Mark,
Thanks.
I've been studying the meter with a magnifying glass, and found a note in Babette Deutsch's Poetry Handbook which sheds some light on it: With tetrameter, too much of a middle caesura can send you to Sir Thopas-ville, as Chaucer pointed out. I've varied a number of the natural speaking pauses, but I still have only one word bridging the second and third feet, "amidst" in the Matchgirl stanza. I should have at least one trisyllabic word doing that somewhere.
But that's what study and feedback is for.
Glad you like the new stanza.
Henry,
Glad you like the new stanza as well. I worked hard on the sonics to get them to what I'd heard.
Janet,
Trying to work on the regularity. I think some of the trouble is the old echoes I was trying to tie into -- successfully, I think -- but not seen in much of anything these days save Hiawatha. However, I did turn up the reference to what else I was hearing in my head.
I found an article on ancient Norse meters, and found the one I'd been keying into:
<h3 align="left">7. Hrynhendr háttr "flowing meter" </h3>
(derived from dróttkvætt, and uses all
the dróttkvætt rules with the addition of requiring
that the basic unit be extended from a three-stress, six-syllable line to
a four-stress, eight-syllable line.)
<h3 align="left">From a praise poem to King Magnus of Norway composed by Arnór
Thórdarson the Icelander ca. 1045 C.E.:</h3>
Ungan frák þik, eyðir, þrøngva
ulfa gráðar, þeira ráði;
skyldir stokk með skæðan þokka
skeiðarbrands fyr þér ór landi.
(Boyish you were, bane of, staying,
barest wolf-greed, men unruly;
helmsman ran with hostile thinking,
high-ship-front's, from you and country.)
Glad you liked it, and still polishing it.
Kevin
Linear Mode
