[Brett Thibault]

Robert, right now it seems desultory more than invidious, but were it so, the basest thought withers at another’s joy.

Actually, I didn’t say variations in meter were completely predictable, I don't wish to attempt to define an absolute. Regardless, I meant to convey something different. For example, and more specifically, I see the alternating paradigm for iambic pentameter as too rigid to accommodate metrical variation except as a failure to meet the requirements of the form. The foot-based paradigm allows approximately ten patterns of normal realization and therefore a precise and subtle control of variation within the paradigm itself. This control can become predictable to the experienced reader, as it meets their expectations. I believe we agree in principle that possibilities of variation are infinite, however, the principle doesn’t find its way into formal practice and acceptability—for most poets enamoured of customary form, the two are not mutually exclusive.

I believe it was this very manifestation that led Eliot, for example, to consciously violate the traditional foot-based paradigm. I think that many modernist and post modernist works followed this formula for interesting meter, and remained metered language, though not regulated by an expected template, or the bounds of acceptable practice. It was the literary analog to Sullivan’s form follows function, in direct contrast to the corseting that often occurs when the opposite becomes apparent in much formal poetry. I could open any one of the books on my shelf and provide marvelous examples of meter and rhyme in free verse—they’re in abundance, but it's a fools errand to argue taste.

Form is not synonymous with pattern, though pattern falls within as a subset. There is nothing certain about form, it’s the outline and structure of a thing as opposed to its substance or essence: configuration stresses the pattern formed by the arrangement of parts within an outline, in the case of prefigured form, it is a regular, predictable arrangement.

To my way of thinking, all language is metered, some so complex and variable a pattern cannot be discerned from it. Most modern, natural speech in English follows this description. Though strict forms can sound wonderful, there is usually little doubt that what the listener hears is far more regular and affected than everyday speech. Add regular end rhyme, and I might start talking about absolutes.

[SteveWal]

I'd like to interject with a personal example.

I'm not a "formalist" if by formalist you mean someone who uses traditional metrical and rhyme based techniques. I tend to write what could be called "free verse."

However, that doesn't mean that I do not have the same resources of metre and rhyme that a "formalist" has. I just use them differently. Rhyme, for instance, doesn't have to be "full"; it can be half-rhyme; and it doesn't have to occur at the end of the line. Metre - well, I don't compose by moving away from and toward a regular pattern as a metrist would; but I am aware of the sound-patterns, the variable stresses and the length or shortness of sylables when I write. It's more like composing a jazz tune than a symphony.

I'll admit, Robert, that an awful lot of free verse is - frankly - dull; partly because nobody sits down with a free verse writer and points out what all these resources are in quite the same way as they do with a formalist.

Free-verse writers also can play around with other techniques. A fair number of my poems have used chance techniques as part of their composition process. There are various techniques of minimalism and maximalism (Robert Creeley & Whitman are probably opposite poles here), use of chant etc.

Basically, what matters in free verse is the individual poem and the "form follows function" quote is probably the best way of describing it. But of course, it at least partly depends on what you put into the poem (content: the meat in the sandwich.) I've lost count of the number of anecdotal half-pagers I've read that have just wandered into a kind of half-life of poetry. But I suspect that's not the form that's at fault, as there's an awful lot of rhyming, metrical poetry that does exactly the same thing. Knowing how to do it is only half the battle.

------------------
Steve Waling

[mandolin]

I've heard that "free-verse is like jazz" so often that it almost sounds true. But it's not. The reason the soloists in a jazz piece can take the rhythmic leaps they do is that the drummer is using the high-hat or the ride cymbal to provide an utterly regular baseline. They "keep time," just as the meter does in a metrical poem. There's nothing like that in free verse.

In contrast, I read a recent interview with Yo-Yo Ma about his collaboration playing Appalachian music with Mark O'Connor and a bass player whose name I can't remember. The major difficulty he had was that he was so used to playing rubato that he couldn't keep time well enough for the traditional musicians.

[robert mezey]

Good for you, Mandolin---you're absolutely
right. As for the various responses, there
are so many misconceptions that it wearies
me just to think of writing about them. But
I will, as soon as I have a little free time.
(I'm certainly not blaming anyone for his
ignorance or misconceptions; as Alan says,
what little education in the art students get
nowadays, or in recent years, usually comes
from teachers who don't know beans about it.)

[SteveWal]

Mandolin - it's only an analogy for, crying out loud!

Besides, I do have a sense of rythmn, and I think the best writers of free verse do too. Only it's not necessarily metrical; it's something there at the back of my head. Or, in jazz terms, it ain't necessarily in four-four. And it doesn't necessarily get heard in the final poem; but it's there. Maybe it's to do with the way I speak, or the music that's on in the background when I write (anything from Miles Davis to Elvis Costello, sometimes even John Cage.)

By the best writers of free verse, I'm talking of people like Basil Bunting, not your average anecdotal half-pager. A lot of poetry so-called doesn't have rythmn: but it tends not to have much to say as well.

A sense of rythmn isn't the same thing as a metre: I often start with a metrical pattern that gets jettisoned or messed up as the poem progresses. However much I might admire those metrists who not only do it well but write good poetry as well, there's something at the back of my head that stops me going the whole hog. Let's just say it's a bit like wearing a suit for me; I know I have to do it sometimes (for interviews and the like) but I always feel profoundly uncomfortable in one. On the other hand, I don't like jeans either (God alone knows why) so I hover somewhere in between.

I've had to learn to walk on fences.

[robert mezey]

Brett's remarks on meter, the parts I can make
sense of, are simply wrong. Human language
is not metered. The sounds of metrical lines
(in the hands of a good practitioner) are not
predictable, except of course for the number
of accents (usually). And if you think poems
in regular meter are "affected," you don't
know nearly enough about the matter to talk
about it. Yes, meter is a kind of special
language ("the basis of intimacy between
reader and writer"), and all poems are written
in a special language, even when free verse, or
when the diction is plain and colloquial. It
is not conversation (though it may mimic convers-
ation or contain conversation). And yes, of
course good poems can be written in nonmetrical
verse, but they must be written in verse, not
prose. I recently came across this little poem
by Howard Nemerov that I think many of you will
find amusing and to the point:

BECAUSE YOU ASKED ABOUT THE LINE BETWEEN
PROSE AND POETRY

Sparrows were feeding in a freezing drizzle
That while you watched turned into pieces of snow
Riding a gradient invisible
From silver aslant to random, white, and slow.

There came a moment that you couldn't tell.
And then they clearly flew instead of fell.


Some of these threads give me a headache with their
endless talk about poetry in general, often without
reference to particular poems. Not that some of the
talk isn't intelligent and sensible. But too much
is completely uninformed and keeps on saying the
same mistaken things over and over.
Just wanted to get that off my chest.

Since we're supposed to be Musing on Mastery, let's
muse on this sonnet by Robert Frost (as good a sonnet
as there is in English, I'd say):

THE SILKEN TENT

She is as in a field a silken tent
At midday when a sunny summer breeze
Has dried the dew and all its ropes relent,
So that in guys it gently sways at ease,
And its supporting central cedar pole,
That is its pinnacle to heavenward
And signifies the sureness of the soul,
Seems to owe naught to any single cord,
But strictly held by none, is loosely bound
By countless silken ties of love and thought
To everything on earth the compass round,
And only by one's going slightly taut
In the capriciousness of summer air
Is of the slightest bondage made aware.


There's a poem you could talk about and praise long
into the night. I'm willing.
A few comments, more or less helpful: "guys" has
nothing to do with the slang word for men (or people)
--they're the ropes or cords without which the tent
would collapse. This poem is also a good example of
what Frost meant when he said, "I'm a synecdochist."
(He didn't just mean that he used that trope in his
poems.) The sentence structure and syntax are really
something and bear paying the closest attention to.
Why silken is easy enough, but why as instead of
like in the first line? The movement of the
lines is beyond praise, and yet, except for three or
perhaps four initial trochees, the lines are straight
iambic. (Some of you may disagree about line 2, in
which case I'll have to go into a very strange and
rarely mentioned phenomenon in strict iambic verse.)
And the stunning effects, both of sound and of syntax,
in the final couplet---the kind of thing that I don't
think could ever be done in free verse. (It has worlds
to do with the very subject of the poem.) Anyone
game to talk about this poem?

[Brett Thibault]

I’ll be brave—it’s an easy job, my fundamental misconceptions and ignorance have placed me in a location such that the only move is up. Maybe. I’ve never read this before, so the following may only set the nails in my metaphorical lid.

My reading resolves an immediate connection between both Frost’s quote and the question contained in Robert’s commentary. The initial reaction to the first-line adverb is simile, but after the first read, it’s obvious the syntax, the one virtuosic sentence, is the mate to an immense metaphor. Immense because it’s the epitome of synecdoche, the physical portions of the poem just the tip of an iceberg. Following the physical, sensory and temporal connections and contrasts reveals what can accurately be described as a fractal nature, each line or thought giving birth to the next, etc. This is obviously a clever trick to keep me long occupied and out of your collective metrical hairs. I’ll acquiesce, after a few more comments.

Frost appears to compare a woman to a tent. At first glance, maybe not the most flattering comparison if one thinks of volume or size, but with a little more thought, the reader gains the perception that this is a loving tribute to an obviously remarkable woman. For example, the guys can be thought to represent not only commitments, but also universal pathos. The cedar pole illustrates not only her faith, but also points to her destiny. She is at ease with all.

The diction strikes me as Biblical in a way, because a few of the phrases remind me of “The Song of Songs” (. . . as in the tents of Kedar” et al). This points to an allusion of supreme worship. The diction also begins to reveal a kind of mild hubris, shamelessness in the bragging about his work, not being able to completely give up the spotlight to another, even for this remarkable woman. The word “field” is the kicker—I can relate the phrase “as in a field a silken tent” to the poem itself. This is probably a reaction to the recent comments and opinions expounded here, but it seems that Frost is saying, “see how this poem can achieve great freedom and variation within the confines of physical limitation (prefigured form). I scan the lines much the same as Robert does, but I don’t dare speak too much of it in my ignorance.

I have some additional thoughts, but hope that others take some time to provide theirs as well. Thanks to Robert for bringing my attention to this amazing sonnet.

[robert mezey]

Those are good insights, all of them. I would
disagree about Frost's "bragging"---you're
quite right that the poem is not only in praise
of the woman but also of his own masterly
sonnet---but he never says that, it's just
the undertext. And he certainly has a right
to feel proud of his achievement here---
something very close to perfection. And,
as you say, one figure throughout in a single
sentence---and not a word too much or too
little, not a word that could be improved,
not a rhyme that doesn't seem as fluent and
easy as breathing, and all this in 140 syllables.
And if you wanted to expand the synecdoche that
the poem is, you could say that it's not just
about poetry but about a way of life, a way of
thinking about what freedom really is (a very
different way from the prevailing American
notion). And let's talk about a few of the
perfections; but tomorrow---Ahm tard, as you
say in Texan.

[wendy v]

What I often marvel over in Frost is his agility with sentence structure. This one's some sort of miracle in that regard. He seems to manipulate so naturally he renders grammar fluid. How many of us are writing in yawny Subject, Verb, Noun patterns throughout our poems ? We speak of cliches in diction all the time. Steele spoke of "metrical cliches" in "All the Fun". There are obviously structural cliches, as well.

wendy

[robert mezey]

Excellent comment, Wendy. The sentence structure
of this sonnet is a wonder. One of the things that
sometimes drove me up the wall when I used to present
this poem in class was that the students, most of them
very bright, had never been taught a word of grammar,
not to mention a foreign language, and so had no way
of talking about what Frost is doing. For example,
that "She is"---the first two words---is the main
clause of the sentence, the subject and the predicate,
and that the rest of the long and somewhat complicated
(though always clear) sentence hangs from those two
words like a chandelier. The reasons, as I see it,
that he uses as instead of like in the
simile (which is the single figure of the whole poem)
are, first, that like would sound awful, and
that as signifies that he is not comparing the
beloved woman to a tent---as Brett points out, that's
not such a pretty figure---he is comparing her way of
being in the world to the way a tent is, so that is
is not merely a copula (usually not a necessary word, and
commonly dropped in Black English) but here has its full
existential force (as in "Let there be light"). And, of
course, if he had used like, the rest of the line
would be an inversion, and though Frost didn't make a
point of avoiding inversions, he definitely does not want
one here, for a reason that will be seen. (In passing, I
want to mention "heavenward," not merely a good rhyme, but
not there just for the rhyme---a canny word; think about
how much weaker "to heaven" would be.) The final couplet
is an astonishing bit of work. For one thing, it is not
in any obvious way the moral or summary that the couplet
often is in the English sonnet---even Shakespeare didn't
always manage it well---but carries the necessity of con-
cluding the clause that began in line 12 and of bringing
the entire sentence to a conclusion worthy of what has
gone before. "In the capriciousness of summer air" is
a delicious line, a regular pentameter but with two of
its accents, in and ness, very faint, so
that we have a three-beat pentameter (and not in the more
familiar pattern of "Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow")
that in its lightness (especially following hard on the
heavy stresses of line 12) and its swishing and sibilant
sounds embody, as it were, the very thing it is saying.
And then, the crowning touch, the inversion in the
final line, an obvious inversion, and the only one in the
poem---why is it there? Surely Frost, being Frost, could
have said what he wanted to say without an inversion, so
there is nothing accidental about it. And it is also a
lucid and not unnatural inversion---it is a symbol of the
very bondage he is speaking of, the slight bondage that
has been felt, you might say, because of the metrical
gust in the line before. The language enacts that
"slightest bondage" that the tent, or woman, is made
aware of. That's the freedom of the poet, the poet at
the height of his art. Frost once defined freedom as
"moving easily in harness"---imagine that! as deeply
American and individual a man as he was. And I suppose
that verse is a kind of harness (without which it is
much harder to ride, and impossible to pull a wagon-
load, say, a load of poetic content), and Frost moves
in it as easily as any wagoneer or sonneteer could
want.
Well, that doesn't exhaust the poem---it probably can't
be exhausted---but enough, especially on Shabbas.