[Carol Taylor]

Bob, if I take your meaning from the example, what you are calling an inverted iamb is just an iamb with the vocal stress in the usual place but the metrical stress promoted onto a normally unstressed syllable, and not a trochee at all. I can go along with that.

And yes, that is a good example of a final trochee in iambic lines working, and of course I wouldn't change it, but is there really much difference in function between the caesura that sets the trochee up and a syllable like "and" inserted there? The full stop obviates the need for an extra syllable before the accented syllable and makes the "y" of the trochee function rather like a hypersyllable.

Carol

[Rhina P. Espaillat]

My reading of that line would be:

like STORM clouds in a TROU bled SKY

I couldn't make myself put any stress on "in" at all, unless the preceding line suggests that clouds may occur OUTSIDE "a troubled sky," in which case I'd want the stress for contrast! I'd have a pyrrhic in that second position.

[robert mezey]

The Justice line with its preceding line:

BANNED POSTBANNED POSTFor hours the convoys had rolled by
BANNED POSTBANNED POSTLike storm clouds in a troubled sky

The lines are strict tetrameter---in must
get the metrical accent, though of course it's a
very light one. You might say the line the
way Rhina scanned it, but your ear should be satis-
fied it has the expected four accents and each in
its expected place. Caleb, I really don't
know what clouds wants---for all I know,
every iamb dreams of becoming a trochee---but
because of its lowered stress in relation to
storm, it is just not quite strong enough
to get the metrical accent. Another example of
this very common phenomenon:

BANNED POSTBANNED POSTHe burned his house down for the fire insurance

---for gets the (very light) metrical accent, not
down.

And Carol, that late caesura in Stevens' line, right
before the final trochee, is lovely, yes, but it's
not necessary to have one. Here are two lines that
end with scazons, trochees in the final foot---one
is my rendering of a Borges line, and the other is
Dick Barnes' rendering of a Borges line:

BANNED POSTBANNED POSTWould lose his senses and his rash eyesight

BANNED POSTBANNED POSTAnd who can tell me if the dark archive

And one could easily find many more examples of scazons
with no preceding caesura.




[This message has been edited by robert mezey (edited September 13, 2001).]

[MacArthur]

So I suppose you could call this the "ambiguous iamb". I noticed it a while ago when reading a book of Mark Jarman's poems (he does this quite a lot-- it seems characteristic of his style). At the time I called it a "half-demotion" or "half-promotion". Normally when you promote a syllable it's bracketed with two syllables of distinctly lower dynamic stress, and similarly when you demote a syllable you surround it with two syllables of distinctly greater stress. But here "clouds" is adjacent to "in", with "in" in the position where you would expect the accent to fall, and "clouds" preceded by "storm" in the previous position where an accent would fall.

I can't get myself to say the Justice line with an inverted second foot. It is neat how the promoted "in" doesn't sound so artificial, as it might with a cleaner promotion.

[Carol Taylor]

Bob, both of those trochees could almost qualify as "inverted iambs," with the second syllable metrically promoted, because the second syllables of both archive and eyesight already get stress almost (though not quite) equal to the primary stress of the first syllables. Compare them to strong trochees like orchid and eider.

We had a similar case on another thread, and I read the line as iambic with a promoted last foot, almost spondaic.

Carol

[robert mezey]

I grant that archive and eyesight have
stronger than usual second syllables, mainly because
of quantity. But neither could ever really be pro-
nounced as an iamb. The difference between a trochee
and what I call an inverted iamb is subtle, but no
less real for being subtle. (If anyone can come up
with a clearer or better term than inverted iamb, I'd
be glad to adopt it.) Here for example is a line
with a sudden trochee, a clear trochee (and not following
a caesura)---my rendering of a Borges line:

BANNED POSTBANNED POSTHis work finished, he slipped away unseen

No question that the second foot is a trochee. Now, here's
an ambiguous line, where the the second foot could be
read either as a trochee or an inverted iamb:

BANNED POSTBANNED POSTThe new day, and the shape of his own hand

And here's one that is an inverted iamb and nothing
else---reading it as a trochee would make for a less
delicate and interesting reading:

BANNED POSTBANNED POSTTo fleeting forms, a bonfire, a tornado

Strange as it may seem at first, the fourth foot is
not a trochee but an inverted iamb. The second
syllable of bonfire is clearly subdued to
the first, and because of that, the article, yes,
the little article a gets the metrical accent
(though it's barely audible---it's as if the ear is
merely satisfied that there's an accent in there
somewhere and that the line goes on its iambic way,
all iambic). I hope that's clear.
As for what may account for accent other than the
position of the syllable, Solan, a tough question,
but offhand I'd say other things that might impinge
are quantity (rarely) and rhyme and the inflection
of the sentence. As I understand it, the three main
components of stress are intensity (volume), duration,
and pitch. Anyone of those might help determine
stress and yet not interfere with the accentual order.
For example, if you read in isolation the line

BANNED POSTBANNED POSTAnd offer to put me gently out of my pain

you'd read it as a loosely iambic line, with a clear
accent and a coinciding stress on pain,
especially since it happens to be a rhyme word. But
the whole passage goes:

I can't help owning the great relief it would be
To put these people at one stroke out of their pain.
But then next day as I come back into the sane,
I wonder how I should like you to come to me
And offer to me gently out of my pain.

You see, pain still gets the accent by virtue
of position and rhyme, but the stress is really on
my (in contrast to their), the stress
being mostly a matter of pitch. I'd call it, yup, an
inverted iamb. Now if all this seems complicated
and obscure, don't worry about it---time and reflection
and reading a lot of poetry with close attention to the
movement of the lines will teach you most if not all of
what you need to know. As for these theoretical bits,
they're only important as a way of explaining how best
to read some lines. And they're not always clear-cut.
Once we get away from the abstract simplicity of the
meter, we get into an area where we are at a loss to
explain; we don't really understand the inner laws of
verse. Again, that wonderful Frost passage:

BANNED POSTBANNED POSTRegular verse springs from the strain of rhythm
BANNED POSTBANNED POSTUpon a metre, loose or strict iambic.
BANNED POSTBANNED POSTFrom that strain comes the expression
BANNED POSTBANNED POSTBANNED POSTBANNED POSTBANNED POSTstrains of music.
The tune is not that metre, not that rhythm,
But a resultant that arises from them.


Yes, the resultant---the real sound of the line,
where all the fun is, and all the mystery.



[This message has been edited by robert mezey (edited September 14, 2001).]

[Caleb Murdock]

This thread is going faster than I can keep up with it.

Rhina, I agree with you about the pronunciation of that line. However, some people on the board feel uncomfortable with three unstressed syllables in a row, so I throw in what I call a "theoretical" stress when I'm scanning such lines.

Robert, this line:

He burned his house down for the fire insurance

is like the other line -- it takes a somewhat artifical pronunciation to promote "for" over "down". I find myself inserting a pause after "down", where a missing stressed syllable would go, as if the line were pronounced:

he BURNED / his HOUSE / down [pause] / for the FIRE / in SUR / ance

Pauses sometimes take the place of syllables, and that immeasurably complicates scansion and meter altogether. Some poets, I think, expect too much of their readers when they think the reader should be educated enough to promote a syllable which ordinarily would take no stress. It would be wonderful if all readers were so educated, but they aren't.

P.S. I just went back and re-read those posts, and I find this line the most troubling of all:

For hours the convoys had rolled by

There is no way I can give any stress to "had", which is a verbal "business word" that modifies "rolled" and has no meaning of its own. If this is iambic tetrameter, it isn't very carefully written. Since "by" must take a stress at the end of the line, this is yet another line with three unstressed syllables in a row.


[This message has been edited by Caleb Murdock (edited September 14, 2001).]

[Carol Taylor]

Bob, a few thoughts in response to the examples you used. In the first example, the second foot is clearly a trochee, but since it doesn't come at the end of the line it doesn't address the question about final trochees.

His work/ finished,/ he slipped/ away/ unseen/

In the second example, I would have called the second foot monosyllabic and the third foot an anapest, rather than reading the second foot as either a trochee or an inverted iamb:

The new/ day ^,/ and the shape/ of his/ own hand/

It seems to me that the caesura which is forced by both the sense and the punctuation breaks the foot between day and and. Can you have a foot with a forced caesura right in the middle? Well, perhaps you can, but would you?

I read the third example as you do, iambic with promotion on a.

To fleet/ing forms,/ a bon/fire, a/ tornado/

But the fourth example I read entirely differently, with the second and fifth feet as anapests and the rest as iambs, thus:

And of/fer to put/ me gent/ly out/ of my pain/

I know, I know, you're going to say that I have to stress me, and vocally I do, but the beat seems to be steady under the fancy footwork.

Caleb, it's sort of like dancing or playing hopscotch. The words you stress verbally may skip over the metrical beat and land on either side. Sometimes you actually lower your voice in order to stress a word. There doesn't have to be a vocal promotion of a word just because it holds metrical prominence. All that is necessary is that you be able to read the line to a rhythm of off-beat-on-beat. I'm trying to find three vocally unstressed syllables in the line you mention and I can only find two vocally unstressed words in the whole line:

For HOURS the CONVOYS HAD ROLLED BY

In a linguistics class you might diagram it something like this, with the voice beginning lower on the preposition and dropping on the article, then raised and held steady on convoys had rolled and then decending onto by, yet by is stressed as much or more than any other word in the line:

___/---\___/ --- --- --- ---\___

Metrically, it sounds like iambic pentameter to me.

For hours/ the con/ voys had/ rolled by/

Let me give you a line of regular iambic tetrameter here and invite you to stess each word in it in turn. Regardless of which word you emphasize, the line itself will still have four feet.

How long/ have you/ been drink/ing gin?/ 4 iambs
HOW long have you been drinking gin? 1 trochee, 3 iambs
How LONG have you been drinking gin? 4 iambs
How long HAVE you been drinking gin? iamb, trochee, iamb, iamb or 2 trochees, 2 iambs
How long have YOU been drinking gin? 4 iambs
How long have you BEEN drinking gin? iamb, iamb, trochee, iamb
How long have you been DRINKing gin? 4 iambs
How long have you been drinking GIN? 4 iambs

The metrical count of a line doesn't change simply because the reader performs it with more or less vocal stress on given words. But if a count is dropped, the metrical value changes.

The above line is all two-syllable feet. But with an added phrase the meter could be either 4 or 5 feet, and the reader, whether sophisticated or not, must depend on the metrical climate to tell him how to read it.

How long/ did you say/ you've been drink/ing gin?/ 4
How long/ did you/ say you've/ been drink/ ing gin?/ 5


Carol

[RCL]

At least 40 years, and after this exercise, I'm having another!

Cheers!

------------------
Ralph

[robert mezey]

Caleb, you're wrong on both counts. You scan the
Frost line with only four accents, which should
suggest that you've made a mistake somewhere. In
fact, you're sort of close to the truth without
quite recognizing it. for does get the
metrical accent, BUT it is very very light, so
that you might say the line just as you scanned
it, but your ear should be satisfied that the
number of accents has been fulfilled. However,
there is no caesura, none, not one, zip, nada.
As for the tetrameter, it is perfectly iambic and
it is excellent verse. voys had is similar
to clouds in---both inverted iambs. Carol's
account of it is pretty sound, so a word to the
wise etc.
Carol, why complicate a scansion that isn't really
all that complicated?---no need for the monosyllabic
foot and anapest. Of course a caesura can divide
a foot, it happens all the time. The foot is completely
abstract and mustn't be confused with the phrase, which
is something else altogether (although once in a while
they coincide). For example,

Friends, Romans, countrymen, lend me your ears.

Wonderful line, especially the phrasing: a single
syllable, a trochaic phrase, and a dactyllic phrase---
but the meter is iambic. And there is a clear caesura
in the middle of the first foot and the second.

BANNED POSTBANNED POSTBANNED POSTO / S o / S o s / S o o S

or you could mark the first foot S / O---it
doesn't really matter, the two syllables are just
about equal in stress. But if you look at just about
any line, and look just at the feet, not the phrasing,
you'll see that the foot often ends in the middle of
a word or is often split by a caesura. Sometimes the
caesura is huge, as in this line, which begins with a
trochaic foot.

So. But the hand was gone already. S // o o S...



[This message has been edited by robert mezey (edited September 15, 2001).]