[Carol Taylor]

I think free verse (in spite of the off-rhymes), but I'll have to leave it to the experts to pronounce the verdict.

Carol

[Gloria Mitchell]

Carol, for my money, the accentual vs. accentual-syllabic distinction does rest on something like a percentage: For me, the question would be whether scanning it in feet tells you anything useful about the poem's rhythm. In the Hardy example Tim posted, about half the feet (if you scan it in feet) are iambic and half not. So "iambic" doesn't seem to be a very accurate overall description of the poem, and might as well be dispensed with. But every line does have a pattern of two strong beats, so calling it "dimeter" does seem accurate. If it's dimeter but it's not iambic, it must be accentual.

But I think you have a point about the line lengths. There are some lines in IP which have spondaic-sounding feet; they might be read as having six stresses (or more, as in Milton's "Rocks, caves, lakes, fens, bogs, dens, and shades of death"), but they're still pentameter lines. But with short lines, the principle of isochrony -- the tendency to hear equal time between beats -- seems to exert a stronger pull. So maybe, with short lines, it's easier to drop or insert extra unstressed syllables -- they don't disrupt the basic pattern we're hearing, which is two (or three or four) equally spaced beats, as in a nursery rhyme:

STAR -- LIGHT -- STAR -- BRIGHT
FIRST -- STAR i SEE toNIGHT

Or a rap song:

i am a NIGHTmare WALKing PSYCHopath TALKing

In a five-beat line (has anyone here tried to write accentual pentameter?) my guess is that it's hard to hear a pattern without a more-or-less regular iambic (or anapestic or dactylic) rhythm to keep things bumping along. Which may be why the Auden example reads like free verse (as it does to me, too).

Perhaps it's that the four-beat line is so fundamental and so persistent in English poetry that we can't perceive a pattern in a line with more than four beats unless there's some extra regularity in the stresses. Or perhaps it's just that a five-beat accentual line is too darn long.

Gloria

[This message has been edited by Gloria Mitchell (edited August 29, 2002).]

[Curtis Gale Weeks]

Gloria,

The problem, IMO, is in thinking that all types of meter rely on a pacing which is somewhat regular--That's an accentual-syllabic sensibility: the concern with how many unaccented syllables can lie between beats and still maintain a pacing of beats which isn't greatly violated anywhere in the poem. Although some accentual poems do, indeed, have a somewhat regularized ratio of beats to non-beats--4 beats/line, 2 on either side of a caesura, with only one or two unaccented syllables between beats (or none), for instance--this doesn't describe all accentual poems; nor should we forget that the beats themselves, in accentual meter, draw the ear into expectation. I.e., there is an expectation of a certain number of beats per line or half-line, but not of where they should lie in relation to each other or to non-beats.

Curtis.

[A. E. Stallings]

Let me just chime in here to say that actually I agree with Mr. Mezey--all monosyllabic words, including articles, are common--that even articles can become stressed by position, as his and other examples show--but position is principally a feature of strict accentual/syllabic verse. (Position meaning a stressed syllable is followed by unstressed and vice versa; i.e., the higher "rule" in accentual/syllabica that you don't have three unaccented syllable in a row).

My article rule holds true only in a looser context (song-like meters, as the Shakespeare line I quote), which is what I was trying to discuss. Sorry if that was not clear.

I also absolutely agree that small prepositions QUITE OFTEN get the stress, as in Mezey's examples. Yet I have come across the idea frequently in prosodic explanations, even in respected textbooks (which I shall not name here), that "to" "of" "in" etc., are little words that are usually unstressed. Not so at all. Prepositions are very important little words.

As for Greek terminology--some of it works OK--iambs for ta DUM, trochees for DUM ta, etc. But it becomes confusing if folks buy into the whole thing--starting with spondees, pyrrhics, etc. Basically, my problem is with feet, a concept I don't find terribly useful as a practioner of English verse, however convenient they are for discussion, as here.

Actually, in regard to Tony's comments--I think there is an element--a hint--in these extra light syllables of a sort of quantitative meter working within the accentual. The short light syllables would not disrupt the rhythm of the poem if we were, say, swimming or walking or jumping rope to it--they are a function of time.

[A. E. Stallings]

Curtis, I may well be wrong on this, but actually I find the "Petition" fairly regular IP, though it pushes the envelope in a couple of lines. I don't think I would go so far as to call it accentual.

A few lines (as the penultimate) start on initial trochees. Some have slight syllables promoted, as a case of Mezey's article promotion:

Prohibit sharply the rehearsed response.

What confuses, I think, is that right away, the second line appears to be hypermetric. I can still read it as a pentameter, though it could well just be a hexameter thrown in the mix--an old "acceptable substitution" in ip. It of course makes sense that this line is hypermetric--it is itself prodigal--a spendthrift of syllables:

But will his negative inversion, be prodigal:

The only other "problem" line in regular IP would be this:

The exhaustion of weaning, the liar's quinsy,

And I think here he may be eking out four-syllables from "exhaustion"

Aside from those two slightly problematic lines, this seems like fairly straightforward IP to me, with only occasional extra syllables. (And I am not a syllable counter, myself.)

[Tim Murphy]

Certainly from Beowulf on down, the four stress has been the main accentual line. But accentual pentameter can be written. Here is a perfectly competent example by new member Henry Quince which we discusseed not long ago over at Deep End:

Adjustable Wench

A flibbertigibbet of little account, I thought her;
She’d do for a time, though young for this old grizzled beard.
It little deterred me that people might think her my daughter —
just so long as she gave me my oats, though I boozed and I leered.

A dancer she was, so she told me; I asked her no more,
and assumed from her coquettish looks that she’d rather not spell
out in detail the dancing she did, or what costume she wore
or discarded at work; but if cynics can fall, then I fell.

It wasn’t her bedcraft alone, though that was a marvel.
(I’d call it an effing one, aiming at literal fact,
but that would fall short: for this was sublimely ineffable,
the ultimate premier cru of the physical act.)

But that magic of hers! While I happily left it as mystery,
Her body’s quicksilver enacted an ageing man’s dream
And I shared little else of myself or my life; in our history,
As short as it was, that never was part of my scheme.

It was always at my place we met, a long afternoon;
and we never discussed why this was the pattern, not that.
But one day, one morning, I answered a whim, none too soon,
and strolled to the street where she lived, and called at her flat.

She came to the door in a robe, and missed not a beat.
She welcomed me in, to strains of Saint-Saëns, and I took
it all in with a glance, and turned on my heel in some heat —
The man in her bed, and the wine, and the poetry book.

So I left in a furious temper, slamming the door.
The old story, yes; but what cut my heart to the core
Was the man — some years older than I, a wreck on the shore
Of old age — and her red and black ballet shoes ranged on the floor.

[Carol Taylor]

Now this illustrates what I think is a gap in terminology between us as critics. We would both undoubtedly read the lines exactly the same way, stressing the same syllables, but where you describe it as accentual pentameter, I read Henry's poem as anapestic pentameter with alternating feminine endings and just enough iambic substitution and occasional caesura to avoid a sing-song effect and make a wonderful rhythm. If this is not anapestic pentameter, what is?

A FLIB/ bertiGIB/ bet of LIT/ tle acCOUNT/, ^ I THOUGH/ her;
She’d DO/ for a TIME,/ ^ though YOUNG/ for this OLD/ grizzled BEARD./
It LIT/ tle deTERred/ me that PEO/ ple might THINK/ her my DAUGH/ter —
just so LONG/ as she GAVE/ me my OATS,/ though I BOOZED/ and I LEERED./


Carol

[A. E. Stallings]

I'd agree with Carol on this one. Though this is only an issue of terminology (I agree we'd all read it more or less the same), I wouldn't call the above accentual, but triple-rhythmed (anapestic or amphibrachic or what have you). And a two-syllable foot is a fairly common substitution in such meters, occurring anywhere, but particularly at the end of a line.

Here's another example of anapestic/triple rhythm with such substitutions:


"Just the place for a Snark!" the Bellman cried
As he landed his crew with care;
Supporting each man on the top of the tide
By a finger entwined in his hair.

"Just the place for a Snark! I have said it twice:
That alone should encourage the crew.
Just the place for a Snark! I have said it thrice:
What I tell you three times is true."

[Tim Murphy]

It is surely just a difference in terminology. Dick Davis once asked me "What are the pagan poets arguing about in the outer circle of hell?" Answer: "The rules of prosody, of course!"

Henry has a fabulous ear, and it's a delight when folks like him appear out of the blue at the Sphere. I'll ask him to tell us how he'd label this.

[Len Krisak]

With one of my painfully obvious, non-sequiturish asides:


Yes, that's the market that I'm coming FROM.

Oh, tell me where she's going TO.

Then are you out or are you IN?

Too obvious for words, isn't it, that bit about prepositions working just fine with hard accents (especially in rhyming position)? I actually repeated this hideous obviousness as an excuse to ask everyone to read the first poem in Greg Williamson's first book, "Silent Partner." It's the funniest ending to a line I've read in a long time, and, well...
no point in spoiling the fun for everyone, but let's just say it involves grammar.