[mandolin]

Frost himself said there were only two meters in English: strict iambic and loose iambic, by which he meant anapestic substitutions, and I think that makes any scansion of Frost using the more unusual feet suspect. Disregrading elision, I'd scan "Mowing" like this:

MOWING

There was NEV | er a SOUND | beSIDE | the WOOD | but ONE,
And THAT | was my LONG | scythe WHIS | pering TO |the GROUND.
What was IT | it WHIS | pered? i KNEW | not WELL | mySELF;
PerHAPS | it was SOME | thing aBOUT | the HEAT | of the SUN,
SOMEthing, | perHAPS,| aBOUT | the LACK | of SOUND--
And THAT | was WHY | it WHIS | pered and DID | not SPEAK.
It WAS | no DREAM | of the GIFT | of ID | le HOurs,
Or EAS |y GOLD | at the HAND | of FAY | or ELF:
ANy | thing MORE | than the TRUTH | would have SEEMED | too WEAK
To the EAR | nest LOVE that LAID the SWALE in ROWS,
NOT with | out FEE | ble-POINT | ed SPIKES | of FLOWers
(Pale ORCH | isES),| and SCARED | a BRIGHT | green SNAKE.
The FACT | is the SWEET | est DREAM | that LA | bour KNOWS.
My LONG | scythe WHIS | pered and LEFT | the HAY | to MAKE.


Now, about that elision that I disregarded. There's an essay by Richard Moore (available on the web at http://home.earthlink.net/~arthur505/cult0397.html ) in which he claims that eleven of the fourteen lines of "Mowing" have only one anapest or none at all. If he's right, that suggests at least 3 elisions, since I've got 6 lines above with two anapests (lines 1-4, 9, and 14). Two candidates: "WHISPering" in line 2 can easily be pronounced "WHISPring," and "what was IT" in line 3 might be said "what WAS'T." But what are the others? Or is Moore just wrong about that? Robert, Tim, anybody?


Caleb -- you might enjoy that essay. Consider this passage:
"If the contemporary effort to write strict iambic has so frequently resulted in rhythms that sound like that, [a bad example from Gorbuduc then the possibility should at least be considered that after four centuries strict iambic is indeed dead and ought to be replaced by something else. (The problem in part may be that the lines of the iambic / free verse controversy were first drawn in Whitman's time, when iambic had already lost much of its early music. In consequence, the verse of the metric conservatives, even to this day, partakes of a tradition, starting with Longfellow and Colonel Higginson, which, like A. E. Housman at his worst, valued excessive regularity and suggested to poets like William Carlos Williams the stultifying proprieties of Victorian times.)"

[Caleb Murdock]

Pat, welcome to the board.

I would scan that line like this:

and THAT/was my LONG/SCYTHE WHIS/-per-ing TO/the GROUND

"to" can take just a whisper of emphasis, thus it must take the stress for the foot; otherwise, you have FOUR unstressed syllables in a row.

However, I do believe that both 3 unstressed and 3 stress syllables can exist in a row. For example, on another board I scanned "Hyla Brook". The 11th line reads like this:

of DEAD / LEAVES STUCK / to GETH / er BY / the HEAT

In actuality, I read the line like this:

of DEAD / LEAVES STUCK / to GETH er {pause} by the HEAT
(as if it had 4 feet)

That pause comes in the middle of a foot, and leaves a three-syllable phrase to complete the line. It is instances like this that make me feel that scansion is more of an art than a science, and that the English language can't be neatly pinned down by any metrical system.

Actually, the same thing can be done to that line from "Mowing":

and THAT/was my LONG/SCYTHE WHIS/-per-ing {pause} to the GROUND
(such a pause would be very brief)

The same kind of pause often occurs when you have an iamb and a trochee back to back:

da DUM / DUM da

This inevitably leads to the question of whether pauses can act as syllables in the meter, but I'm not ready to tackle THAT!

Mandolin, I think that too much is being made of elisions. A person who would write an article arguing that "Mowing" has only 2 anapests is not being consistent with what I think are Frost's obvious intentions. In his mature work, he frequently inserted anapests into his iambic pentameter -- it was a bona fide technique that he used to give his poetry a more mature, relaxed cadence. As I pointed out in another thread, "The Road Not Taken" has 9 syllables per line -- it is iambic tetrameter with one anapest per line.

I'll go and take a look at that article.




[This message has been edited by Caleb Murdock (edited July 08, 2001).]

[mandolin]

Caleb, I must not have been clear. Moore said "Of the fourteen pentameters, eleven have only one anapest or none at all." So that's, at a minimum, 3 lines with more than one anapest, or at least 6 anapests plus the single anapests scattered in the other 11 lines.

[Caleb Murdock]

My apologies -- I completely misunderstood!

This "Ask the Poet Lariat" thread has taken on a life of its own.

[Alan Sullivan]

A note for Pat:
and THAT|was my LONG|SCYTHE WHIS|-per-ing TO|the GROUND.

A note for Mandolin:
What WAS|it it WHIS | pered? i KNEW | not WELL | mySELF;

These strike me as more likely.


A.S.

[Tim Murphy]

We're all of us trying to make science of an art, and it can't be done, although in my experience the man who's made the best go of it is our esteemed guest. Frost's concern was not mathematical precision but creating the "sound of sense," the music of common speech. Hence his glorious "loose iambics" which rock and sway with the rhythm of our working language. For many years I've gone to Key West and sat in the garden of the Heritage House beside the Frost cottage. There I always play his tapes on the little machine behind the bar, tapes made when I was two and three years old. I have that voice accurately printed on my memory, but I still wouldn't presume to offer a definitive scansion of "Mowing."

I am certainly more relaxed in my own metrical practice than is Tim Steele, but let me offer a word of advice to one and all. Don't try to experiment until you have mastered the rudiments of the strict iambic line. Otherwise you will commit what Carol aptly calls metrical blunders, rather than skillfully substitute.

[mandolin]

Originally posted by Alan Sullivan:
A note for Pat:
and THAT|was my LONG|SCYTHE WHIS|-per-ing TO|the GROUND.

A note for Mandolin:
What WAS|it it WHIS | pered? i KNEW | not WELL | mySELF;

These strike me as more likely.

A.S.

I've got no quarrel with that, Alan, though to my ear, using the 4 level stress system, you don't quite get a spondee in the third foot of the first line, but a 3 on scythe and 4 on whis.

Tim Murphy -- I envy you those recordings.

I'm still interested to hear what Tim Steele has to say about elision in general, and it seems this poem might be a good starting place.

[robert mezey]

Moore was right: only lines 3, 4, and 9 have
more than one anapest---most of the other
apparent anapests are elidable. But it's
rather pointless to argue about how many
anapests in a poem which is loose iambic and
so freely permits extra syllables. But it
is iambic, and therefore the word
"scythe" in the second line, although as
strongly stressed as the two syllables on
either side, does not get a metrical
accent. (To that extent, scansion is a
science.)

Has anyone written such a variety of sonnets
as Frost? This loosely iambic one irregularly
rhymed for openers, and one in heroic couplets,
and one in terza rima, English and Italian of
course and many variations on both (even one that
begins in Italian and ends in English), and some
in rhyme schemes of his own devising, and a couple
that look and sound like sonnets but turn out to
have 13 lines or 15 lines (one 15-liner in blank
verse and one in Catullus' hendecasyllable), one in
strict tetrameter and one in loose tetrameter with
two dimeters, and no doubt others I've forgotten.

[Patricia A. Marsh]

Dear Caleb and Alan,

It's nice to see you two agreeing on how to scan the second line of Frost's Mowing; but, although you both read the 4th foot [in that 2nd line] as an anapest, I'm gonna sorta stick to my guns about it being a tribrach [for the sake of being ornery]. ;-}

Look at it this way: Have either of you ever cut your way through tall grass with a scythe or seen/heard somebody else doing so? Considering that a person swinging that scythe would be doing so in one smooth motion [swish!], if he were to pause long enough to put the slightest emphasis on the "to", he'd likely lose the rhythm of that swing . . . and, perhaps, cut his foot off at the ankle for good measure! [Sorry 'bout that!] ;-}

All best,

Patricia

[Alan Sullivan]

For the record, I stand corrected by Robert Mezey, and I should not have shown "scythe" as fully stressed. It is very hard to avoid confusing newcomers with such things, and I was trying to evade the subject of secondary stress, which is now very much in play on a related discussion in "General Talk." I heartily support Dr. Steele's effort to win acceptance for a quaternary rather than binary system of scansion. General understanding of such a system would help clear up many of the confusions that arise in Manichean minds.

A question for Robert: I have prefered to indicate stress for all strong syllables when presenting binary scansion on this board. Do you really think this is a mistake? Your approach would highlight otherwise-hidden iambic patterns, but it would also induce newcomers to think that scansion imposes a false pattern of stress on normal pronunciation.

Alan Sullivan