[Tim Murphy]

There is no such thing as metered prose. That's verse printed without its lineation. There is such a thing as unmetrical poetry, though it must be powerfully rhythmic to make grade.

My priest used to say "This is the lamb of God. Happy are those who are invited to His supper." Under my correction he says "HAPpy are THOSE who are CALLED to his SUPper."

I adore Thomas Hardy, the rabbit hunting scene at the onset of Fowles' Daniel Martin, an abject obeiscance to Hardy. I went nuts over Cormac MacCarthy's beginning to his great trilogy. Listen to the rhythm of the railroad in that first page and a half. I've been after Mason to read it for years, and he finally did. Blown away.

The Dickens may even be over done. But Mark (and Oliver) the Lyly is divine: Although hitherto, Euphues, I have shrined thee in my heart for a trusty friend, I will shun thee hereafter as a trothless foe. Shrined trusty friend shunned trothless foe. Get over Carver, Oliver, and come home.

I'm a horseshit prose writer. But I find a good egg now and then.

"Upwind the pine-clad hills were on fire, and a pall of smoke mixed with the gritty dust of Yellowstone Valley fields. Dryland corn on deep alluvial soil was stunted and dead white. Even the irrigated sections were wilting in 5 percent humidity. Russian thistles, forced to ripen months early, were tumbling over fallowed fields like wind-driven drills, sowing their hated seeds." from Ploughshare

forced fallowed fields driven drills sowing seeds.

Certainly rhyme and alliteration and rhythm are ornaments as appropriate to prose as to poetry. In retrospect, I wish I had been more sparing of modifiers here, but it came after a great deal of the sparest, drought-stricken prose imaginable. And eventually, I changed it into metrical speech:

Farmers taught me to see our tumbleweeds
as wind-driven grain drills
sowing their hated seeds
in every furrow that the tractor tills.

This all came from Kelly Miller calling the tumbleweeds "wind-driven grain drills." I think that if we listen carefully and imitate accurately the speech around us, our writing can become rhythmic and memorable.

Whether either of these examples of Murphy, the only writer on whom I am expert, is memorable or not, they delineate between prose and verse, and attempt to answer the question.

[Mark Allinson]

Interesting article, Mark, but one still wonders, reverting to the general subject of this discussion, what someone who can perpetrate a jawbreaking sentence like this would know (or care?) about cadence and compression ...

Universally that person's acumen is esteemed very little perceptive concerning whatsoever matters are being held as most profitable by mortals with sapience endowed to be studied who is ignorant of that which the most in doctrine erudite and certainly by reason of that in them high mind's ornament deserving of veneration constantly maintain when by general consent they affirm that other circumstances being equal by no exterior splendour is the prosperity of a nation more efficaciously asserted than by the measure of how far forward may have progressed the tribute of its solicitude for that proliferent continuance which of evils the original if it be absent when fortunately present constitutes the certain sign of omnipollent nature's incorrupted benefaction. (Joyce - Oxen)


Oliver,

I just wanted to note that not all of Joyce is as clearly "poetic" as the example you offer.



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Mark Allinson

[Janet Kenny]

Tim,
Of course the Dickens was overdone and he probably would have laughed if he had read your comment. Concision there ain't but rhythm and progression there is.

The Lyly is positively tangible (unlike his awful essayist (no not you Mark!)

I vote strongly with Oliver for James Joyce.

It isn't decent to say so but Salman Rushdie can play an orchestra--whether or not one likes his harmonies is another matter.


I fell in love with Hardy when I read The Return of the Native.

"A Saturday afternoon in November was approaching the time of twilight, and the vast tract of unclosed wild known as Egdon Heath embrowned itself moment by moment. Overhead the hollow stretch of whitish cloud shutting out the sky was as a tent which had the whole heath for its floor."

For four pages--the entire first chapter--Hardy continues to decribe a place with no sense of urgency about introducing a human figure. The first sighting of a human is the start of chapter two. By the time the figure appears we are completely absorbed into the vast landscape and we see the unfolding drama which starts with an aged wayfarer through whose eyes we see the "reddleman" who is completely red. The reddleman doesn't appear until the end of the first page in chapter two.

Something we don't discuss in the deep end is the creation of mood. I think that mood is the most important ingredient in art. By mood I don't simply mean emotion, but a set of colours and dynamics which evoke certain responses in the reader. Without that all the other skills are worthless.
Janet

Tim PS:
"Upwind the pine-clad hills were on fire, and a pall of smoke mixed with the gritty dust of Yellowstone Valley fields. Dryland corn on deep alluvial soil was stunted and dead white. Even the irrigated sections were wilting in 5 percent humidity. Russian thistles, forced to ripen months early, were tumbling over fallowed fields like wind-driven drills, sowing their hated seeds." from Ploughshare

More than a touch Hardyish.

[This message has been edited by Janet Kenny (edited May 25, 2005).]

[Mark Allinson]

Just a little side-note I found re the Lyly:

Artistic truth is the externalization of taste. I sometimes wonder, for instance, whether the "artificial" speech of John Lyly might perhaps be "truer" than the revelations of Dostoevsky. Certainly at its best, in its feeling for a statement which returns upon itself, which attempts the systole to a diastole, it could be much truer than Dostoevsky. Keneth Burke, "Psychology and Form"

[oliver murray]

You have proved my point, Mark. I don't believe I ever said that "all of Joyce" was "poetic." but I did say of the sort of language you quote "except in the form of mockery or satire it is hardly effective, much less attractive, prose.” Joyce could write in any style under the sun and the part you quote obviously mocks formal, circumlocutory and utterly boring language, which is made particularly obvious coming immediately, as it does, after a pasage like this:

“Send us bright one, light one, Horhorn, quickening and wombfruit. Hoopsa boyaboy hoopsa! Hoopsa boyaboy hoopsa! Hoopsa boyaboy hoopsa!

Tim. In my opinion, the term “verse” , though often misused, still strongly suggests lineation and control over the line endings, the only thing that clearly distinguishes it from prose, so I don’t agree with the term “unlineated verse” to describe the Joyce piece. You can have unlineated poetry all right, usually known as “prose” but sometimes as “prose poetry” but that is quite a different matter. I am sure all this has been discussed ad nauseam before on these boards, but I think we can agree, if it was ever in doubt, that prose can be as noble, musical, rhythmic and moving as verse, with verse, perhaps, having the edge because of the writer’s ability to control the line length or endings. It might be argued, by the way, that this control is actually increased in the case of good free verse.

I have to say, though Hardy is one of my favourite writers, I find his prose pretty old-fashioned for its period, and to be avoided as a model at all costs, compared to, say, Joseph Conrad, though, to be fair, Conrad’s first novel was published around the same time as Hardy’s last.

“In the days of high-waisted and muslin-gowned women, when the vast amount of soldiering going on in the county was a cause of much trembling to the sex, there lived in a village near the Wessex coast two ladies of good report, though unfortunately of limited means.” “The Trumpet Major 1880- opening lines”

One would take this, at first sight, to be a parody of Jane Austen (b.1775) But Hardy is apparently being serious!

I thought the extremely talented Cormac MacCarthy became over-poetic and unbearably long-winded in his “Horses” trilogy which I gave up on about half way through. I’ll stick with Richard Ford, John Updike and, yes, Raymond Carver, thank you very much.

[Janet Kenny]

Oliver:
I have to say, though Hardy is one of my favourite writers, I find his prose pretty old-fashioned for its period, and to be avoided as a model at all costs, compared to, say, Joseph Conrad, though, to be fair, Conrad’s first novel was published around the same time as Hardy’s last.
Certainly Hardy used too many words for our present tastes but it is worth asking why his books brood in our memories. The excellence of Jane Austen (a superior "writer" by present standards) is irrelevant when considering Hardy I believe.
I love both writers.
Janet

[Tim Murphy]

Oliver, I loved the MacCarthy trilogy all the way up to the awful little fv poem that ends it. Always wanted to write him a fan letter and offer to ghost write the next poem with which he wants to end a novel.

[Janet Kenny]

Tim,
I should have added that the alliteration in the piece of yours that I quote is not like Hardy--the images yes, but the language is fiercely and flintily your own. Lovely stuff.
Janet

[oliver murray]

Originally posted by Alan Sullivan:
Is there (or should there be) such a thing as metered prose?[/b]

I notice Tim mentions meter, and I see I overlooked this question of Alan's. Prose, by definition, cannot be metered, in the full sense, even if it is written in Iambics or other feet, because the line-endings are determined by the typesetter or his modern equivalent. Therefore, though it can have regular metric feet, and some might call it metric in this sense, they are not in measures determined by the writer. Poems in Iambics or any other meter, which are unrhymed and have lines of irregular length, are usually designated free verse, along with mixed meters, rhythmic free verse, lineated prose and the whole caboodle outside the strict metric stuff.

[Janet Kenny]

Oliver,
I do agree in principle but good prose has cadence and phrasing don't you think?
Janet