At the risk of making a post that is too long to be readable, I've pasted below a copy of the old thread to which I referred above. I'm "Porridgeface" or "Porridginal" (old pseudonyms), and the posters names are given at the end of their posts. Although it's long, I found this to be one of the most instructive threads to have occurred on the Board, and it articulates a large amount of knowledge from the heads of Tim, Alan, Golias, Robert Mezey, and several other learned Eratospherians. My cutting and pasting may have distorted some formatting, but it's too long for me to reformat.
Start of Insert
Hello all,
This is a continuation of a discussion from the Metrical Board. Porridgeface had just read an essay by Poe on the subject of musical measure and its relationship to poetic measure. I have seen references to this essay on a number of occasions, but I have never read it myself. Here is Porridge's paraphrase of the thesis.
"In a thread some time ago there was a discussion about the potential equivalence between music theory and metrics. Poe's paper implicitly addresses this. His thesis is that each "beat" takes a constant measure of time (something that seems obvious to me as a basic principle of rhythm and that forms a fundamental connection between metrics and music).
"The building blocks are long and short sounds. Long sounds are worth one unit and short sounds half a unit. So iambs and trochees are 1 1/2 units, and anapests and dactyls are 2 units - 1 plus two halves. He then allows for "hypermetrical variation" in which additional short sounds can be inserted without changing the time value of the foot.
"The first level is the addition of one short sound and it gives you a "bastard". So a bastard iamb has two short sounds followed by one long sound. But it differs from an anapest in time value. In the bastard iamb, the two short sounds are fitted into the same time as for an iamb, so the structure is 1/4 + 1/4 + 1 = 1 1/2. By contrast the anapest, which is also two short followed by one long, is 1/2 + 1/2 + 1 = 2.
"The second level is the "quick", which has yet another short sound added in within the fixed time value. For instance, a "quick" iamb is 1/6 + 1/6 + 1/6 + 1 = 1 1/2. etc. It is therefore possible to have 4-syllable iambs. I've used iambs in the examples but the principles apply to all types of feet.
"Iambic and trochaic beats in this system would be directly analogous to 3/4 time in music, and anapestic and dactylic would correspond to 4/4."
Well...I see a number of problems with these notions. Porridge himself immediately offers the following caveat: "While I find the analogy to music interesting and realistic, I can't believe that language is quite this regular."
Students of semantics claim to discern timed units of vocalization they call morae, but I am extremely skeptical that such measures really exist in our highly inflected language. While scholars agree that poets in Classical Greece and Rome used duration as a principle of poetic measure, the chants of antiquity have gradually given way to modern inflection.
Poe's theory strikes me as an argument devised by a poet of dubious metrical skill, who wished (ex post facto) to establish a theoretical justification for his own clumsy rhythms. But I shall be interested to hear what others have to say on this topic.
Alan Sullivan
I'd like to add a few more pieces to the start of this discussion.
Using Poe's methods, Golias scanned a posting as wrapping dactylic, with some "caesuras", and some anapestic substitutions. After reading Poe's article, it appeared to me that Golias had done it exactly as Poe would have. First, let me make a few points about what that means.
Poe used "caesura" to describe feet that contain fewer sounds than in the summary above, but still have the same time value. For instance, an iambic piece might end in a single syllable with a time value of 1 1/2. Poe would call that a caesura because, in it, the foot is made up of at least one fewer sound than the standard foot (in this case a single sound of duration 1 1/2 instead of two sounds of durations 1/2 and 1). Since the time value of the foot is constant, it follows that at least one sound must have a prolonged time value. Poe maintains that this type of foot causes a pause. He used the term "caesura" for the foot itself, not the pause.
The "wrapping" part relates to Poe's view that poems are better scanned without reference to line-breaks because a single foot can flow from the end of one line to the beginning of the next. He says traditional scansion doesn't allow for that.
In this scansion there are therefore two types of deviation from standard feet: feet with more and shorter sounds than in the standard foot ("hypermetric" - bastard and quick feet), and feet with fewer and longer sounds than the standard foot ("catalectic" - caesuras).
Now here is what Tim Murphy had to say about the same piece:
"Were a classical poet to scan this, he would find amphibrachs, bacchics, antibacchics, even a cretic or two. The delight is in the variation. The only thing conceivably worse than an iambic stomp would be a dactylic stomp. One has only to read the depressingly iambic and pentametric pages of The Formalist to realize how very far we have to go to reclaim the rich metrical heritage left us at the turn of the century."
I found Golias's analysis of what is hypermetric and what is catalectic to be a helpful way of looking at the skeleton of meter and understanding what is going on. I think it is a good tool for highlighting metrical irregularity, "caesuras", and how feet do "wrap".
I don't understand how the scansion in Tim's comment would look, and would like to be enlightened. But, after reading the Poe and seeing it applied to a real piece, I can say this. I am convinced that Tim is likely to be correct and that Poe isn't.
I think there is substance in the idea of the intervals between each "beat" of a poem having a constant time value (if the poem is recited with perfect rhythm, which I think should be possible but not necessary). However, I am convinced that the time intervals associated with each sound are not nearly as neatly cut up as Poe implies.
First off, intervals between beats are not the same as feet. Why should intervals not be distributed unevenly over feet, provided their time values are correct in total?
In addition, I doubt very much that the lengths of different sounds within a foot always break down into even structures like 1/6 + 1/6 + 1/6 + 1 = 1 1/2. But this is where the correspondence with music gets interesting. In "musical" poems, maybe this does happen to some extent, giving the rhythm of triple notes.
Poe also implies that all long sounds are stressed and that stress is binary, either on or off, not a matter of varying degree. I don't buy that.
I therefore expect that Tim's description will be much closer to reality and I'd like to understand it better.
Porridginal
My head is swimming after reading these two posts. I don't know how you guys manage to follow these concepts without providing examples -- maybe I'm just not as intelligent as the rest of you.
I long to discuss certain metrical issues on this board, but the problem is that people define scansion in different ways. I worry that if I introduce a discussion of metrical anomalies, instead of resolving the issues, we'll get bogged down in our various concepts of scansion. Nonetheless, the concept of "wrapped feet" is one of those things I have wanted to discuss, as in a line like this:
da DUM / da DUM / da DUM / da DUM / da DUM / da
x DUM / da DUM / da DUM / da DUM / da DUM
example:
da DUM / da DUM / da DUM / da DUM / fomenting
Happily / da DUM / da DUM / da DUM
In normal scansion, the last syllable of the first line would be considered a hypermetric syllable, and the first foot of the next line would be considered a "headless" foot. Of course, you can't end the first line on "foment-" and start the next line with "-ing", so in effect a foot ("-ing hap-") gets wrapped between two lines.
I would also like to know why a line of 5 trochees is such a crime in an iambic pentameter poem, given that a trochee is just a reversed iamb. I've been criticized for this:
du DUM / da DUM / da DUM / da DUM / da DUM / da
DUM da / DUM da / DUM da / DUM da / DUM da
Depending on the language, if it's possible to read those trochees with a rising rhythm rather than a falling rhythm, I don't see why that should be a problem.
The problem with comparing poetry to music is that different syllables take different amounts of time to speak. I doubt that the word "it" (which I call a "narrow" syllable) has ever been stretched as long as it takes to say "breadth" (which I call a "wide" syllable). This variation in width of syllables (or the time it takes to say them), when added to meter (which is based entirely on stress), adds a wonderful dimension to English poetry. I have often read lines of poetry which had the right meter but which were composed of syllables which struck me as too narrow or wide. That's one of the reasons I'm uncomfortable with the last stanza of "Nocturne" by Auden (which I posted elsewhere) -- he uses syllables which strike me as too narrow or slight for the weight of the meaning.
I hope that I haven't thrown this discussion too far afield.
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Caleb
Hi, Caleb. Glad you looked in on this. I'm only dropping in right now so I'll just deal with your point about examples. They would be a little time-consuming to set up on the thread. However, Poe's best one is Byron's "Bride of Abydos" which can be found on pages 4 and 5 of Poe's paper at the address Golias gave:
http://www.eapoe.org/works/essays/ratlvrs2.htm
Porridginal
Most of us were taught to read by teachers who discouraged phonetic sounding. We were told to read silently. I am inclined to blame this practice for the metrical illiteracy which helped establish free verse as the norm.
Tim Murphy is an exception. He was encouraged to read Shakespeare aloud as a child, and he later memorized thousands of lines. The rhythms of poetry were engrained early and deep. Those of us who lack such a background inevitably struggle to grasp precepts that come naturally for him. Here are his comments on the topic at hand.
Duration in Verse
Duration retains so little significance in contemporary verse that Poe’s theories are worse than useless. However, duration is of vast importance in the long history of poetry. In classical (quantitative) verse, syllables are long or short, literally having the duration of a half note or a quarter note. Phonetically, here are the beginnings of the Iliad and the Aeniad in their respective languages:
MAY-nin eye-AY-de the-AH
ARM-a wi-ROOM-kway can-OH
Note that Virgil exactly copies Homer, and the Latin meter works exactly like the Greek. If you read the capitalized syllables as half and the lower-case as quarter notes, without varying the stress, you’ll hear what it sounds like.
By the time of Beowulf, circa 800 A.D., Old English poetry appears to be both quantitative (duration-based) and qualitative (stress-based). Syllables can be long, short, or even shorter in occasional triplets. Lines generally run from eight to thirteen syllables.
AD on EORTH-an UN-wac-LIC-ne
that HI-o hy-re HEARM-da-gas HEARD-e on-DRED-e,
These lines, and indeed the half lines, are presumed by most scholars to be isochronous when recited. That is, they have identical duration.
After the Norman Conquest, duration was marginalized to liturgical chant and nursery rhyme:
TOM, TOM, the PIP-er’s SON
STOLE a PIG and a-WAY he RUN
Duration remains the organizing principle in song lyrics, where a syllable may elide over several musical notes or be held for a long sostenuto. Occasionally duration becomes apparent in accentual verse:
BREAK, | BREAK, | BREAK
on thy COLD|GREY STONES,|oh SEA,
David Mason has a fine essay on this Tennyson poem in his collection of criticism, The Poetry of Life, Story Line Press.
Duration has scant significance in the accentual-syllabic, iambic poetry which dominates English from Thomas Wyatt onward. It retains a vestigial presence in poems which intersperse triple and double feet.
Poetry should not be recited to a metronome (well, maybe Poe’s should). Nonetheless metrical verse should be contrived so it will read to a regular beat, like the beat of a heart, speeding or slowing at need. Often I want to reach for a defibrillator when I read verses written by novices.
Some poets seem to understand by instinct how a beat should sound. I have been impressed to read the postings by Porridgeface, and I have wondered how great a role memorization might have played in his facility. Let’s look at some lines from “Wind over Skye.” I would scan them thus:
the WIND COMBS|the MOOR-land|from KIN-loch|to BREAK-ish
I read these feet as bacchic, amphibrach, amphibrach, amphibrach.
its WAVES SOUGH|and RIP-ple|a-CROSS|the RIPE HAY
Here I find bacchic, amphibrach, iamb, bacchic.
where in CHAR|-lie’s OLD BED|DOC-tor JOHN|-son ONCE SNORED
And this looks like anapest, bacchic, cretic, bacchic.
Now, let me caution that Sam Gwynn and Tim Steele, both masterful metrists, think I’m nuts to scan the more obscure classical feet in English. But they are teachers with a vested interest in preserving a simple system for clueless students. They are reluctant to complicate the picture by admitting trisyllabic feet other than the simple anapest and dactyl. I find this approach useful because it recognizes the role of secondary stress.
I employed this type of scansion while creating the metrical template for the translation of Beowulf. Sections are posted on Paul Deane’s alliterative poetry website, Forgotten Ground Regained. Alan and I learned through trial and error how to write isochronous verse in Modern English. Using a substantial proportion of trisyllabic feet and heavy caesuras, we crafted lines which impose their duration on the reader.
It can fairly be argued that my approach is idiosyncratic, but surely I’m on firmer ground when I scan my own verse. Here’s how I hear my lyric Elsewhere in its hypermetric ballad stanza.
a GOOSE|in the YARD|YEARNS for|a BARN
and the PENNED|BIRD to|GO FREE.
a re-TURN|-ing SALM|-on YEARNS|for the TARN
from WHICH|its FRY|will FLEE.
ELSE-where---|WHAT is|its LAST|-ing CHARM
for the CREA|-ture in MIS|-er-Y?
the FISH|-er-man LONGS|for the LAND|-LOCKED FARM
its TENant|would TRADE|for the SEA.
Nowadays I use triple feet often, but I confined myself to iambic pentameter for four years in my twenties until I was reasonably fluid in that great measure. The more experienced citizens of the Eratosphere have achieved enough mastery of the iambic rhythm to attempt the windswept heights of Skye.
Robert Frost once discussed medial trochaic substitutions in one of his poems. A matron attending the reading said, “Surely a great writer like you pays no attention to such matters.” “Pay attention, lady?” retorted Frost. “Hell, I revel in them!”
Tim Murphy
Here is an excerpt from an email I recently received from Timothy Steele:
there is not much helpful material about prosody available--partly because the subject itself is so wooly and multi-faceted and partly because so much
metrical theory and practice of the last several generations has been conducted on Poundian principles. Pound did some good things for poetry,but his skewed interpretation of English meter has had some unfortunate
consequences.
Nearly any poem, or other vocal expression, can be scanned for most ordinary purposes with just six standard foot-types. For the writer of traditional poetry, I think these will suffice for checking whether a poem he has just written has metrical problems.
But for specialized rhythms, such as dipodics (in a blues lyric, for example) we need to know how use more elaborate methods of analysis to see whether we have got it right.
The medial trochaic substitution mentioned above should be understood and employed by anybody writing in iambic rhythm. But how many know how to convert a metronomic iambic or trochaic line into natural-sounding speech by switching a few words around to form an ionic (di di DUM DUM)?
Well, I'm sure Tim Murphy's knowledge of this topic far exceeds mine, but I'm always interested in learning more, so I'd better be more listener than talker in this and similar discussions..
G
I can't match Tim Murphy's knowledge (and as a 50-year-old high-school drop-out, it's pretty much too late to try [clarification: I dropped out at 18, not at 50]), but his remarks about trisyllabic feet are very interesting. In my own use of scansion, I had eliminated any use of trisyllabic feet besides anapests, dactyls, bacchiuses (not sure of the plural) and antibacchiuses, because it seemed to me that amphibrachs, amphimacers and other such trisyllabic feet were a kind of cheating. However, in the examples that Tim gives above, the lines seem to fall off the tongue in groups of three syllables, and his use of these unusual feet seems entirely natural. I am particularly impressed that Tim seems to be dividing Porridgeface's lines into feet according to the phrases, something which is almost never done in modern scansion. In modern scansion, we are supposed to ignore phrasing, and as a result, it is not uncommon for a foot to span the end of one sentence and the beginning of another, or to span across a caesura -- things which have always struck me as utterly wrong.
All this just shows that meter and scansion (two sides of the same coin) are more an art than a science, and any attempt to turn them into a science will fail.
In the scansion of modern poetry, I do find myself using those unusual feet to justify anomalies, as in cases where the poet chose to throw in a syllable here or there where one doesn't usually belong, such as:
DUM da DUM / da DUM / da DUM / da DUM / da DUM
(that's something I've done plenty of times)
I see no reason why we should be so restricted in our writing that we can't take occasional liberties; and in such cases, these unusual trisyllabic feet are useful.
In Tim's scansions, I was pleased to see plenty of variant feet.
quote:
Originally posted by Golias:
Nearly any poem, or other vocal expression, can be scanned for most ordinary purposes with just six standard foot-types. For the writer of traditional poetry, I think these will suffice for checking whether a poem he has just written has metrical problems.
But for specialized rhythms, such as dipodics (in a blues lyric, for example) we need to know how use more elaborate methods of analysis to see whether we have got it right.
I think that becoming good scanners in order to figure out whether "we have got it right" is the wrong way to write poetry. What we need to do is to LISTEN to what we have written and change our poetry according to whether it SOUNDS right. It is the ability to HEAR what works and doesn't work that sets great poets apart, not the ability to count well or scan well. Mistakes should be caught with the EARS, not with the EYES. This is in keeping with my argument that poets should listen to their internal rhythms when writing, and not be concerned about what others consider to be acceptable metrics.
Scansion should be used as a writing tool as little as possible; poets should rely on their sense of sound. Scansion's real value is in deciphering and understanding what has already been written.
Caleb Murdock
Poetic measure? yes.
Wrapped feet? ok.
Duration a factor? yes.
Phrasing influencing scansion? sure.
Tri-syllabic feet? possibly.
Ad-hominem arguments? no.
Sure they're fun and edgy, but really a distraction from this already complicated argument.
In the midst of good, logical, knockabout, arguments, I find these!
Alan wrote: "Poe's theory strikes me as an argument devised by a poet of dubious metrical skill, who wished (ex post facto) to establish a theoretical justification for his own clumsy rhythms."
I think that Poe's metrical skill is up for argument since a poet putting forward a theory of meter should be a good metrician. But I'd like to see the argument that shows Poe's "dubious metrical skill."
Tim Murphy wrote (via Alan): "Now, let me caution that Sam Gwynn and Tim Steele, both masterful metrists, think I’m nuts to scan the more obscure classical feet in English. But they are teachers with a vested interest in preserving a simple system for clueless students."
Vested interest? Everyone has a vested interest. The point is the argument. There is nothing here about what Gwynn's and Steele's arguments are for a basic foot approach. Their argument is dismissed based on their job?
Otherwise, this is a great thread.
Joel Lamore
Caleb Murdock says: "I am particularly impressed that Tim seems to be dividing Porridgeface's lines into feet according to the phrases, something which is almost never done in modern scansion. In modern scansion, we are supposed to ignore phrasing, and as a result, it is not uncommon for a foot to span the end of one sentence and the beginning of another, or to span across a caesura -- things which have always struck me as utterly wrong."
We're in complete agreement on this point. Some scholars have so abstracted the langauge that they quite forget what words do---communicate thoughts, phrase by phrase. Surely our scansions should honor phrasing as much as they can, just as our phrasing should honor the rhythms we are attempting to speak, when we shape poetry. Accordingly, I do not buy this notion of feet "wrapping" from one line to the next, unless the words wrap as well. Do you know any poets who habitually hyphenate their enjambments?
In an earlier posting on this thread, Caleb said: "I would also like to know why a line of 5 trochees is such a crime in an iambic pentameter poem, given that a trochee is just a reversed iamb. I've been criticized for this:
du DUM / da DUM / da DUM / da DUM / da DUM / da
DUM da / DUM da / DUM da / DUM da / DUM da
Depending on the language, if it's possible to read those trochees with a rising rhythm rather than a falling rhythm, I don't see why that should be a problem."
I would like to comment on this variation, which is one that I've attempted myself on occasion. It is very easy to write a hypermetrical line, ending in female rhyme, then slip into trochees for the following line. The trick is getting back on the iambic track. Note in your example that, discounting the line break, the rhythm is an absolutely regular alteration of stressed and unstressed syllables. I would criticize your example for too much regularity, not too little. Maybe this actually is an example of line-wrap!
BTW, Caleb, our metrical debates have nudged me in the direction of increasingly drastic experiments with my own verse. I'll send you some soon.
Alan Sullivan
Surprisingly, it's a good feeling to be in agreement with you, Alan! I hate always being at odds with someone.
If we are in agreement that scansion should, to whatever extent possible, follow phrasing, I am going to try to find some odd lines of poetry for us to scan. For example, recently I saw (on this board, I think) a line of iambic pentameter poetry which was like this:
da DUM / da [period/caesura] DUM / da DUM / da DUM / da DUM
As you can see, a period and therefore a caesura occurred in the middle of the second foot in a ten-syllable line of iambic pentameter. Let me see if I can find it. I supposed that sometimes it is necessary to scan across a punctuation mark.
My "da DUM" examples are so regular just because I don't want to complicate the issue.
Caleb Murdock
Joel, somehow I skipped your points, so let me get back to you first.
With regard to Poe: I believe he devised his theory to excuse the utter metrical regularity exhibited by many of his best-known poems. Contemporaries had criticized him for it, or so I am told. I do not have first-hand acquaintance with the literary controversies of the time.
Tim and I presumed that most readers here would be familiar with Timothy Steele and his metrical ally, R. S. Gwynn. Steele is a strict metrist with an astounding command of poetry from many periods. His recent prosody has frequently been mentioned in Able Muse. We did not think it necessary to elaborate.
Caleb, your example would be one of those times when I would let the metrical pattern outweigh the phrasing in determining where the feet are. But if there were irregularities nearby that could be scanned as amphibrachs(da DA da|da DA da rather than da DA|da da|DA da) then I would incline to favor phrasing and call the whole metrical plan into question. Context is important!
Alan Sullivan
This thread has been fascinating to me - especially since I am so new to writing metrical verse.
What I have garnered from the posts here has probably pointed me to the crux to my own problems in writing metrical verse.
I came to poetry not from English Lit. courses, but from Theater and acting classes. This makes a world of difference in my mind. The former studies the technics of the poem and the latter studies the (shall we say) music and feel of the poem.
For instance, I would no sooner read aloud Shakespeare while allowing my voice to reveal the meter than I would read Poe without elongating certain sylabols for the effect (and, from what I read here, making it actually more metrical in that process).
It is the drama (and comedy) in the poem that shows me where the emphasis should be when reading a poem aloud, and not the meter. Once any writer uses enjambment in their metrical poetry, the meter must take a secondary place.
Anyway - I'll have to read this thread again more closely, but I just wanted to put my two cents in on this.
(I wanted to say more but I'm too tired and forgot what else I had to say - something about little asses, I think... and wishing mine was like that. Whatever. Good night, all.)
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One person's opinion.
Davida Chazan
Davida, it was once part of theatrical training to speak Shakespeare metrically. Both theater and literature students largely abandoned this practice during the second half of the twentieth century. We are trying here to reclaim a place for rhythmic, musical speech in poetic practice. Music and measure should not be subordinate to meaning, or vice versa. All should dance together. But this is difficult to achieve. The triumph of free verse has also been the triumph of laziness and mediocrity.
Alan Sullivan
I'm back again, but don't have enough time tonight to assimilate this thread properly. I'm printing it for later study. However, let me say this. I found Tim's analysis totally enlightening. His scansion makes perfect sense to me and has a huge validation impact. I had been spending time transforming amphibrachs, and particularly bacchics and cretics into more "acceptable" feet a la Steele. I have been killing poems by writing out the metrical kinks. I immediately resolved to become more metrically adventurous.
I think a fundamental part of this topic is the "metrical contract" with the reader. Maybe it's now oversimplified. In times when poems were recited and heard more than read, the metrical contract could be formed during recitation rather than having to flow from a silent printed page. I suspect that that allowed the writer to expect the reader (or hearer) to handle more complex meter.
I'm getting ready for some recitations at Burns' Suppers tomorrow and Saturday. I've been using them to analyse what Tim has written about
: tape recording, listening, and trying to hear how the lines scan. I'm totally convinced that the points about scanning in complete phrases are correct, as is the idea that these old types of feet are useful and maybe essential for reflecting "secondary stress".
Here's an example, using a line that I made up just for this illustration:
The horses gallop and gallop along
This is
the HOR/ses GAllop/ and GAllop/ aLONG
and is not
the HOR/ ses GA/ llop and GA/ llop a LONG
They are waaay different and the difference is in two things - the duration assigned to each foot by the beat, and the tiny breaks between complete phrases. The second succeeds in a different way from the first, except for its second foot, which destroys it.
More on this later, but my great thanks go to Tim for straightening me out on a huge misconception.
Porridginal
Po, let me add something that Tim and I somehow omitted, regarding the scansion of your poem. Regardless of exactly how one places and names the trisyallabic feet, our scansion honors the powerful four-beat rhythm that hides behind the secondary stresses in your verse. This is the rhythmn of Old English, with which we have worked so much. Binary scansions miss it altogether. Your poem is not written in hexameter. However, another alternative is simply to abandon the idea of scansion for this type of verse and call it accentual rather than accentual-syllabic.
Alan Sullivan
Guid Burns Day, Po. I am deeply gratified by your response. With your reference to this evening's recitations you've answered my question about how you developed your ear. I'm going on the big farm and country station for two hours this evening to sing and recite Burns to la tout Dakota. I spent a couple hours writing that little analysis, and Alan spent a couple more editing it into something comprehensible. It's something I'd long wanted to do. Let me admit that Tim Steele's four level peak and valley diagram is a perfectly adequate approach to accentual verse such as Wind over Skye. I simply prefer my method.
Aye yours, Timeter
I'm surprised that Pinsky's The Sounds of Poetry hasn't been invoked in this discussion. True, he eschews technical language, but his concerns seem similar. What do others think of his discussion?
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Ralph
Alan,
You wrote: "Tim and I presumed that most readers here would be familiar with Timothy Steele and his metrical ally, R. S. Gwynn. Steele is a strict metrist with an astounding command of poetry from many periods. His recent prosody has frequently been mentioned in Able Muse. We did not think it necessary to elaborate."
My difficulty was not with an unfamiliarity with Steele, nor with any need to rehearse his position, but with the dismissal of his position because he had a "vested interest" in dumbing down meter for his students. It's no way to argue. Tim Murphy's argument succeeds on its own merits, and Steele's needs to succeed or fail on its own as well, and not be dismissed because of something outside it.
Joel Lamore
Dear Joel,
I am a lousy theorist but a pretty good practitioner of meter. Tim Steele, who has been unfailingly kind to my verses and who has been my houseguest, is a scholar. A quick look at our poetry books will elucidate the difference in our practice. My half-baked theories resonate with Po, whose ear accords with mine. --
Timeter
Sorry, Joel. Initially I misunderstood your concern. I still don't see how that comment constitutes an ad hominem. There's nothing slanderous about it. Steele might actually agree that the needs of pedagogy play a role in his exposition. Let's ask him!
Alan Sullivan
Getting back to the Poe theory that started this thread:
"The building blocks are long and short sounds. Long sounds are worth one unit and short sounds half a unit. So iambs and trochees are 1 1/2 units, and anapests and dactyls are 2 units - 1 plus two halves."
I'd like to take an informal poll. To my sense, an iamb doesn't take that much less time than an anapest. Poe's giving the iamb/trochee 1 1/2 units and the anapest/dactyl 2 seems not quite right to me. One of the effects of an anapest/dactyl, it seems to me, is that the unaccented syllables get a little acceleration, and that this makes the anapest/dactyl as a whole take very little time longer than the iamb/trochee. Centering the musical measure around beats rather than feet doesn't seem right, if that is true, and it seems to ignore the importance of stress in English. This is another case where duration and stress do not have consistent compatibility.
So, the poll: Based on your finely tuned ears, does an anapest take 1/3 longer (or any significant amount of time) to speak than an iamb?
Joel Lamore
Pardon me for butting in...and I'm sure I haven't read all of the previous posts attentively enough to be sure my point hasn't already been made. But aren't ALL of you forgetting some basics of metrical theory.
1.) Stress in English is almost entirely RELATIVE. Some syllables are described as "stressed" in a line of poetry (or in an ordinary spoken sentence) ONLY because they are relatively more stressed than the syllables placed on either side of them. That's why a sentence in English has the same "shape" whether you shout or whisper.
Duration, like other parts of the physical complex of speech we call "stress" is ASSIGNED to the syllables we choose to give a stress.
Duration is present in the sense that stressed syllables are given a shade longer duration, relatively, than the unstressed syllables around it-- but how MUCH duration is assigned by the speaker or (mentally) by the silent listener depends entirely on the overall (and variable) pace of the person uttering or reading.
That is why it is spurious to assign Real-Time values to stress patterns in poetry-- the pace is fluid and idiosyncratic. In singing an Art-Song by, say Schubert, how long you would "hold" a syllable corresponding to a note is simply stipulated in the music. But no such stipulation holds in poetry.
2.)What makes English so irresistably rhythmic, and explains our particular prosody, is the fact that spoken Modern English will not tolerate a sequence of three consecutive syllables without assigning at least one syllable Stress compared to it's neighbors, and at least one syllable an Unstressed status compared to it's neighbors.
Attempts to supply durational values to stress with any precision are spurious and less than useless-- they don't analyse anything.
And so, for similar reasons, are "feet" with more than three syllables-- the concept is analytically "empty", and misleading.
"Ionics" are just a shorthand way of describing a peculiarity of how two consecutive Bi-meter "feet" can effect each other. A point that IS probably well worth making is that while Bi-Meter poetry certainly has a "direction"-- rising or falling--, and so do tri-metrical "substitutions" in Bi-metrical contexts, verse that is fairly consistently in a Tri-meter probably doesn't really have a direction at all. The only thing you really know is that two unstressed syllables fairly regularly occur between each stress. Tri-meter lines neither rise nor fall-- they "rock". And the line can pretty much begin or end anywhere. E.A. Poe probably thought he was writing Iambic verse, when he was actually writing a Tri-meter, because he started a line with 2/3 of an anapest. Poe was a metrical boob. It's a common beginners mistake.
[ See my horrendous "Looker", the first thing I posted here-- I thought it was Iambic, too.]
MacArthur
MacArthur,
Thanks for reminding us of the basics. I agree that the relative stress of the language is important--and I do believe that such points were made in earlier posts, though often subtly because I think a lot of the discussion has to a certain extent presumed the importance of relative stress. Though duration could be considered an effect of stress, it is interesting to be aware of it, and as poets, discuss it. However, going back and remembering the fundamentals is crucial. Thanks.
But, I again fail to see the argumentative merit of name calling. OK, you've made your argument against Poe -- why then call him a "metrical boob"? You can't win an argument (if winning in this context even matters, since I presume our goal is illumination) by trying to discredit the opponent (especially through outright name calling) instead of the argument.
I know I've posted twice on this issue of ad hominem arguments (I'm sorry, everyone), and I won't again (I promise), but the "metrical boob" crack seemed too blatant to ignore.
Finally, no one posted a response to my last post. Is this thread dead or was it that my post just didn't make sense?
Joel Lamore
To paraphrase a remark I meant to make in another place: When any of us has a superbowl-winning NFL team named for one of his poems he may possibly be in a position to disparage Poe. Until then I think he might do well to take Joel's admonition to heart. A little humility seldom hurts an argument.
G
Joel,
I think yes -- in answer to your question above. Any syllable takes SOME time to enunciate, aloud or silently. Poe's arithmetic is sometimes helpful to me as I seek to assure that I offer equalities of sound, expressed in rhythm and meter, which a reader may perceive, at least if he or she reads more or less as I do.
G.
Joel and Golias, I appreciate the need to respect the sensitivities of the living, but if we can't dis the dead, we risk turning into stiffs ourselves. Is it really such a big deal to use a little color in our language?
Belated reply to Joel's question: I don't think anapests or dactyls read much differently in duration from iambs or trochees. I think another duration value comes into play when one reads metered verse aloud: isochronicity. This tends to override the occasional trisyllabic foot. A group of such feet, constituting a metrical shift akin to a change of time signature in music, would perhaps slow a reader's pace.
Alan
Alan, I don't think one can disdainfully disparage anyone,living or dead, in the presence of people who admire, even reverence, that person, without arousing resentment. And resentment leads to breakdown in civilized discussion.
I think this applies to literature as well as to persons. Was it not Frost who said something to the effect that the critic's first step should be to avoid giving offense to those who love what one is about to criticize?
A little humility and tact is all it takes. I say this from some experience, knowing well that I have been sometimes guilty of criticizing someone's writing tactlessly.
That said, I agree with the last paragraph of your post above, but I think it's a narrow question. You and I probably think "illimitable" can be read in the same length of time as "unending" in Prof. Mezey's Roadside Epitaph -- though it scans two syllables longer. I hear those as quick syllables which but slightly affect the rhythm or the meter, but Prof. Mezey sees and hears them differently, and finds they spoil the meter. As your friend Tim Steele says, it's a fuzzy and many-faceted subject, this prosody.
G.
Oh heck, just to continue a pointless argument (all in fun)... there are almost certainly tens, if not hundreds of millions of people in the world today-- including many for whom English is a second language-- who can recite by heart the lyrics of John Lennon and Mick Jagger. Any song-writer of note is an important "poet" if a head-count is the criterion. Come to think of it...if the royalties weren't so prohibitive they probably WOULD name a NFL team after the Beatles or the Rolling Stones.
FYI-- Poe himself, was scarcely known for the balance and charitableness of his critique. He was perhaps best-known in his life-time as young America's most famous literary critic...and the popular expression "Hatchet-Man" was coined for him.
MacArthur
Mac, you and I appear to be advocating a post-Sixties brashness that risks antagonizing the circumspect. Proceed with caution! However, as I have observed elsewhere, it might be good for us all to identify less personally with our work, our viewpoints, and the predecessors we revere. Then, from our respective vantages of disinterest, we could trash each other without causing offense. Right. Egoless poets. Up there with winged pigs.
I would read the word "illimitable," in the context of Prof. Mezey's poem, to have but a single stress, and to carry about the same metrical heft as "unending." A strict iambicist would probably insist on promoting a bit of secondary stress in "illimitable" and find the word metrically disturbing.
Previously, Mac has asserted that English meter could not accept three consecutive unstressed syllables. This is also Tim Murphy's view. While I agree with this assertion for most purposes, I am willing to make an exception for "illimitable." Such exceptions are common in "Sir Gawain and the Green Knight." Paul Deane and I have kicked a number of them around in correspondence. I used to hold a more fundamentalist view on this point, but Paul has persuaded me to bend a bit.
Alan Sullivan
Alan, I agree that three unaccented syllables
in a row can be found in English verse, though
rarely. But I see no way of getting around the
secondary stress in "illimitable"---it's a 5-
syllable word however you slice it. (In any case,
I chose the commonplace hyperbole "unending" for
its juxaposition to the word "end" which appears
before it and after it.)
A few comments about this and that. Wiley, I
think Frost meant that one shouldn't overanalyze
or otherwise misuse GOOD verse. He said the
question was "what to say of a lovely thing
without giving offense to those who love it."
He had no hesitation in dismissing poets he
regarded as dismissable. As for Poe, he has a
certain genius, but a tin ear; it was not for
nothing that Emerson called him "the jingle man."
I don't see the point in Tim's scanning phrases.
Phrasing is a large part of the movement of a
line, but the phrase and the foot are two different
things. The foot is purely abstract and of course
it can divide a phrase, or a word. It's bad enough
that we adapted the Greek names for quantitative feet
to use on our meters---we really have no need for
amphibrachs and cretics, &c. The one useful foot,
aside from iamb, trochee, anapest and dactyl, is
the double foot, the ionic. I know Tim Steele,
among others, doesn't use it, but it's useful, and
it can indicate fine distinctions. For example,
o o S S o o S S
To a green thought, in a green shade.
But
o S o s O S
....the marriage of true minds
(This notation is Ransom's adaptation of George Stewart's
system and has the advantage of showing metrically accented
syllables and stressed syllables, which usually but not
always coincide. Even so, it is, like all systems of
notation, fairly crude.)
Part of the music of a metrical line lies in the relation
of meter and phrasing (and other inflections). As Frost
writes,
Regular verse springs from the strain of rhythm
Upon a meter, strict or loose iambic.
From that strain comes the expression strains of music.
The tune is not that meter, not that rhthym,
But a resultant that arises from them.
For example, you hear clearly in "Friends, Romans, country-
men," a lovely series of progressively longer words, a
monosyllable, a trochee and a dactyl---but those are NOT
the feet. It's a perfectly normal iambic line.
O / S o / S o s // S o o S
Friends, Romans, countrymen, lend me your ears.
Some might argue that the last four syllables of "Let me
not to the marriage of true minds" are an ionic, and one
could read it that way, it wouldn't be wrong; but I'd
argue that it doesn't quite sound that way.
The ionics I've been talking about are, by the way, ionics
minor. The ionic major is the double foot reversed. Auden
loved to collect them, since they're relatively rare. For
example,
o S o s o S o s o S (O)
And standing at our leisure till the day broke
S S o o S O o S o S
Said some of the best things we ever said.
(There's a rarity in the first line that I have found only
in Frost---a strongly stressed feminine ending. Another
example: "Out walking in the frozen swamp one grey day")
That second line is gorgeous in its movement, its tempo
and phrasing. You could scan it otherwise, though it
would sound much the same, e.g.
O S o o S S o S o S
Said some of the best things we ever said.
The very slight pause between "Said" and "some" is, to my
ear, ravishing.
Another, perhaps more definite, ionic major, the 4th line
of Tate's marvelous poem THE SWIMMERS:
S S o o S o S o o S
Long shadows of grapevine wriggle and run
(an iambic pentameter with only one iambic foot)
Well, there's a lot more, but enough.
Robert Mezey
ps Sorry about the scansion. I put
o and S directly over each syllable I
marked but for some reason they got
all jammed together when they were
posted. But you can figure them out
easily enough.
Robert Mezey
I have recently read Poe's "Notes Upon English Verse", an excellent and I should say invaluable treatment, and in all candor I must laugh to hear him described as a clumsy poet. It reminds me of the author with a well-nigh Usherine ear, who composed a rhyming dictionary with a preface in which Robert Browning is pointedly given as an example of how not to write.
Christopher Mulrooney
End of insert
John
Linear Mode
