[Stephen Collington]

Originally Posted by A. E. Stallings

It's true that in trying classical hendecasyllables, we often convert long syllables to accents--DUM (as Frost does); but Tennyson is concerned with syllable length rather than strictly with accent--he's trying for the full classical effect. A curiosity. Don't know that it works, however. He seems to be saying as much, that it is a mere exercise.

No, Tennyson is working with the natural accents of the English language. "Syllabic length" has nothing to do with it, except insofar as the feature is correlated with tonic accent. Of course Tennyson says (tongue in cheek!) that the poem is "all in quantity," but we don't need to take his word for that at all. Back when Latin formed the model for most poets' understanding of grammar, "length" was often confused with "accent" as a matter of terminology, but in practice no one since the 16th century has tried to write with "syllabic lengths" in English. (If you haven't read it, you might enjoy Derek Attridge's Well-Weighed Syllables.)

Anyway, as for the Justice poem, I simply disagree. I think that the lineation adds very little of real purpose to the poem. But my main point is something else: assuming that the kind of effects that you described in your first post on the poem are really all that important, I simply wanted to show that they could be brought out even more strongly with a different arrangement. So, for example, putting "I" at the head of each stanza really gives us a "thin man" in the flesh, and enjambing at "this" rather than "to" makes the drop to "edge" below all the sharper (tension or no, "to" shifts "edge" away from the edge of the line, and so blunts the effect) and so on. That being the case, what is the virtue of the syllabic arrangement here?

Well, of course, it is metrical. But the metre is dimeter, and the arrangement into groups of five syllables as such is irrelevant to its functioning. That's all.

Steve C.

[A. E. Stallings]

Well, we shall have to agree to disagree on the Justice! I also have to say that Tennyson does seem to me to be using quantity (perhaps in addition to accent)--syllables long according to the Latin system by either vowel/dipthong or position (syllables followed by two consonants). Surely the fact that this was published (and an Alcaic and Hexameter exercise ) under the title, "Attempts at Classical Metres in Quantity" would confirm that. I don't think it is tongue-in-cheek, but an actual effort in that direction.

It seems to me that it is also no accident that the successful syllabics we have been looking at--at least I think they are successful--are by poets also skilled in traditional metrics.

[A. E. Stallings]

Chris Childers wrote a paper recently about Wilbur's haiku-shaped "Sleepless at Crown Point." I wonder if he would be willing to share his analysis here?

[Janet Kenny]

Stephen,
I replied and it appeared above this post. I will probably understand why tomorrow. Read my post and you will understand now.
Janet

[Stephen Collington]

Originally Posted by A. E. Stallings

I also have to say that Tennyson does seem to me to be using quantity (perhaps in addition to accent)--syllables long according to the Latin system by either vowel/dipthong or position (syllables followed by two consonants). Surely the fact that this was published (and an Alcaic and Hexameter exercise ) under the title, "Attempts at Classical Metres in Quantity" would confirm that. I don't think it is tongue-in-cheek, but an actual effort in that direction.

Actually, looking back at the Tennyson from that point of view, I think that might just explain what he was up to with "blatant"--making the second syllable "long by position" in the classical manner. So I concede that point to you Alicia: Tennyson is more carefully aping the "rules" than I at first gave him credit for. For example, he carefully avoids closed syllables on the off (unaccented) positions throughout the poem . . . which may of course be a coincidence, but is more likely a conscious gesture towards "correct" scansion in classical, quantitative terms (it is, of course, completely irrelevant from the point of view of English accent). That said, if he'd seriously believed that a closed, but normally unaccented, syllable could be "promoted" to accented status just by being "long by position," then he surely would have felt free to use the trick more than once in twenty-one lines. After all, in the Latin examples he's presumably imitating, such "promotions" (L.B.P.) might occur several times per line. And yet, and yet--with one blatant exception--his accenting is perfectly in accord with natural English stress . . . a fact which suggests to me that he had no illusions about "quantity" as an inherent feature of English syllables, absent stress as co-factor.

But really, are you sure you don't think it's tongue in cheek? The whole thing seems pretty blaTANT to me.

Steve C.

p.s. Janet, we cross posted. I actually rather suspected you knew all about the patterning in the hendecasyllabics. I even originally started my post off with something to that effect--"I know you probably know this, but . . . "--but edited it out because I was starting to sound prolix. Anyway, I apologize. I wasn't looking to call you out on a mistake; I simply wanted to make the larger point that what might not appear "metrical" at first glance is sometimes quite elaborately patterned indeed. And so you provided the occasion for the sermon! (Glad to hear about the elections. I originally misread you . . . so if you saw my previous note of consolation, scratch the gloomy thoughts about demockracy. Call it demuckrakecy instead. May your new broom sweep clean . . . )

p.p.s. Here's the Tennyson again, in case anyone's wondering:

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.

[Rose Kelleher]

I was persuaded as soon as I read the Donald Justice poem in the other thread. Seems like it encourages short lines and compression, which could be a good antidote to IP-itis. That and reading Tim and Wendy's poems.

I've read some syllabic poems that didn't please my ear, but most of these examples sound great. What makes the difference? I'm seeing a lot of feminine line endings in the ones I like best. I'm sure there are other useful techniques, too, but somehow I don't think studying them would be as helpful as just trying it, and going back and re-reading the good ones.

p.s. Some here seem to be arguing that syllabics in English aren't worthwhile. But obviously some beautiful poems have been written in syllabics in English. So what am I missing? Look at the examples and ask yourself: Is this good poem? Is it, in fact, a better poem than most of mine? If so, maybe I shouldn't dismiss the technique on pedantic theoretical grounds.

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.

[Stephen Collington]

Originally Posted by Rose Kelleher

p.s. Some here seem to be arguing that syllabics in English aren't worthwhile. But obviously some beautiful poems have been written in syllabics in English. So what am I missing? Look at the examples and ask yourself: Is this good poem? Is it, in fact, a better poem than most of my boring crap? If so, maybe I shouldn't dismiss the technique on pedantic theoretical grounds.

Before you can say Nevermind . . .

As to what you're missing, Rose, I'd say it's probably just the point of the argument. No one here (to my knowledge--I'd have to go back and check thoroughly to be sure) has said that there haven't been beautiful poems written in syllabics. The question is whether syllabics represent a true metre in English--as opposed to, say, a method of composition, or "free-verse prosody." And that, pedantic as it may sound, is a valid question--one which, if the inclination ever strikes you to look, you will find has received considerable attention in the literature on English metrics.

Anyway, as (presumably) one of the pedants whom you're lashing out at here, I'll just say for the record that I find Justice's poem (since that is primarily what I've been talking about) a very ho-hum affair--not actively bad, just not very interesting, all in all. But that's my opinion. As for contemplating my own writing as "boring crap," however, even if only for the purpose of comparison . . . I can assure you, the thought has never so much as crossed my mind.

Steve C.

[Rose Kelleher]

As long as people are proposing new forum rules, may I propose that we introduce a "Wait five minutes before responding" rule, to give each poster time to make a few edits to their post before you go jumping down their throat about it? I don't always manage to say it exactly right the first time. Pressing the Submit button seems to trigger some kind of heightened awareness that allows me to catch things I hadn't noticed before - overly emphatic modifiers, for example.

That said, Stephen, I don't think I'm the one who's missing the point.

[Maryann Corbett]

Do I even need to say this? Let's discuss the poems and not each other, please.

[A. E. Stallings]

I suppose I am not a purist--it doesn't matter to me whether it is a "true metre" in English, but whether it is a useful constraint that produces good poems. Method of composition is fine by me. I suppose that would be the difference between how a scholar and a practioner would look at things, and I would look at it as a practioner. As this thread is called "Successful Syllabics" may I suggest that whether syllabics are a "true metre" or not might be addressed better in a General discussion thread under its own heading?

May I produce one more example, one of my favorites, again, this time by our own Julie Kane? I hope she doesn't mind--at any rate, it has already been posted on the Sphere in the women and form discussion:

Egrets

You have to love them
for the way they make takeoff
look improbable:

jogging a few steps,
then heaving themselves like sacks
of nickels into

the air. Make them wear
mikes and they’d be grunting
like McEnroe lobbing

a Wimbledon serve.
Then there’s the matter of their
feet, which don’t retract

like landing gear nor
tuck up neatly as drumsticks
on a dinner bird,

but instead hang down
like a deb’s size tens from
the hem of her gown.

Once launched, they don’t so
much actively fly as blow
like paper napkins,

so that, seeing white
flare in a roadside ditch, you
think, trash or egret?—

and chances are it’s
not the great or snowy type,
nearly wiped out by

hat plume hunters in
the nineteenth century, but
a common cattle

egret, down from its
usual perch on a cow’s
rump, where it stabs bugs.

Whoever named them
got it right, coming just one
r short of regret.


--Julie Kane


One of the neat things about syllabics is their ability to get in jazzy speech rhythms without sounding prosy in the negative, flabby sense. There is something charmingly and deliberately awkward here that mirrors the egrets. My students, upon encountering this, all took up the phrase "trash or egret" into their memories immediately. I love that this poem can include "McEnroe" and "Wimbledon" and "rump" and "sacks of nickels".

This seems to me a wonderful use of the enjambments, and of enjambment across haiku stanzas:

jogging a few steps,
then heaving themselves like sacks
of nickels into

the air. Make them wear

You can feel the effort of the take-off.

I would encourage folks playing with syllabics not to be shy about internal rhymes, rhymes, alliteration etc. Syllabics need not be minimalistic.