[A. E. Stallings]

I don't think modern syllabics can be compared with failed examples from the birth of English prosody--it is rather an experiment in a kind of metrics (measurement) that will, yes, have different rhythms--maybe more free-versey, if you will. Is there a market for it? If we were worried about market, surely we would be in a different business. A good syllabic poem, though, will not have a problem finding a home!

And what is wrong with line breaks on prepositions? Surely we do that all the time (of/love anyone?). Prepositions are vital.

But rather than resisiting the notion of syllabics--and I realize not everyone will be won over--I wish we could focus a little on looking at successful poems in syllabics and seeing how they work and what is useful. No one is suggesting we abandon traditional metrics, just that this is yet another tool in the toolbox. It is fruitful, and it is fun.

I am leary of arguments regarding what is "natural to the language." Prosody is something that grows, after all, from hybridization, from imports--whether it is Latin adopting the dactyllic hexameter Greek system so that we get Virgil and Lucretius; or English adopting hendecasyllabics from Italian and getting decasyllabics; or rhyme borrowed from Latin drinking songs. We borrowed the sonnet, but it has naturalized nicely, even into an English version. If we were writing what was autocthonous to the language, we would be writing alliterative verse. (And nothing wrong with that, either.)

Here's a beautiful syllabic poem (5/7/5 of haiku stanza) that employs rhyme, punctuating the heterometric effect of different line-lengths and rhythms. The haiku stanza is of course perfect for the subject. notice where lines go into hard monosyllables (fact, fact...) or employ wonderful polysyllabic words (bathysphere).

Thyme flowering among rocks

Richard Wilbur

This, if Japanese,
Would represent grey boulders
Walloped by rough seas


So that, here or there,
The balked water tossed its froth
Straight into the air.


Here, where things are what
They are, it is thyme blooming,
Rocks, and nothing but –


Having, nonetheless,
Many small leaves implicit,
A green countlessness.


Crouching down, peering
Into perplexed recesses,
You find a clearing


Occupied by sun
Where, along prone, rachitic
Branches, one by one,


Pale stems arise, squared
In the manner of Mentha,
The oblong leaves paired.


One branch, in ending,
Lifts a little and begets
A straight-ascending


Spike, whorled with fine blue
Or purple trumpets, banked in
The leaf axils. You


Are lost now in dense
Fact, fact which one might have thought
Hidden from the sense,


Blinking at the detail
Peppery as this fragrance,
Lost to proper scale


As, in the motion
Of striped fins, a bathysphere
Forgets the ocean.


It makes the craned head
Spin. Unfathomed thyme! The world's
A dream, Basho said,

Not because that dream's
A falsehood, but because it's
Truer than it seems.

[A. E. Stallings]

And another favorite contemporary syllabic poem of mine, Rhina Espaillat's sinuous "Current" in 11-syllable lines:

Current

Coiled to spring, newly unplugged from the homely
percolator, you watch me with tense nostril-
eyes that rivet like fangs, your small motionless
head malignant and useful, angry god that
reached for me once in childhood through a hairpin
probing the wall’s secrets, sudden and smoother
than sex or whisky, a licking all over
by fire, a rod of ice in the marrow.
And afterward I hid night after night, but
ah, you found me in dreams, flicking your quick tongue
lewdly from the safety of familiar things;
you crouch in my walls; you ripple your braid of
muscle among dark leaves in the mind’s garden.

[Janet Kenny]

Originally Posted by A. E. Stallings

I am leary of arguments regarding what is "natural to the language." Prosody is something that grows, after all, from hybridization, from imports--whether it is Latin adopting the dactyllic hexameter Greek system so that we get Virgil and Lucretius; or English adopting hendecasyllabics from Italian and getting decasyllabics; or rhyme borrowed from Latin drinking songs. We borrowed the sonnet, but it has naturalized nicely, even into an English version. If we were writing what was autocthonous to the language, we would be writing alliterative verse. (And nothing wrong with that, either.)

I think that the adopted forms which work in English are forms which grew in languages with similar stresses. Italian, which owns the sonnet, is essentially stressed in a way that resembles English. I think the sonnet has always been comfortable in the English tongue. I think there is some confused thinking when forms developed in languages which are far removed from English, are fitted onto English.

Here are the words of a much performed 18th century Italian song by Giordani which shows that the "spaghetti" idea is not the norm. I'll mark the metrical breaks according to the musical setting:
Caro mio ben

Ca/ro mio/ ben,
cre/di/mi al/men,
sen/za di/ te

lan/gui/sce il cor,
ca/ro/ mio ben,
sen/za di /te

lan/gui/sce/ il cor
Il/ tuo/ fe/del
so/spi/ra o/gnor

Ce/ssa, cru/del,
tan/to ri/gor!
Ce/ssa, cru/del,

tan/to/ ri/gor,
tan/to ri/gor!
Ca/ro mio/ ben,

cre/di/mi al/men,
sen/za di/ te
lan/gui/sce il/ cor,

ca/ro mio/ ben,
cre/di/mi al/men,
sen/za di/ te

lan/gui/sce/ il cor


Alicia you are comfortable in Greek and English and know whether they can be honestly married in one form. I can only sense it through an impression. Greek sounds much more angular than English to my ear. I spent a lot of time dealing with musical translations and I do know that some languages simply couldn't be metrically or syntactically matched in translation. When Igor Stravinsky set Shakespeare songs his angular unrelated rhythms, though musically interesting in an abstract way, usually cause mirth in anyone who contemplates performing them. "A liLY and A rose."

[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.

[John Hutchcraft]

Originally Posted by Rose Kelleher

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.

I guess I would say that much of the pleasure of syllabics is the pleasure of recognition, namely, the pleasure that ensues on the fifth or sixth or tenth read, when one recognizes that the poem is not, in fact, free verse, but written in stanzas that are, after a fashion, rhymed and metered. The haiku stanza has become common enough that it fairly gives itself away to a certain set of sensitized readers, but I suspect that there are few readers, if any, who immediately pick up on the arrangements of Moore's stanzas. In part that's because they're individually crafted. It's also in part because of the feminine rhymes you admired - and the fact that many of the rhymes are eye rhymes, or other types which are difficult to hear (e.g., dead/repeated, an/injured fan). She decouples rhyme from accent, and as such, spotting her rhymes, let alone hearing them, becomes nearly impossible - and probably meaningless - without the lines being broken where she's broken them. So - could you relineate "The Fish"? Sure. Would it still rhyme? Maybe. Would the lack of rhymes detract from the poem? Depends on your taste - in my opinion, the recognition of the stanzaic scheme is a major part of the pleasure of reading the poem the first few times.

I'd also note that these poems, like lots of syllabic poems, are not necessarily written for the ear. Is that a bad thing? Depends a lot on one's taste, which is based on one's critical commitments, both the spoken and the unspoken ones. For my own part, while I usually think of myself as being very into sound and rhythm and memorizability, I think there's still enough graduate student left in me to really admire the less visceral pleasures of Moore, including the pleasure of recognizing an ingenious, unique, and inaudible form.

[Rose Kelleher]

I guess I would say that much of the pleasure of syllabics is the pleasure of recognition, namely, the pleasure that ensues on the fifth or sixth or tenth read, when one recognizes that the poem is not, in fact, free verse, but written in stanzas that are, after a fashion, rhymed and metered. The haiku stanza has become common enough that it fairly gives itself away to a certain set of sensitized readers, but I suspect that there are few readers, if any, who immediately pick up on the arrangements of Moore's stanzas. In part that's because they're individually crafted. It's also in part because of the feminine rhymes you admired - and the fact that many of the rhymes are eye rhymes, or other types which are difficult to hear (e.g., dead/repeated, an/injured fan). She decouples rhyme from accent, and as such, spotting her rhymes, let alone hearing them, becomes nearly impossible - and probably meaningless - without the lines being broken where she's broken them. So - could you relineate "The Fish"? Sure. Would it still rhyme? Maybe. Would the lack of rhymes detract from the poem? Depends on your taste - in my opinion, the recognition of the stanzaic scheme is a major part of the pleasure of reading the poem the first few times.

I'd also note that these poems, like lots of syllabic poems, are not necessarily written for the ear. Is that a bad thing? Depends a lot on one's taste, which is based on one's critical commitments, both the spoken and the unspoken ones. For my own part, while I usually think of myself as being very into sound and rhythm and memorizability, I think there's still enough graduate student left in me to really admire the less visceral pleasures of Moore, including the pleasure of recognizing an ingenious, unique, and inaudible form.

So the syllabics in "Fish" are not just a composition aid for the writer, then, but an important part of the result - just in a way that may be hard to spot if you don't have the text in front of you. Yeah, that makes sense. I tend to forget about anything in a poem you can't hear, but that's my problem. I also remember being told, in some forum or other, by some guy who sounded very authoritative and sure of himself, that a poem should work even when the reader doesn't recognize the underlying form; e.g., if you have to justify your sestina by explaining what a sestina is, it's not working. I tend to agree, so for me, a syllabic poem should work even without that "pleasure of recognition," but again, that's my thing. Thanks, John.