[MacArthur]

Hm... "the ghost of meter", or the ghost of Eliot? For Eliot is representative of several 20th Century poets whose prestige is conjured by Formalists whenever it appears useful to summon him-- he's a closet Formalist, we're told, and a case can be made for it.
Now here's where I become confused: Eliot's shade is then promptly returned to the Outer Circle to resume eternal torment...presumably Dante's outer circle where all the really good poets are damned, while the mediocrities go straight to heaven. Why?
If Eliot composed in a loosened Formal approach, and this strategy was successful, what's the problem?

There's a story about the late-Renaissance Doctor, Erasmus. Erasmus was a Humanist, whose intellectual skepticism was an important influence on (among others) Calvin. In the religious controversies which sprang up late in his life, he elected (for whatever reason) to remain Roman Catholic. But in the emerging Counter-Reformation church his doctrines came under opprobrium.
His prestige was such however, that he was induced to debate Martin Luther (from a distance). In the debate Luther greeted him "Ah those Jesuits, Doctor Erasmus: If you weren't debating me...they would burn you alive!"

[Paul Lake]

Roger, your choice of "Snow Man" was a great one. This might be a great place to close our discussion since we're probably in essential agreement on this. The poem is a great one, and it doesn't fit neatly into any single formal pattern--though, I will argue, there is a ghost of a meter, a very old meter, haunting it. So the poem is more free than, say, a Wilbur sonnet, but it's also far less free than almost anything by Williams, Ammons, Ginsberg, etc.

The main rhythm behind "The Snow Man" is a four beat accentual line. We can hear it first in the opening line:

ONE must HAVE a MIND of WINter

a line which can also be scanned as trochaic tetrameter or a headleass iambic tetrameter line.

Line two switches to a three beat line--the main variation in this poem and one Eliot uses sometimes--and then line three melds the first two lines with a pattern that can be heard more or less either way, as four stress

of the PINE-TREES CRUSted with SNOW

or, since "trees" gets a shade less strees than "pine" as

of the PINE-trees CRUSted with SNOW.

Line four again sort of wobbles between three and four stresses, then lines five and six come back emphatically to four stresses:

To beHOLD the JUnipers SHAGGED with ICE
the SPRUCes ROUGH in the DIStand GLITter

and so on for two more lines till the poem reverst back to three stresses again in line nine.

Another recurring feature is the rising ionic (- - ' ' )
which can be heard here and there throughout:

of the PINE TREES
of a FEW LEAVES
of the SAME WIND

Toward the end of the poem, Stevens shortens the lines pretty regularly to three stresses before bringing it back to the norm of four for his final line:

NOTHing that is NOT there and the NOTHing that IS.

Add to the mix the poem's strict three line stanza, and you have a pretty regular--though not a strictly regular--form.

This poem is "free" in the sense that the author departs from a four stress norm on fairly regular basis, almost always though keeping his variable lines to three stresses. There's a nice mix of satisfying and flouting reader expectation, which is what metrical poetry does, too. But you have to have a meaningful norm in order to depart from it.

As I always argue, the best free verse is written by poets like Stevens who write masterfully in meter.

Paul Lake

[graywyvern]

the Stevens poem confirms my point: it is
magnificent with vowel-music. i do agree,
though, that there is a reminiscence of
(unalliterating) AngloSaxon metrics in
this & other poems of his (even the ones
that are usually considered "loose blank
verse"); & this is no accident.

[Roger Slater]

Paul, I'll also refrain from saying much more until your next article in view of the emergence of some common ground between us. But I'll say a bit.

Your wrote: "This poem is "free" in the sense that the author departs from a four stress norm on fairly regular basis, almost always though keeping his variable lines to three stresses. There's a nice mix of satisfying and flouting reader expectation, which is what metrical poetry does, too. But you have to have a meaningful norm in order to depart from it."

This is very close to what I meant. My point was that a free verse poet can establish his own order and patterns and let the content and composition "discover" a final order that's not imposed by a pre-determined template. I didn't mean to suggest that metrical effects had no place in a free verse poem, only that the the poet is free to use them or depart from them in ways that the formal poet is not. The bottom line, I believe, is that Stevens would have been required to post "Snow Man" over on the free verse board, not on the metrical board. The departures from formal pattern were not defects, but strengths in the poem discovered (no doubt) in the course of composition as the final ordering of the poem emerged in WS's mind.

I purposely picked a poem that had many formal characteristics, and which I presumed that you simply had to respect and admire, because I wanted to lure you out onto the slippery slope that will soon have you tumbling into the valley of my conclusions. If we could imagine another poem that is slightly less formal than "Snow Man," and then another one that's slightly less formal still, we could probably keep on agreeing that each poem successfully resolved its chaos into an appropriate and satisfying order.

I suspect we might reach a point, though, where the poems we encountered do not create their order by keeping formal metrical concerns in sight, but do so by the logical and intuitive movement of their metaphors, images, connections, argments, and realizations. That's where we may start seeing things differently, since I don't think I believe (at least to the extent you believe) that the essence of poetic ordering must necessarily be a musical or metrical phenomonon. I believe, rather, that the substance of a poem is part of the ordering, maybe even the most important part. But I confess I find it much harder to set forth arguments, etc., on this subject, and that my critical faculties are simply not up to justifying my intuitive sense of poetry as I read and enjoy it. And so I look forward to your next article and to the possibility of having my beliefs and critical insights changed by what you teach me. Fascinating stuff!