditional vocabulary.

Michael Lewis's Moneyball tells the story of how Oakland A's manager Billy Beane came to disbelieve in the traditional statistics used to measure player performance and sought more relevant, predictive statistics. That enabled him to buy undervalued players and enabled the A's to perform at a higher level than their low salary budget would normally have allowed. Is there a more accurate system of scansion available that expresses, for example, the relationship of quantity to stress, the place of the syllable in larger units than the line, or as Clive emphasized, the relationship of grammar to meter, which brings us to cesuras? If anyone has found a persuasive one I would love to hear about it. Bill

[Heidi Czerwiec]

At this point in the conversation, I don't have much to add to what's been said above, but I very much liked what Maryann said about the metrical line versus the conversational -- it makes me remember an exercise Tom Kirby-Smith had us do scanning Frost according to how the metrical line sounded, then rescanning the same poem according to how Frost read it in a recording -- the two were surprisingly different.

And like one of the other commentators (Sam?) I will purposefully clunk up the line with substitutions to convey feeling or awkwardness, etc. My polestar in this is Shakespeare's "Th'expense of spirit in a waste of shame".

[Wintaka]

Gregory:

Originally Posted by Gregory

Colin, I can see the iambic lines and I can see a case for saying some lines are ambiguous. But I really don't see how it is possible to say it has zero lines of trochee. How do you scan the first line? And "What the hammer? what the chain?" I confess I'm not sure how you are using the term "hypometrical"; presumably it is alternative to "catalectic" but I still don't see how one read these lines other than with a marked trochaic beat.

"Hypometrical" refers to lines that are missing a syllable from their beginning or end, as opposed to hypermetrical ones with their extra syllable(s).

Tony's example, Blake's "Tyger", is perfectly apt because it illustrates all four scansion rudiments, the whole of which can be expressed in 10 words--7 if you allow an acronym like "KISS":

1. Keep It Simple, Stupid: 6 > 0.
   
   
2. Scan backwards: Start at the end of the lines and we see this as iambic immediately. Note how the rhymes, along with the scarcity of irregularities at the ends of the line, draws our ear's attention to each line's terminus.
   
   
3. Scan poems (as opposed to lines in isolation): By definition, hypometrical and hypermetrical lines cannot be scanned in isolation. We need to look at the entire poem. To wit:
   
   To be | or not | to be, | that is | the quest{ion}
   Iamb, iamb, iamb, trochaic inversion, iamb, catalexis
   
   {To} be or | not to | be, that | is the | question
   anacrusis, trochee, trochee, spondee, pyrrhic, trochee
   where the 3rd and 4th foot form a double trochee or "Ionic a maiore".
   
   
   This famous line actually scans better as [anacrusic] trochaic pentameter than as [hypercatalectic] iambic pentameter. Coming as it does amid thousands of lines of IP, though, there is no question as to how that ambiguity is resolved.
   
   
4. Find models: The six complete, 8-syllable lines of iamb define how the ambiguous, 7-syllable hypometrical lines are to be viewed. Most poems contain at least one such "reveal" line, Countee Cullen’s "Heritage" and various nursery rhymes being among the exceptions.

Best regards,

Colin

[W.F. Lantry]

Hey, folks,

Ok, so: I scan Colin's example differently. Here's what I hear:

to be / or not / to be / that / is the / question

Obviously, that's wrong. My ear is all wrong, so I'm not really qualified to discuss these issues. And I feel like a chess player who still uses the old notation!

But I wonder about the practical applications. The whole thing puts me in mind of chironomia, which people studied for centuries. Entire elaborate systems were drawn up, and proponents of one argued with proponents of another. If you've ever studied ars praedicandi, you can get a refresher course on chironomia every week.

But can we really match gestures to persuasion, or the use of a trochee to a specific emotion or thought? I know it's fun to argue about terms and their application, but I keep coming back to something James Wright wrote in a letter. I can't recall the exact citation, but it was something like 'I have yet to find any practical use for the variable foot.'

So that's my question. Do we find a conscious and practical application for all this? Can systematic use stir a definable specific emotion in a reader, and can we employ this knowledge during the composition process?

As I said, I can't even scan Shakespeare, so I'm not qualified to give an answer, but I *am* interested!

Thanks,

Bill

[Michael F]

This is a very interesting discussion. I’ve learned a few things, including at least one new word…

Bill, I hear you -- things can be over-determined. I tend to doubt that you can read the whole range of human emotions in metrical substitutions.

OTOH, the inversions that Clive points out in PL in relation to syntax / meaning have the ring of truth to my ear. I guess I have too much respect for Milton to think they’re all happenstance, all serendipity. To me, it feels like artistry.

[Bill Carpenter]

Bill,
In answer to your question, what's the point, I would say that, for an experienced poet who has internalized metrical conventions and fleshed them out with his or her ear to taste, there's not necessarily any point in going back to school and bringing the elements of scansion up from memory -- though even an experienced poet may be interested in comparing his or her practice to others', which seemed to be the gist of Tony's question. For a less experienced poet, by contrast, learning scansion is essential to learning to operate in meter. It is especially important for a beginner to understand the role of substitutions and not mistake the background for the foreground. It is also useful to have relatively objective measurements available to counter oversubjective personal readings that no one else will discover.

In addition, scansion provides a supplemental notation as to how a line should be read. It's not always self-evident from the page. Heidi's example of Frost's personal scansion demonstrates this. In the example Clive and I discussed, "Of man's first disobedience, and the fruit," I think the second foot is reversed, Clive does not. If you were going to perform it, you would want to know where to put the stress before opening your mouth.

So that's two points, to educate the student and to annotate the poem for performance. But maybe scansion isn't as important as discovering a new recipe for chickpeas? Best, Bill

[John Whitworth]

Can't EVEN scan Shakespeare? Shakespeare is notoriously difficult.

To BE or NOT to BE, THAT is the QUESTion is the way I say it. But go to You Tube. How do Olivier, Branagh, Gibson and whoever else they've got there do it? Now try

If 'twere DONE when 'tis DONE then 'twere WELL 'twere DONE QUICKly.
We've got Welles, McKellen (bravo!) and Stewart here.

There is such a thing as a natural ear. My younger daughter has it. My elder daughter doesn't.

Can you scan Johnson's unscannable line. Lay your knife and you fork across your plate. Gavin Ewart has a poem made up entirely of lines that scan in the same way. But what way is that?

Is this important? Not as important as whether Christ was the son of God, but more important than the causes of the First World War (which I knew once).

[Neil Jackson]

I know this is an aside to your main discussion but...

If iambic pentameter is meant to be representative of stresses in regular (English) speech patterns and we are compelled to write to various forms etc etc. how does poetry deal with these examples where one big stress on one word changes the intonation and context of the whole thing?

I mean the BIG stress is placed on the word in bold type.

Of course I love you.
Of course I love you.
Of course I love you.
Of course I love you.